Getting some ideas about a new PC

[NV30]

Hi all,

Well my PC ain't the best anymore, but it'll be fine for about a year at maximum. (Specs in profile). I'd like to upgrade in 6-9 months, and I'll have some newly earned cash from the summer in my pocket as well. What types of technologies (or advancements) are coming out between now and then? I was thinking of DDR2, the latest ATI or Nvidia card, one of the fastest CPUs proportionate to cost and the best motherboard/memory. New soundcard and speakers most likely as well. I'd probably need a DVD-RW "all-in-one" drive and perhaps a memory stick reader or floppy drive. I can keep my keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer and scanner, as they'll very good for years.

Thanks

PS, how much of a performance boost would I get my going to DDR PC2700 on my system? (New mobo of course)

 

[iss]

you would see a very noticable difference going from PC 133 to PC 2700. a few months ago I upgraded my wifes PC from a 1.2 GHZ Tbird with 512 of PC 133 to a athlon XP 1800 with 256 of PC 2700. but the first thing I did was put the 1.2 GHZ in the new motherboard to see what difference the PC 2700 made and it was very noticable. I recently added another 256 of PC 2700 to her computer and it runs even smoother now.

you should see even more performance increase than I did since your P4 has a 400 mhz FSB and the athlon I used had only 266 FSB.

 

[NV30]

OK, do you think I should perhaps do that to tide me over for the next half year or make do?

 

[iss]

right now it would be the cheapest upgrade. PC 2700 DDR is dirt cheap right now. I just bought a 512 stick of PC 2700 ( Kingston) from newegg for 61.50. Last month a 256 stick of the same brand cost me almost 80.00. so I would snag a stick of 512 and a decent motherboard and you will be pleasently suprised at the performance boost it will give you.

 

[NV30]

Any ideas exactly how much? Right now I'm just at about 7000 3Dmarks using 3Dmark 2001. Haven't tested in 2003 yet.

Thanks

 

[NV30]

OK, got 1320 marks in 2003.

 

[iss]

my kids computer has a athlon XP 1800 512 PC2700 and a G4 Ti4200 64MB DDR. the 3Dmark 2001se score is currently 10,150

so I would say you should see that score or better with your 1.7Ghz and PC2700

 

[NV30]

Wow! That would be 3000+ marks! I'll probably take it.

 

[NV30]

I ran a Sisoft Sandra bench on the memory, and got some interesting results. I got around 900Mbps with mine, but an Intel D845PE mobo with 512MB of PC2700 got around 2.6GB/s!! If I can get an image host, I'll post the pic, it compares mine to a few other configs as well.