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"£300 (possibly £400) Budget - Lets go Shopping"

OK, firend of mine what to upgrade his PC, but only has a £300 budget to get :

Mobo
Ram
Processor

and possibly

GFX Card
HDD (May leave him with his struggling 20GB as have a couple of free 300GB SATA's coming my way soon and will drop one in for him so the mobo should have SATA 150 support)


His current set up is an old Dell Dimensions XTS system with P3 600, 256 PC100, 20GB HDD, ATi 9500Pro

What would people suggest?

Like to move him to AMD (XP) and at least 512 Ram. Not overly concerned about the graphics as the 9500pro still cuts it in places and supports DX9, but he's not looking for a HL2/D3 monster.

Only concern I have is the current Dell case. Are these a mare for fitting new mobos into?

If so, I'll need a nice, cheap sexy case too.

See if you can find the legendary 2.4 Northwood, or any Northwood for that matter instead of a prescott...

The 2.4 or 2.6 Northwood overclocks to around 3.2 on air no problems, the ram speed also goes up with it = mega bandwidth through the whole system.

EDIT: Ok that would require PC3200 (DDR400) ram... but still worth the hunt

OK, looks like I've settled on a set up, not the most amazing by any means, but 1000x better than what he's got:

Case: ASUS Vintage Barebones System (inc Mobo/PSU/FDD) @ £56.00
CPU: P4 Prescott 2.4Ghz 533FSB @ £75.00
RAM: Crucial PC2700 2x256DDR @ £50
HDD: Maxtor Special Edition 8MB/120GB ATA @ £45.00
DVD: Samsung TSH522B OEM 16x Dual Layer DVD+/-RW @ £35.00

£260 + VAT = £306.00-ish

He should be happy with that. Case is quite "sweet" and a nice small size and will end up with a nice sexy little black number.

AGP is coming from the current ATi 9500Pro, but he's currently running this on AGP x2 and not x8 which will make a huge difference.

Coin wrote:
> What? The 9600PRO is better than the 9500PRO, and the 9600XT is better
> than both...
>
> So yeah, the X600 is better.
>

Well the 9600PRO and the 9500PRO are based on different core sizes, the 9600 series was basically introduced because the 9500 cost too much to manufacture.

Evidence that the 9500PRO kicks the X600:

[URL]http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/half-life_12.html[/URL] note the fps for the 9500PRO and then note the fps for the X600XT - that is a noticable difference.

What? The 9600PRO is better than the 9500PRO, and the 9600XT is better than both...

So yeah, the X600 is better.

Anyhoo, retail P4's do come with fans.

Sh*te fans. Buy a cheap coolermaster, around £15. An Aero one.

Tyla wrote:
> OK, quick questions...
>
> X600 PCI-e Good or Bad in comparison to 9500pro?
>

Exact same performance 9600XT = X600= 9500PRO!!

2 years on and the 9500 can still hold its own!

Apparently the socket 754 sempron is a damn good buy. 88% in the custom PC review.

My post really wasn't that much use was it. Sorry. Lol.

Tyla wrote:
> Semperon - Good or Bad?

It depends on your needs.
Sempron is AMD's attempt to compete with intel's celeron. They're basically a new version of the thoroughbred CPU. Bartons are a better purchase still (more L2 cache), but AMD seems to have phased out all the lesser models of it in favour of the sempron now so not so easy to buy anymore.

X600 = 9600XT
X700 = 9800Pro

Just the PCI-e versions!

Tyla wrote:
> OK, quick questions...
>
> Semperon - Good or Bad?
> X600 PCI-e Good or Bad in comparison to 9500pro?

From what I gather, Semperon's are the replacement for Durons - just be careful though, they sometimes require you to flash the BIOS on the mobo to get it to work.

I would imagine the X600 is superior to the 9500Pro, but wouldn't like to say for sure.

> Do p4 retails come with Fan/HS?

I believe so.