What should I upgrade to?

[sapi]

You might be right, but if i was designing dx10 i'd certainly start from scratch with no backwards compatibility, especially considering what you pointed out about there being a phase in period over the next few years, where most games will support either dx9 only or both (the only exception i know of is halo 2 for vista)

[Caius]

I will use the thread title to my question.

I have 1.5 Ghz Amd Sempron(I guess thats the name), 256 MB and Nvidia Fx5200.

What should I upgrade to?

[x-dANGEr]

I have the same PC.. Except, by time my 256 became a gig! And it's doing pretty good now.. (In anything else than running games.. )

[Phatose]

Guys, just so you know, it's real real hard to answer "What should I upgrade to?" unless you give us at the very least a budget. Else we'll just tell you "P5N32-SLI Premium/WiFi-AP, 4 nVidia 8800GTXs in Quad SLI, 4 GB of ram, a Q6600 quad core 2 processor, a dell 3007FPW, and a compressor/peltier cooling unit. Oh, and a check to me too."

[Beirut]

Hugh Tower,

I have the same CPU as you and it still runs everything well. Look at your other options first.

First off - get more RAM. You need 1 Gig. 2 is nice, but you have to have at least 1. If possible, sell your strip of 512 and get a single strip of 1024. That way when you want to add more, you just buy another stick of 1024. With strips of 512, you run into problems sometimes. Some machines don't like 3x512, or 1x1024 + 1x512 (causes instability), and some MBs cannot handle 4x512. Get into single strips of 1024 sooner than later if you can afford it. (Make sure your MB accepts strips of 1024 first.)

As for you card, decide if you are staying AGP or not. If you are, your "only" choices are the 7600GT and the 7800GS. Many people here like the 7600GT. I like the 7800GS (because I have one) but it's more expensive and some people say the increase in performance over the 7600 does not justify the increase in price. Some say there is no increase in performance over the 7600.

I went from an AMD64-3000/512/9800Pro to an AMD64-3000/1024/7800GS and it was a huge improvement. (I have 2Gigs of RAM now.) Everything looked better, played faster, and the new card allows you to use the Shader 3 options on many games which really pumps up the graphics.

If you stay AGP, and you up the RAM and get a 7600 or 7800 AGP card, you will absolutely see a big fat increase in performance.

If you switch to PCI-E, that brings up the MB question as well as new video card options. You might even have to switch your CPU depending on the MB you buy. What's your budget?

First things first - RAM.

[HughTower]

Many thanks for all the advice on this. Shortly after I posted, my MB blew up & suddenly I was looking at spending more ££ than I intended.

So I decided to spend even more than I should & but a whole new base unit -
Intel Core Duo E6300, 7600 GT, & 1 gb RAM -& suddenly I'm playing a whole different game. It's very cool.

I even managed to put my own wireless card in it without mishap, & then it struck me quite how simple changing components really is (within reason of course). These PC repair shops are charging money for old rope.

[Beirut]

Many thanks for all the advice on this. Shortly after I posted, my MB blew up & suddenly I was looking at spending more ££ than I intended.

So I decided to spend even more than I should & but a whole new base unit -
Intel Core Duo E6300, 7600 GT, & 1 gb RAM -& suddenly I'm playing a whole different game. It's very cool.

You are talking PCI-E, not AGP, correct?

[Caius]

I have the same PC.. Except, by time my 256 became a gig! And it's doing pretty good now.. (In anything else than running games.. )

In that case i dont need a upgrade at the moment.