$1000 Upgrade - What to do?

[sickness]

I have $1000 to spend on an upgrade to my aging 9800 Pro / Athlon XP system but i'm not sure what to buy. I really want this upgrade to make my system last for 2-3 years before I have to upgrade again because my parents HATE when I spend my own money on computer parts. So that being my #1 concern, i'm also a huge Valve gamer (HL1, HL1 mods, HL2, HL2 mods) and I still play Doom 3 and I plan on buying F.E.A.R. and possibly BF2 and COD2. So my main questions are, should I go with dual core now (Opteron 165) or go with a 3700+ sandy? And what video card(s) should I buy?

[terrordemon]

id get a:

dfi ultra-d - 125
opteron 165/170 (prolly 165 because it seems theyre ocing much better recently than newer 170's) - 300ish
2gb G.Skill HZ - 200
7800 GT - 300

and still got like 75 bucks for a decent heatsink

the only problem is that this solution leaves out the psu... which is important with all this beef. i duno, thats what im doing but see what other people have to say

[Arkangyl]

hmm, basically just did this for a friend, $1180 got a X2 3800+, chaintech mobo , 2gb DDR, 7800 GT, 200gb HD, 16x DVD-RW DL, Antec Sonata II [comes with PSU]

for you; I'd say

AMD Opteron 165 $300
DFI Ultra-D $125
2gb g.Skill PC-4000 DDR $200
7800 GT $280
Tagan 480w U-22 $80
total : $985

you can nab better cooling later, getting a solid core first strikes me as most important

[nn_step]

MSI Neo4 - $84
165- $300
G.Skill NT- $200
6800Gs- $195
Antec Neopower 480- $80

Which leaves you $141 for case and Drives...

[manomanx2]

For now I'll assume that you'll be keeping the hard drive and the case, as they seem pretty good.

Ultra-D (125) + Opteron 165 (300 for OEM at Monarch) + Good Heatsink (35-50ish) + G.Skill HZ (200), 7800GT (300ish, comes with Quake4 if you get eVGA, which I would do) + Decent PSU/Keep old one until you OC.

125 + 300 + 50 + 200 + 300 = 975. You could keep the old PSU, which is okay, until you come into some more cash in a few weeks. Maybe you can stretch your budget, but considering taxes and shipping, I think you'll be over 1000 anyway. I went with the 165 OEM because the retail is around 350 anyway, so a better heatsink would be a better option.

Good luck with the build.


Edit: Oh yea, if you sell your old parts for decent prices (the 9800 will fetch a good amount), you'll have some more money to flex.

[sickness]

Thank you very much for the suggestions, but I don't think I need new memory. My 2x512mb OCZ PC-3500 Platinum memory is very overclockable and can take very high vdimm. All I need is a new psu/mobo/cpu/videocard and that's pretty much it. Here is what I decided on so far:

AMD Opteron 165 Denmark CPU - $330
AeroCool Turbine Power ATX12V 550W PSU - $106

[nn_step]

Antec TruePower II 550 or PCP&C 510
Your Lian Li Is plenty good..

[manomanx2]

Go with another PSU, maybe a Forton Bluestorm 500w for like 75 bucks, that's pretty good. What nn_step offered is good as well, but the PC&P may be a little too expensive.

Keeping the memory saves you a bit of money, enough to spring for everything else I said, maybe even a Powerstream 520w.

[nn_step]

Cheaping out on the PSU is the last thing you should ever do...

[i found nemo]

first off, personally i'd get some fx series g.skill

[nn_step]

first off, personally i'd get some fx series g.skill

Dude not with his Budget