All right, heres my current PC Specs.

Amd Athlon 64x2 4200(939)
Asus A8R-MVP32 deluxe
2 Gb OCZ DDR400 dual channel
Ati Radeon X1950xtx 512mb


Its been a pretty good system, but its starting to show its age pretty badly. I'm guessing that the CPU and RAM are the biggest downfalls. So what I'm wondering is what the best i can get for pretty cheap?. I just play games on this PC but dont consider myself a hardcore gamer, just basically a weekend warrior. But I'd like to be able to play some of the newer games(Far Cry 2, Fallout 3 DoW2) on more then low settings, as its almost to that point now. Is a Am2 Dual core 6000+ with decent motherboard and 2 gigs ddr2 going to make a noticeable difference?

if youre looking for an upgrade intel will definatly give you a betetr performing chip,and as well more board choice. but the 3 main things you need to upgrade is
board, cpu, and ram. now i dont know what kind of budget you have available to you. so i will list the mid range suggestions.

for a good decent cpu at a nice price INTEL Pentium Dual-Core E5200 2.5GHz 800MHz 2MB LGA775 CPU, Retail
108.00


for a board ASUS P5QL-EM G43 1XPCI 2PCIE X1,4D.DDR2,PCI-EX16 1333 /1066FSB,SATA HDMI 1394 X4500VGA M.ATX
129.00

and hell 2 gigs of ram doesnt really matter unless you're going to oc.



now if you want to go better chip, e8400 @ 208.00 is a very good performing chip. overclocks very well, or theres the q6600 option. if you want quad.


and you may consider later on upgrading your video card, an 8800gt or revised 8800gts are great performing cards at a great price. or you can look into a the 9600gt or 9800 etc.. or even the 4850. all decent cards. but depends on your preferences and budget

+1 vote for the 4850..thing runs awesome..
+1 for the e8400..." "

Well I can get an ASUS M3A78 board for cheap from a friend of mine, so I was going to try and stay with an AMD processor simply because I can get a good deal on the board. If i was going to build the best PC for the money, I'd definitly go the e8400 route... as it seems to be one of the better going. So, if i was going to stay with AMD, would a Dual core 6000+ even be an improvement over mine? would I notice a difference while gaming, or would I have to upgrade to say a 9550 to notice a difference?

I used to be a AMD fan. But Intel blows AMD out of the water now when it comes to all around performance. Don't get me wrong. I still use AMD in my servers to support the competition.

You will notice a INSANE difference in performance to stepping upto a Core2.

On the improvement side. I'm hoping thats a rehtorical question. Yes it is but barely noticeable.

I stress this to so many people who believe AMD are gaming CPUs now. And they just don't listen but i'll try once more. Get a E8400 processor. I guarantee you'll like it. And you can thank me after for the recommendation.

With the Q9550 you will just be burning your money at the moment. I went from a E8400 on one of my machines to a Q9550. The performance in games is miniscule. Until games start using more than 2 threads for cores. It's not worth it for a gamer.

If you buy a E8400 and have a 8800 and above. Buy a aftermarket cooler and Overclock the 8400 to 3.6 and above (being 4.0 Ghz) on a aftermarket cooler IE: Zalman 8500 or above..
This will give you more perfoamnce out of your card being that the CPU is the bottleneck over the GPU now.

Anyhow I hope this helps.

P.S. A good budget board which will overclock well on a E8400 would be a P5K-SE (ASUS). I managed to pull 4.21 Ghz on my 8400 on it. With air cooling.


So to sum it up.

Best bang for buck in perofmance and excellent OCer: E8400

Step up: Q9550 which is not a huge improvement in current games. But neat to have if your into the trend...

Mobo: P5K-SE by Asus. Good with this processor to overclock and all the necessary options to do so.

Thanks for the info. Instead of wasting my money on a half a$$ed upgrade, ill just wait and get the parts one at a time.

Buy my P5N-T Deluxe. Ill give you a good deal. just send me a msn

topsecret66server@live.com

-B

Aight, took everyones advice, went and bought an e8500 at MB today, then Bought a P5N-T Deluxe, and Some Ram from members on here. Thanks guys, cant wait to get my new system up and running.

nice upgrade from the amd...u'll be impressed

lol i sold you that 8500 today. it was the only one left in stock

you work at MB?

You prob sold me lotsa stuff anyways.

So which one are ya

Glad I got the last one.

lol im the saturday guy with the beard.

Noted. I'll drop by and pick on you someday , lol.

Aight guys Im having a problem. Ive installed everything and the pc keeps crashing during installation of windows, usally only a few mins in. I decided to check the bios and the temps are wayyyyyyyy up there, like around 90-100 and climbs a degree every few seconds kinda thing. Ive double checked and the heatsink pins are down as far as they go, and the fan is spinning free and clear. Any ideas?