How should I go about upgrading??

[thorleif]

Ok, here's the scoop. This was brought on by me buying a new monitor and trying to set up duals with no luck. My machine is getting old, and I am wondering what would be the best way of upgrading.

Currently, I have a crappy "pcchips" mobo that has 2 pci slots and 1 agp slot. The PCI slots are occupied by a sound card (onboard crapped out) and a wireless card. The AGP is occupied by my ATI AllinWonder Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB video card. ----> All of my expansion slots are occupied.

Yesterday I bought a 1GB stick of DDR PC2100 compatible. Although I beleive I can probably return that within a couple weeks if necessary.

My processor is an AMD Athlon XP 2400+. I am not dissatisfied with it, but I'm sure with 3 years worth of technology, this thing is probably not compatible with any MOBOs/it won't cost much to get a fairly decent upgrade.

I have a 40GB HD for my OS/programs and a 200GB for storage. I don't think anything needs to be done in this department, except for maybe getting a new OS HD because I don't thnik the 40 is a "quality" drive.

1 standard DVD drive, 1DVDRW 16x dual layer drive... Should be fine here.

My case is a POS.

Monitors - 1 SamsungSyncMaster 204B, 1 Viewsonic flat CRT 19", UltraBrite A90f+. No problems here, except for possibly upgrading to 2 LCDs down the road.

What I want to be able to do;

First of all, I want to be able to run dual monitors. I've heard that most machines today come with support for this. Also, I really like the All In Wonder card. Are today's PCs Windows Media Center compatible (ie having a cableTV input onboard)? I'm not really a gamer, so graphics don't have to be through the roof.

Now, I'm not a big fan of just going out(ie to Best Buy) and buying the cheapest machine that satifies my requirements. These things tend to be of lesser quality. I'm also not a fan of going to Dell and buying a $1200 machine either, as I have quite a few peripherals that can be forward substituted.

So, here's where I look for the geeks to come in and give me the perfect description of what I need. I, myself, have always been interested in computers, but since I set up this machine, so many newer technologies have come out that I feel I'm lost. I don't really know where to begin. What I *think* I should probably do is return my memory, buy a new case, high quality mobo, processor, memory, possibly video card.

[BiPolar_Nut]

Cheapest (short-term) way out would be to scrap your current vid card for one that's dual monitor capable.

I'm still running a few 800FSB 2.4GHz machines as my main boxes...and they're fine so I'd be hesitant to upgrade your mobo/CPU/RAM.

The modern Core 2 Duo's do kick ass tho...I guess it comes down to how much longer you think your comp will satisfy you vs the cost of the vid card.

Eventually when you DO upgrade your mobo/CPU, you will likely need a PCI-e vid card and your (new) AGP will be a paperweight. If you can keep the dinosaur for another 13-14 months, and you find a $100 dual-head AGP card, that'd prolly be your best bang for the buck since systems will be faster in a year and the best deals are typically in Jan/Feb during inventory time.

Waiting a month or two and hitting a pre-inventory sale on a Core 2 Duo would save you from having to buy a vid card you're going to replace shortly...but it means you have an unused monitor sitting til then and can't run dual-headed...which would prolly shift the timetable to a "now" upgrade (mobo/cpu/vid card/RAM) worthwhile.

It really comes down to personal preference and finances you're willing to part with. I hope I gave some insight into what your options are, at least....feel free to elaborate on your needs/wants/and views on the upgrade paths I mentioned if you need help narrowing down the choices into numbers/dollar signs.

[thorleif]

Gosh I love these forums.

Alright, so say I go out and buy a dualhead card now... As you say ~$100. That would make it a total of $240 invested with the RAM I just bought.

From my understanding of your post, prices in Feb 2008 will be about the same as Feb 2007, but with faster systems.

So, fix it now is $240 to keep the old system.
Fix it now is ~$xxx? to get a new mobo/cpu/vid card/RAM?
Fix it in feb07 is ~$xxx? to get mobo/cpu/vid card/RAM?

thx bipolar,