Upgrade 5 year old comp - What's best bang bank-per-buck till Nehalem?

Hi.

My existing spec:
Pentium 4 2.6c HT
Asus P4C800 Deluxe
2 x 1 Gig Corsair Value ram
4 x Seagate Barracuda (SATA with two on stripe RAID)
RME Fireface 800
Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW (22 inch widescreen)

As you can see my comp specs are proper old school.
I want to upgrade with a view to upgrading again in 2010, when the new architecture is established. I therefore don't want to spend £220 on a motherboard, but am looking to get best bang for buck with maybe the equipment listed below:

Intel E8400
Asus P5Q3 Deluxe
Corsair HX620
Corsair 2X1GB DDR3 1600MHZ 240PIN DIMM UNBUFFERED (mfr#: TW3X2G1600C9DHX )
ADS Tech PYRO1394 PCI Express

What do you think to the ram choice? I want to overclock it a bit.
I use Steinberg Nuendo a lot and want to start playin Call of Duty 4.
What GFX card would you get?

Mucho cheers,
Jim

Bang/buck wise, DDR3 is horrible, get the P5Q Deluxe version and some DDR2 instead

I would suggest either the 8800GT or 8800GTS 512 (G92 cores).

BTW: to the forums!!


EDIT: Note sure what "ADS Tech PYRO1394 PCI Express" is. If it is a 1394 card, the board has an onboard 1394 controller.

Agree with thideras 100% I'd get 2x2GB of ram DDR1000 or better

Trap05 said:

Agree with thideras 100% I'd get 2x2GB of ram DDR1000 or better

Click to expand...

LINKAGE

I have two sets of those, very nice sets

Yep that's the ones I was thinking of. Probably the best bang for buck right now

thideras said:

Bang/buck wise, DDR3 is horrible, get the P5Q Deluxe version and some DDR2 instead

I would suggest either the 8800GT or 8800GTS 512 (G92 cores).

BTW: to the forums!!


EDIT: Note sure what "ADS Tech PYRO1394 PCI Express" is. If it is a 1394 card, the board has an onboard 1394 controller.

Click to expand...

Oakie dokes and a big /wave to y'all!!
DDR2 then with the P5Q Deluxe.
What do I sacrifice? If it means spending another £100, then that's ok. But if the bang really aint worth it, then...

I've got to get the ADS Tech PYRO1394 PCI Express because Asus, very, very annoyingly has replaced the Texas Instruments firewire chip with an Agere one.
As an RME techie states:
"there is a new FW 800 chip on the market from Agere, which seems to be incompatible (not only) to RMEs FireWire audio, and requires workarounds for successful operation."
So it's gotta be TI all the way for me.

Will the 8800GTS 512 be fine on my Samsung? Please bear with with because I only know old-tech at the mo...

Cheers

Yeah I play CoD4 at 1680x1050 on a 22" with very similar hardware.

decilinear said:

What do I sacrifice?

Click to expand...

Nothing really

The only place you will see the difference is in synthetic benchmarks.

Well, I've spent my money and the gear is being delivered on Monday
I bought:
Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 (wanted 2 x 16 crossfire)
Intel Q9450
Corsair HX620
Antec p182
Gigabyte HD4850 (werd )
Gskill 4gb (2x 2gb) HZ PC3-12800 7-7-7-18 DDR3 (already received, but i got a question. see other post)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit OEM
2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB 7200RPM S300 32MB Seagate Barracuda (for raid stripe)

This is going to be used with Photoshop, Dreamweaver, COD4 and multitrack recording, editing and playback with Nuendo, Adobe Audition, amongst many other things. Will probs get another 4850 when price drops.
I know this isn't bang for buck . I decided to splash out a bit more than first intended! This may have had something to do with the bottle of wine that I consumed whilst building and paying for my purchases!

Just thought I'd let ya know.
What can I say.. I'm a ***** to the tech!

p.s. I already have 3 SATA-150 500 Gig Seagate barracudas that I use for storage of songs, samples, images, etc.

overkill.

B-auto said:

overkill.

Click to expand...

My music programs require a lot of juice with what I am using them for. Plus, I'm gonna get started on editing video.
Anywayz...

B-auto said:

overkill.

Click to expand...

Thanks for positively contributing to the thread.

To the OP: Nice setup, you wont be disappointed.

-tc

thats going to be a killer setup you'll be very happy with it compaired to p4 nite and day
Rich

Thats like, completely and totally not what we thought you wanted to do at all.....

Yes, very nice rig; make a nice machine to fold with, while editing music.