Upgrade or not?

[BIGGI]

Seeing all these new high quality games come out is making me wonder if I should upgrade. The two newer games I have now are WoW and HL2. I have yet to play HL2, it was pre-ordered and hasn’t arrived yet. WoW plays good, no problems at all.

Here are my system specs:

P4 2.4 800fsb
ASUS P4C800 Deluxe http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-464&depa=0
WD 80gig HD 7200rpm 8mb cache
ATI 9700Pro
SB Audigy Gamer
1024 PC2700, Kingston

What I was planning on doing was saving up for a X800XT and maybe another gig of ram. But! Do I really need to upgrade? If so, what?

[GHoosdum]

Your current setup should run HL2 with no problems at all as well. I'd advise saving your cash up for an A64 system in about 6 months.

[BIGGI]

A 64bit system will be my next build. I made this machine almost two years ago.

I'm very curious about this new pci-e technology.

[primesuspect]

I would spend money on ram instead of a video card upgrade. HL2 runs great on my 9800 pro/128. But I noticed a huge difference in performance in UT2k4 and Doom3 when I upgraded from 512 to 1gb of ram.

By all accounts that I've read, HL2 runs fantastically well on a 9700pro.

[BIGGI]

So it seems I'm ok in the video department. Now, how about my CPU? Should I upgrade that to a 3.0+ ?

[madmat]

Buy yourself a gig of PC4000 and replace that PC2700 with it then remove the stock HSF in favor of a newer heatpipe based P4 cooler (the new Thermalrights kick a$$) and set your FSB to 250mhz and O\C that bad boy.
I've got my 2.4c running at 3245mhz with watercooling and I've seen more than a few guys running this CPU at 3Ghz with aircooling.

[BIGGI]

Can my mobo support PC4000? lol :scratch:

[madmat]

Yes, it's based on the Intel 875 chipset for dual channel DDR and point in fact, it's the very same board that Corsair uses to test their ram with for compatability with Intel based socket 478 systems. ;)

[BIGGI]

If I stay with Kingston : http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator/modelsinfo.asp?SysID=15770&distributor=0&submit1=Search

I dont see any PC4000, which manufacture should I go with?

[madmat]

KHX4000K2/1G 1GB 500MHz DDR Non-ECC CL3 (Kit of 2 - 512MB) Which is found here...http://www.kingston.com/hyperx/thelines/default.asp?type=krxu

[BIGGI]

Oops! Sorry sir, thats a hefty price :wtf: .

[madmat]

Check www.newegg.com, you should find PC4000 there for about $300 give or take

[madmat]

http://www.newegg.com/app/SearchProductResult.asp?Submit=Go&DEPA=0
There's a search result for PC4000 on newegg...

[BIGGI]

Gameve - 290
Newegg - 268.25
zipzoomfly - 287

Its not too bad ^_^

[madmat]

See, right now your CPU is running at 200fsb, which is stock, your ram since it's PC2700 is at 160mhz due to a divider imposed by the mobo of 5/4 (200/5=40 so 40x4=160) which means your ram is effectively a bottleneck so the answer is to get faster ram and since a bump to 250fsb will net you 3ghz it makes the most sense to get at least PC4000 which is rated for 250mhz x 2 or 500mhz and will allow you to run the ram at 1-1 with the FSB of the CPU.