New PC or upgrade ?

[mack848]

Hi

I currently have an old setup

AMD Sempron 3000+ (1.8GHz)
1 Gb DDR RAM
40 Gb RAM

I cannot play Full Tilt at all since the updates and I am getting occasional freeze-ups when 8 tabling Party, with PT and PAHUD. So I need to upgrade - but on a budget. The machine is not used for anything other than poker (except Email and surfing - no gaming or video/music editing etc)

Question is; will I be OK going for a motherboard/CPU bundle and re-use my current RAM and HD? I am thinking along the lines of an AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual core 3800 or 4800.

I don't need a bigger hard drive, but I believe that hard drive speed may be a reason to upgrade? I am sure that 1 gig of RAM is sufficient, but is RAM speed an issue for me?

Basically, I can get a motherboard bundle for about UK£160. A new machine with the same CPU, but with 2 gig of DDR2 RAM, a 250 gig SATA2 7200RPM hard drive and a DVD drive costs about UK£300.

Any advice (especially about RAM, Hard drive speed) would be much appreciated. I am basically looking for a much better CPU than the Sempron I have, as cheaply as possible.

Mack

[PokerImprov]

AMD is cheaper than intel.

If you upgrade your processor to dual core, then you have to upgrade the mobo. And if you upgrade the mobo, then you have to go to DDR2 RAM. PC5300 should be just fine for RAM speed. Unless you got a mobo with IDE support, then your going to have to switch to a SATA HD drive.

Not sure about hard disk speed. Never been a issue for me.

ECS has cheap mobo's, but if you find a good combo then go with the AMD + mobo combo.

Just do a bit of shopping and you should be alright.

[Beavis68]

AMDs are cheaper than Intel because Intel processors perform much better. you can get away with getting lower end C2D from Intel that will still outperform AMD.

Try adding another gig of RAM if you want to go for an upgrade though.

[Bremen]

[ QUOTE ]
AMDs are cheaper than Intel because Intel processors perform much better. you can get away with getting lower end C2D from Intel that will still outperform AMD.

[/ QUOTE ]
and both are far most than most normal people need.

I have a hard time believing your Sempron isn't good enough to play Full Tilt. If you mean you get slow downs with PT importing the only real way to address that would be to get a seperate machine for your database.

[flavius]

Its imperative that if you upgrade to go core2duo over AMD. I dont think you will notice a differnce between 1 to 2 gigs of RAM though, it would negligible. 256mb-1GB is when most of the performance increase is gained.

[ QUOTE ]
AMDs are cheaper than Intel because Intel processors perform much better. you can get away with getting lower end C2D from Intel that will still outperform AMD.

Try adding another gig of RAM if you want to go for an upgrade though.

[/ QUOTE ]

[funkyworms]

Your existing hardware should be sufficient for what you are doing. What processes do you have running in the background? Possibly Mcafee or Norton antivirus?