Should I upgrade or just save for new comp?

[The_678]

Right now I have a AMD Athlon at 1.4 Ghz, 756 RAM, and a nVidia Geforce 4 MX (got comp when moved out, was house comp not gaming) I was wondering if would even be worth it to upgrade or if I should just wait and save to get a new comp. I know I want to up grade at LEAST the video card asap, but I don't want to spend all too much because I need to save for the PS3 pre-order to get that when it comes out. The thing is I would have to pretty much have to upgrade almost everything including case and fans and is it even worth it?

[Geezer57]

From a brief look at your hardware, your machine would most benefit from a RAM and video card upgrade. However, I suspect your current memory is the old 168-pin SDRAM. rather than the more recent 184-pin DDR1 RAM. If that's the case, then it isn't really worth upgrading the memory, as the availability is poor & cost-per-meg on the old stuff is uneconomical.

Similarly with your graphics - it's most likely an AGP interface, which is rapidly becoming obsolete and not well supported by the latest graphics chipsets. So you'd be forced into buying either older technology or a lower-performing chip, which you wouldn't be able to take with you in a future upgrade. All newer machines use PCI-e x16 slots, often in dual-card (SLI or Crossfire) configurations, which is something an upgraded card for your current motherboard couldn't later migrate towards.

I'd say your best choice is to continue to save up for a new machine - so in this case, patience is a virtue!

[hoom]

756MB of RAM on a 1.4ghz Athlon is not a shortcoming.

I'd say about the only thing you might find worth doing with that rig on cost/benefit would be upgrade the graphics card to a low end directx9 card.

Something like a X1300 should give a big 3d performance increase over a GF4MX without blowing the budget & without either leaving the CPU as bottleneck or killing the PSU.

[LeftEyeNine]

The 678, I'll be definitie and brief: Save for a titan. Don't splash for a tiny monster.