Upgrading, what's the best choice?

[it290]

Upgrading, what's the best choice?

Well, it's been a while since I've given any love to my Linux machine, which is my main desktop PC. It's currently running an ECS K7S5A motherboard, with an Athlon XP 2200, 1 gig of DDR266 memory, and a GeForce4 Ti 4600. I want to boost it a bit, but I'm trying to save cash while doing so. The main thing I want to do is upgrade the CPU and video card, but I need some advice.

Here are my options:

1. Boost the CPU to an XP 2800+, and stick something like a Geforce 6600 in there. This is the cheapest option, but it has a few downsides - A, I'm not sure if my (overall system as well as gaming) performance will be increased by much, B, I'd like something with SSE2+3 so I can mess around with Mac OS x86 on this machine, and C, the AGP slot is limited to 4x.

2. Shelve the motherboard and processor entirely, and upgrade to an Athlon 64 system, maybe with PCI Express. Obviously, this is more expensive, but I'm considering it. The main thing is, I don't want to spend any cash on new RAM right now, so I'd be stuck using my DDR266 modules. Is this even feasible? Will a machine with a much faster FSB even be able to use that memory, and if so, will it simply hinder performance too much? I've been wanting to upgrade to an Athlon 64 for a while, and this would also let me upgrade my OS to 64 bit. But if the memory is going to be a big issue, I might skip it for now. Also, I'm worried that whatever motherboard I get may not be as rock-solid stable as my K7S5A has been.

So, any advice?

 

[slinga]

Upgrading, what's the best choice?

If you get a Geforce 6600, stay away from XFX. Pure crap.

Edit: Let me clarify, crap in terms of reliability and tech support, I haven't benchmarked the card yet. RMAing it back to Newegg.

 

[it290]

Upgrading, what's the best choice?

For the video card, I'll probably just get the best fanless Nvidia model I can find. I run this machine 24/7 and it tends to get pretty dusty. I've had 2 fans fail on the Ti4600 that's in there now -- which is why I'm now running it fanless, but with a case fan right next to it pulling the hot air away.

 

[RitualOfTheTrout]

Upgrading, what's the best choice?

Im sort of in the same boat, Id like to upgrade my system with two Serial ATA drives in a raid 0 configuration but my mobo doesnt support raid. So im stuck between the decision of getting a PCI SATA Raid Card or just getting a whole new mobo. The problem is I dont want to get a new processor and ram to go with it but I also do not want to spend 100 to buy a new mobo that I can't upgrade to a 64bit processor or maybe even dual core at a later time frame, while im getting a new mobo I might aswell spend like 50-100 more and get a "

I personally dont think you will notice a big difference with the upgrade of processor and video card. Maybe in gaming you would see some performance increase, but overall typical system performace would only show a marginal imporvment IMO.