To Upgrade or not?

[inko1nsiderate]

I am considering upgrading my graphics card.

Currently my system specs are:

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57
Asus A8R32-MVP deluxe
2 gb of DDR dual channel
ATI x1800 GTO


Now I was thinking since I am a college student I can't really afford a complete upgrade until I graduate (in another two years) so I was considering maybe getting an Nvidia 8800 GT to upgrade my graphics card so I can get a little better performance in my games and my rig can last it out until I graduate.

I am wondering if it is worth it though.

Does anyone have any advice? Maybe ideas on what I should upgrade first if I have the opportunity.

[DMB2000uk]

It a PCIe board then?

If so, yes, the biggest single-component-upgrade-performance-boost would be the graphics card.

Dan

[inko1nsiderate]

It a PCIe board then?

If so, yes, the biggest single-component-upgrade-performance-boost would be the graphics card.

Dan

It is pcie, so would the 8800 gt be advisable or would a different card be better?

[ibleet]

It really depends on your budget, but the 8800gt would be a good choice. Tiger Direct has the 256Mb XFX version for $99.99 after MIR.

[DMB2000uk]

It depends on how much overall you want to spend on the upgrade. The 8800GT is about the sweetspot for price/performance currently.

One thing to note is that you might not be able to get full performance out of the 8800GT currently (rest of the system might bottleneck somewhere), but it will still be a huge marked improvement over what you have now. When you upgrade the rest of the PC, the remaining power can be unlocked though, so it is nothing to worry about.

Dan

[martini161]

or you can buy one of the ones brian just reviewed, it has 512mb of memory, but half of it is locked in the bios. just flash it to a 512mb bios and boom you got a 512mb card for a 256mb price

[JustinEss]

I'd be a bit worried about your CPU bottlenecking the 8800GT. Your best bet would be to get a new motherboard, CPU, RAM and the videocard. If you can't afford it at the moment, just keep saving money until you can afford to get all 4.

[ibleet]

Well the video is holding you back the most, so if you want to get a piece at a time, I would start with the video card anyway.

That way you get the most performance boost now until you can afford the other parts.

Or maybe once you replace the video card, you will decide the system is fast enough for you...who knows!

[inko1nsiderate]

Yeah definitely can't afford upgrading my mobo, cpu and vid card all at once.

Thanks for the replies though, very helpful.