Gaming Rig: upgrade questions/suggestions

Greetings,

I'm trying to find out the most cost effective means of upgrading my
current system. I plan on purchasing an entirely new system within
the next year or so, but, in the interim, I was hoping I could get a
little more speed/life out of my existing machine.

My specs:

AMD Athlon 1.2 Ghz
256 RAM (I'm assuming it's SD, but I could be wrong)
Nvidia GeForce2 (w/ 64 megs)
Windows98

I was thinking that another 256 megs of RAM would probably give me the
most bang for the buck, but I wanted to get other opinions. I was
also thinking about upgrading to a GeForce 4 (??), but I've been told
my front side bus won't really be able to take advantage of it (though
I'm not sure why that is).

A buddy of mine also suggested that I get a new motherboard, new
processor, more RAM, and a new video card -- but, at that point, I'll
be up around $600 -- which is quite a bit more than I was hoping to
spend.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
V

(Volstag) wrote in message news:<. com>...
> Greetings,
>
> I'm trying to find out the most cost effective means of upgrading my
> current system. I plan on purchasing an entirely new system within
> the next year or so, but, in the interim, I was hoping I could get a
> little more speed/life out of my existing machine.
>
> My specs:
>
> AMD Athlon 1.2 Ghz
> 256 RAM (I'm assuming it's SD, but I could be wrong)
> Nvidia GeForce2 (w/ 64 megs)
> Windows98
>
> I was thinking that another 256 megs of RAM would probably give me the
> most bang for the buck, but I wanted to get other opinions. I was
> also thinking about upgrading to a GeForce 4 (??), but I've been told
> my front side bus won't really be able to take advantage of it (though
> I'm not sure why that is).
>
> A buddy of mine also suggested that I get a new motherboard, new
> processor, more RAM, and a new video card -- but, at that point, I'll
> be up around $600 -- which is quite a bit more than I was hoping to
> spend.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> V

What are you using this computer for? web browsing, Word processing,
to play games etc.

(jamotto) wrote in message news:<. com>...
> (Volstag) wrote in message news:<. com>...
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I'm trying to find out the most cost effective means of upgrading my
> > current system. I plan on purchasing an entirely new system within
> > the next year or so, but, in the interim, I was hoping I could get a
> > little more speed/life out of my existing machine.
> >
> > My specs:
> >
> > AMD Athlon 1.2 Ghz
> > 256 RAM (I'm assuming it's SD, but I could be wrong)
> > Nvidia GeForce2 (w/ 64 megs)
> > Windows98
> >
> > I was thinking that another 256 megs of RAM would probably give me the
> > most bang for the buck, but I wanted to get other opinions. I was
> > also thinking about upgrading to a GeForce 4 (??), but I've been told
> > my front side bus won't really be able to take advantage of it (though
> > I'm not sure why that is).
> >
> > A buddy of mine also suggested that I get a new motherboard, new
> > processor, more RAM, and a new video card -- but, at that point, I'll
> > be up around $600 -- which is quite a bit more than I was hoping to
> > spend.
> >
> > Any ideas?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> > V
>
> What are you using this computer for? web browsing, Word processing,
> to play games etc.

Thread title says games.

Anyway, it looks like all your components are equally matched. For
this reason, I would save you money and buy a killer rig later. The
only thing I would maybe do is add more RAM, but I don't know how much
good that would do. After all, you only have Windows 98. But I
suppose, games take much RAM. So go ahead, upgrade RAM.

Aaron

(Aaron) wrote in message news:< om>...

[snip]

>
> Anyway, it looks like all your components are equally matched. For
> this reason, I would save you money and buy a killer rig later. The
> only thing I would maybe do is add more RAM, but I don't know how much
> good that would do. After all, you only have Windows 98. But I
> suppose, games take much RAM. So go ahead, upgrade RAM.

I've also been told that installing WinXP will help with my
performance. Is that true? I think I might go with another 256 of
RAM and get XP installed.

-V

> Thread title says games.
>
> Anyway, it looks like all your components are equally matched. For
> this reason, I would save you money and buy a killer rig later. The
> only thing I would maybe do is add more RAM, but I don't know how much
> good that would do. After all, you only have Windows 98. But I
> suppose, games take much RAM. So go ahead, upgrade RAM.
>
> Aaron

True, I wanted to know if it is all he was going to to do with it. If
it is just a gaming machine I would upgrade the memory as Aaron
suggest's, however if you plan on building a machine as opposed to
buying a DELL I would hold off. b/c some of the parts you would swap
won't work in the new rig for example the memory.