I am going to upgrade my graphics card for christmas. Now I am wondering if I should upgrade the rest of my computer.

Graphics Card: GeForce FX5200 --> GeForce 6600GT/Radeon 800GTO
CPU: Pentium 4 2.8ghz HT
Memory: 1gb (4x256) off brands

should I upgrade my CPU or memory? I will get a new motherboard so that I can support PCI Express. I am just trying to figure out mainly if I should upgrade processors. Does anyone know how the new AMD Athlon 64's compare to my current processor? I was looking at...

AMD Athlon 64 2800+ ClawHammer 800MHz FSB 512KB L2 Cache Socket 754 Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103485

or

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 1GHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103539

I am looking for a strong gaming computer to keep up with new games and definately good enough to run the higher setting in Battlefield 2: Special Forces.

Thanks!

12/17/2005 12:20:29 AM

you have plenty of power there. though if you're changing motherboards to PCIe you may as well get a socket T P4 or go AMD.

for gaming, the AMD is going to be faster but hard to tell if you'll notice. my guess is unless you're used to running at very high resolution (1600*1200) you'll probably not notice much difference (unless you're one of those who think 100 FPS is somehow better than 60 FPS).

12/17/2005 12:23:12 AM

Don't know what the difference is, but I noticed XP pro 64 bit edition the other day.

12/17/2005 12:32:13 AM

yea your current setup shoudl be plenty powerful to run games on. after you upgrade ur video card and u feel like it's not fast enough, u may want to look into some dual core intels, and if you go amd you want to be sure you get a socket 939 since 754 isn't in amds future.

12/17/2005 1:14:14 AM

i am tempted to upgrade my cpu

the dilemma being... is paying $200 going to give me enough of a difference in a cpu? i was thinking i might keep playing with current processor... i can OC it to 3.15 stable easily.

12/17/2005 3:26:25 AM