Price range of upgrading my computer?

[gisa]

Hi All,


Slowly, but surely Christmas approaches. The only thing I can think of that I'd like for Christmas is an improved computer. My computer is alright I guess (about a year and a half old) but it seems pretty slow compared to a lot of you guys. If it's not too much, I would like to really upgrade it but I'm wondering how much it'd cost.

Here's my current specs:

AMD athalon 64 processor 3200 + ~ 2.0 GHz (single core)
1024 MB of RAM
nVidia 7600 GT 256 meg vid card
Windows 2000 O.S.

Could you guys give me some advice on what would be best to upgrade and the possible price ranges I'd be looking at. I guess spending about 200-300 dollars is doable. Should I just wait a few years and then start from scratch or just upgrade a few things I've got?

:wave:

Gisa ^^

 

[ColPrice2002]

Hi Gisa,

Since I'm running an Athlon 64 3000+, 2Gb RAM, nVidia 6600GT graphics,

I guess you have a slightly faster system...

I'd suggest upgrading the RAM, anothe 1Mb certainly made a difference to mine.
I think that installing Trainz on a separate drive makes it more responsive - though that is only an impression I have.

When I started overclocking my PC, the only thing that made a difference was the CPU speed - not the GPU.

How about treating thr PC to a new case (with good cooling), adding a CPU fan (better spec than standard) and oveclocking by 10-15%?

HTH,

Colin

 

[johnwhelan]

In the last message on this thread I've quoted Blooknok's thoughts on performance.

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=31979

So his thoughts would be memory to 2.5 gigs first then a fast hard drive
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136033 note the latency of 2.99 millsecs.

For memory go to www.crucial.com and download their scanner to see what you have and what options there are. Then buy from newegg or NCIX.com

If you look at Tomshardware.com http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Best-Graphics-Card,2033-7.html I note that your graphics card is well down the list. I suspect your motherboard is AGP in which case an ATI 3850 is the fastest on the planet for AGP systems. Because you are running an nVidia card at the moment I'd probably suggest reinstalling the operating system to make sure you get rid of all the traces of the old drivers.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131090 The rest of your system will not be able to feed the video card as fast as it would like but set the aa and af to highish figures and the increase in image quality is well worth while.


Also I note you are running Windows 2000. XP should give you another 10-15% on your existing hardware.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16837116194

Cheerio John

 

[johnwhelan]

The other upgrade for better frame rates would be either TRS2009 or TC3. Both really need more memory but both would give you better frame rates than TRS2004 or TRS2006 and they are cheaper than hardware upgrades..

Cheerio John

 

[gisa]

Hi Guys!


Thank you very kindly for the information! I think I will seriously consider upgrading my memory to 2 gigs and purchasing XP. I like windows 2000 a lot though but I should notice a substantial improvement if I up the memory and O.S. I would also consider purchasing 09 if several features I'm interested in would be included...either way, the memory and XP upgrade would probably give me an increase I'm looking for.

:wave:

Gisa ^^