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I think I am going to wait, I don't want to re-outfit my entire computer. I think I will just wait until next christmas and ask for a gaming computer (Alienware ftw?), because right now, I am not playing any high-energy games.

 

Looks great BA.

Danger: I just found out that this board will not function whit the x2-6o00. Do not know why, but it says so o the site of a webshop. I advice an asus or gigabyte whit the nvidia 550, 560 or 570 chipset. I only found the gigabyte m56s-s3.

Alas I am still a spoilsport. One 400 watt PSU is not like the other one.
It is important to know how much power it has on the 12volt lines. A bad one give to much on the wrong powerline and thus is weaker than the 400 watt it boasts. The amd x2 6000 uses 125 watt. What is the brand of the unit? You have a greater change that it is okay, but you never know. The graphics card uses 47 watt.

The harddisk has a chace of 8mb. the ones whit a 16mb have a better data transfer rate, more suited for the am2 board. It is not a big deal so it will be fine, but still. XFX is the best Nvidia brand. Kingston is a top memory brand and that set is perfect for your board.

For Sabre: use a second hand agp card. It will postpone the upgrade whit half a year. It is the weakest part of your pc.

 

To build up on what Merlanni said, Saber, If you want a cheap second-hand AGP card, you can't get any better bargain than GeForce 7300GT DDR3. I repeat: DDR3. Not 2. The DDR3 version is nearly as good as 7600 GS DDR3. The price should be very, very low by now. Also, the best AGP card you can get is Radeon x1950pro, but that's expensive compared to other cards (probably worth it) and eats 66W power, so beware if your PSU isn't too good.

 

As good a deal as the 7300GT DDR3 is, I still don't think it would be too wise an upgrade to a 6600GT; the increase in performance, while noticeable, would not be great enough to justify the outlay for the card. The DDR3 version is only around 20%-30% faster than the 6600GT, while the DDR2 version will actually run slower.
As an upgrade option, I think the ATI 2600XT, while more expensive, would be a much wiser purchase, as a decent performance gain would result (~twice as fast as your current 6600GT).

Of course keep your eyes out for a bargain and be ready to adapt to market changes.

references:
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html
http://www.gph.benchmark.pl (chevalier posted this earlier)

 

Well, if I am not going to be playing any high end games the near future, do you think I should just wait a while and buy a whole new computer?

 

I'm assuming that something will be done with the old card, e.g. selling it or giving to someone with a worse card. The cash you could recover that way wouldn't be that much less than the price of a 7300GT. All in all, that would be a cheap upgrade. Myself, however, I decided to skip 7300GT in favour of 7600GT. Between 6600GT and 7600GT, there should be 33-50% increase in power in both older and newer games.

That's why I'm saying don't even look at DDR2. Some cards already have DDR4, though I doubt we'll see any of that on AGP and even if, then it'll just be ATI. ATI is generally friendlier to AGP slot owners. NVidia is being mean by castrating cards - e.g. they use slower RAM chips for AGP cards than for PCI-E (1.4 ns, 1.2 ns, respectively in case of 7600GT and 7300GT) probably to make PCI-E appear better in benchmarks - unless they actually believe there's a reason AGP can't handle such low latencies. I think that's rubbish.

You mean GF 7600GT or Radeon 2600pro/XT? Out of the latter two, I suggest XT rather than pro if you can find it.

Or good bids at ebay. I got a card some 33% cheaper this way some time ago and it was still only half the way into warranty period.

 

Saber, your pc is not that bad. But yes, save up until you have a good cash pot before a major upgrade. The videocard will extend the life of your pc so granting more time to save, but on the long term it only costs. Target $600 a a base to upgrade from. It is a lot of money, we know. but we want to give you as sound advice as possible whitout dissapointment, even if it means bad news. If you decide to buy a graphics card, we understand. I would do the same thing in your place because gaming is so nice. Only last July I bought a lesser card because I could not wait. For that 150 euro I can now buy, in November, a card almost twice as fast. But in those four months I was happy whit it.

To all, readers and poster alike, the motherboard is such an underrated piece of your pc, but yet the most important. Ofton we think we get a nice bargain at a big store that boasts a good processor for a great price, but the Motherboard is a older generation surplus model. Processorprices tend to drop fast, motherboard prices are more stable.

 

The 2600XT of course, sorry bout the typo.

Sabre - it depends largely on what you want to be playing - if your current rig is capable of running all the games you want to play, then I'd recommend waiting and buying a new comp when you *need* it. If however there are a few games you are unable to play at a reasonable number of frames per second, or you would like to be playing something with higher visual settings, then an upgrade may prolong the time it takes for you to *need* a new computer.

 

Yup. And if you don't really need the upgrade anyway, then find a better way of spending the money. Or save. I know what I'm talking about. I spent a lot of cash early this year and ended up using it just in one game.

Also, if you know your bits about hardware, assemble the computer on your own. You don't need to know how stuff works, you need to be able to plug it in. Saves cash on assembly. Also, use the old monitor, the old printer or scanner or what have you. And even old hard drives and DVD. That is something you can replace later.

Reasoning: It's better to save on the monitor, keyboard, mouse, hard drive and replace them totally later, then to buy a new SATA2 HDD, fancy keyboard & mouse, a new burner etc, but a cheaper graphics card that you will want to swap later. No, no, no. Just get a good CPU, a dependable mobo, good enough RAM (I mean the stats of the chips, not necessarily the amount - you can always add one chip later - who says you need dual channel right off the bat?), a good graphics card. You can swap the HDD for a newer and bigger model later. Then the monitor. Keyboard, mouse etc last.

 

The Problem however is the sata connection. many old computer use the PATA. this give you mostly two pata devices whit a new motherboard, the dvd players. Meaning you might need a new SATA HDD anyway.

But, a smartass might say, use only one dvdplayer and the hdd. The sataconnector is faster, reducing the time neede to transfer data.... For a dvd player not a big issue, for a hdd it is.