What should i get for my comp next?

hey guys... i have $80 burning in my wallet... and its time for a computer upgrade! only problem is that i don't know what i should get for my computer next... here are my specs

MOBO: Asus A7N8X Deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon Xp 1700+ (I got a t-bred-b)
RAM: kingston 128mb pc2100 ddr
Video Card:A Geforce 2 MX 200 64mb video card
Floppy Drive... when i was building my comp... i somehow broke the floppy drive.. luckily windows xp doesn't need a floppy to install...
CDROM/CDRW-sme cheapo cdrw i got from god know wheres
I only have on really really really loud case fan that came with my case (NOTE: my case can take two)
some cheapo 2.0 speaker setup
a 17" monitor which i probably will NOT upgrade

I also want to get the game Age of Mythology.... here is what i am thinking...
i can save up my money for two more weeks where i will have $100 dollars (from my allowance as all the money i make from work goes into my buy a car account)... looking at newegg i saw that a pair of kingston pc2700 512mb for $59 and i could also buy a new floppy drive for $13 dollars from newegg... and then that would be it?

or My Second option (the one i am leaning towards more since in the long run more fun for me) is i can wait on this setup till June, and then after my b-day i will have collected close to $400 where i could buy:
Pentium 4 2.4b for $169
an Abit mobo for no more than $110
a descent sound card for $40
a stick of 256mb pc2100 for $30
And of course Age of Mythology for $50
and at a total of $399

your thoughts.. as you can see there are many things wrong with my current setup...
only 128mb of ram
broken floppy
cheapo speakers with cool soundstorm sound

but quite frankly i just don't like amd... i've built many p4 systems... and this is my first amd system... it was meant to replace a 533mhz celeron comp... i'm just not impressed...

here is what i would do:

Crucial Micron 512MB 64x64 PC2100 DDR RAM, 184-Pin, CL=2.5 Unbuffered 2.5V, 6-Layers - $67.99 shipped
MITSUMI D359M3 FDD 1.44MB 3.5INCH - OEM - $12.50 shipped

$67.99 + $12.50 = $80.49

okay so it goes over by 49 cents... but it solves two of your problems.... i would never skimp on ram... especially in winxp... that extra 512 would be fantastic with the existing 128 for a nice 640 MB of ram... that would do winxp nicely... when i first boot i use about ~200 to ~250 MB of physical ram so i know that has got to be holding back your system... i wouldn't be impressed with that setup either if you are running only 128 MB of ram that really slows down your computer when it has to resort to using a great deal of the page file which it appears that your would have to do...

I agree with mbentley...more RAM...You have one of the best motherboards on the market...a decent processor...the weak link in your system is the memory...but do not do the PC2100...PC3200 or PC3500...what hard drive do you have???

Hookem said:

I agree with mbentley...more RAM...You have one of the best motherboards on the market...a decent processor...the weak link in your system is the memory...but do not do the PC2100...PC3200 or PC3500...what hard drive do you have???

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ah, i didn't realize your mobo supported fast ram... if you are going to build a completly new system soon, then i wouldn't spend the extra money on the faster ram at the moment unless you plan on using it in your new intel setup. then i could see getting the faster ram as a great idea. i am not sure how much benefit you'd see with the 1600+ and faster speed ram

originally when i bought the system.. i was going to overclock it to the best that i could... i know that my kingston ram pc2100 can go to 150 fsb...... but the asus mobo kept resetting itelf... and because i didn't have the floppy drive working, i couldn't flash the bios on it...(most of the people i asked who had the problems i was having said that flashing the bios would fix most of the problems)...
When buying the parts i kept in mind that this wasn't going to be the best comp in the world... I'm going to college next year, and this comp is just a little something so my parents aren't stuck with a 533mhz celeron... but if I DO buy ram then it will probably be migrated over when i go witht he intel rig... It all depends... if i buy the ram and the system performace really shoots up then i'm not giong intel... But if it still doesn't thne i guess i'll go with intel.

The harddrive i am using is a Westerd Digital 20 gig harddrive 7200RPM ATA 100 i dunno the exact model number.

Darryl_D said:

The harddrive i am using is a Westerd Digital 20 gig harddrive 7200RPM ATA 100 i dunno the exact model number.

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that hard drive should be fine for just a normal computer that doesn't have a ton of games... shoot, i could get away with a 20 GB hard drive if i just saved all my music, movies, and downloads to cd's instead of keeping them all on a seperate drive... right now i use ~10 GB of space for win2k and i have tons and tons of applications installed, including visual studio.net which is a couple gigs of space right there... (more than win2k i think ) since that hard drive is ata100, it should be fine performance wise... if you haven't done so already, set the page file to a specific file size... windows often times has the page file so it can expand and contract... just set it to something like 512 MB - 512 MB and that should prolly do you fine... that helps a tiny bit performance wise, but every little bit helps, you know?

i would go for the kingston 512mb pc2700 valueram. i think it is selling for around 60 bucks on newegg. that gets you to at least 166mhz fsb.

id go with faster ram and a better video card

I won't suggest and specific vendors, but I agree with everyone who said more ram.

128mb is unfortunately like nothing - it's like trying to run Win95 on 4 or 6mb. It works, it's just painful.

Get more memory, everything you do will be faster and smoother.

MOBO: Asus A7N8X Deluxe
CPU: AMD Athlon Xp 1700+ (I got a t-bred-b)
RAM: kingston 128mb pc2100 ddr
Video Card:A Geforce 2 MX 200 64mb video card
Floppy Drive... when i was building my comp... i somehow broke the floppy drive.. luckily windows xp doesn't need a floppy to install...
CDROM/CDRW-sme cheapo cdrw i got from god know wheres
I only have on really really really loud case fan that came with my case (NOTE: my case can take two)
some cheapo 2.0 speaker setup
a 17" monitor which i probably will NOT upgrade

Click to expand...

There is really only 2 big problems with your computer:
RAM and Video Card.

I feel RAM is more important since your computer benefits from it with nearly every process where as with the video card you will really only see a difference when you play games(which I dont even know if you do)




Now if you want to keep that memory also just buy a stick of pc2100 since the 2700 or 3200 will clock down to the same speed anyway when you use it with the lower speed. I dont know if it would be better to have the 640MB pc2100 or the 512mb pc2700


You can easily get a good 512MB pc2100 or even pc2700 for under $80. I'd say just go with whatever sounds best, there are many good brands such as Crucial, Consair, Dane-elec, Apacer, Geil, and Kingston

all of these have 5 or 6 dollar shipping:
KINGSTON KVR266X64C25/512 512MB DDR PC2100 - $52.00

Apacer 512MB DDR PC2700 RAM 32X8 Infineon Chipset CL=2.5 - $57

KINGSTON KVR333X64C25/512 512MB 32x64 PC2700 DDR RAM - $59

CORSAIR MEMORY 512MB PC2700 VALUE SELECT. DDR RAM - $76.00 (free shipping)






You will get a huge boost with more RAM. Espicially since you dont have very much. For Video cards I'd say the Radeon 8500LE.. It's $76 and can run nearly every game on medium settings.


I really wouldnt even buy that second system if I were you, just get a good video card, more ram, some cooling an doverclock the 1700.. Your system will rock.







I have a feeling the reason you arent impressed is because you dont have enough RAM.. Of course it wont run great without much RAM. and if you game what can you expect with a card thta is what, 3 years old?

more ram for sure! i noticed a MASSIVE differance from 256 to 512- im sure form 128 i mean wow! abou the floppy.. hwo needs it? i havnt used on for quite some time

the only thing about the floppy is this... without it I CAN'T OVERCLOCK MY SYSTEM! you see the bios i have on my mobo is the first origianl one.. and whenver i o/c it the cpu resets to default settigns no matter what! so the only way i can flash the bios is with the floppy... *cries* i know stupid floppy drive. If i DO buy the ram (whuich at this point after hearing what all of you guys are telling me.. then i will most likely just buy a stick of 512 mb PC 2700 Kingston Hyperx from googlegear (i think its like $72 along with a floppy and away i go with the overclocking!

As far as the graphics card goes... I'm waiting.. i will probably chip in for an ol gf4 ti4200 128mb 8xagp card some time in the summer... or perhaps with my birthday money (which considering my b-day is in june will be a while).

Question for you guys.... Which is better just price/performance the standard Kingston valueram (512mb pc2700) for $59 or the hyperx(512mb pc2700) for $72... ALSO NOTE: As is my system is not overclocked... and i'm unsure if i even want to overclcok it at the moment....

dont waste money on the hyperx

the valueram will be sufficient and much cheaper.

oh for gods sake pick up a OEM floppy disk for (10£ english -15$)
or flash your bios thers probably some solution for it. ive got 3 computers running with no floppy disks and ive not see a single problem!

i just found a perfect program you would find useful. probably
from that stats its given me i know i need more ram in win2k just running internet explorer and a mp3 player my computer uses up 100mb of ram!!!!!!!!! in Unreal 2 i get 90 fps at medium settings but i experiance huggggggge waits and jerky playing due to the comp running out of ram and using swap files. get ram! ram and fast ram at that! its verrrry imorant to have enough. you don't benefit from surplus though..

With your motherboard you have to go into the BIOS and change it to not halt on errors...

hookem i already did that...

what i was thinking that even if i wasn't going to o/c... then i could just run the ram at like $130% (is that even one of teh options?) at 133mhz fsb

the only thing about the floppy is this... without it I CAN'T OVERCLOCK MY SYSTEM! you see the bios i have on my mobo is the first origianl one.. and whenver i o/c it the cpu resets to default settigns no matter what! so the only way i can flash the bios is with the floppy...

Click to expand...

dude, with that board, you don't need a floppy to flash the BIOS!!!!!!!!!!!

the setup CD that comes with that board has a program called Asus Update, or something like that (if you don't have the CD, you can download it from asus's website). This program lets you flash the BIOS on Asus boards from within windows! One tip---this program will automatically download a new BIOS, I'd recommend downloading the BIOS manually, then using the program just to flash.

If that doesnt work (and it should, I've used it on 2 different Asus boards), you could just burn a DOS bootable CDR.

That board supports dual channel RAM...whatever RAM upgrade path you take, just remember that 2 smaller sticks are DEFINATELY better than one big stick (ie--get 2x256 instead of 1x512).

I would recommend you put that cash towards some fast RAM. Save up a little more money and get 2x256 of some Kingston PC3200 or so. You won't be disappointed.

Or a video card...but ONLY if you're a heavy gamer. That GF2 should handle most games OK. I'd highly recommend the new ATI cards over anything nvidia has to offer right now.

Or, you COULD buy a new proc...the 2100+ is around $90 at newegg. But I really think you should flash the BIOS and get some fast RAM, you should be very happy with that.

definitely i'd recommend getting 2x256 pc3200 and a floppy drive (what happened to the floppy drive from the celeron?) your board and mobo offer tons of potential.
-or-
get another (cheapo) **matching** stick of your kingston 128mb pc2100 ddr and put it in the 3rd slot (leave middle one open for dual ddr) a cheapo floppy, and save up for a new grafix card later, and then better dual ddr again after that.

... okay right now i am looking at getting the following... 2 sticks of kingston pc2700 256mb ($74 dollars shipped)... and then get some cheapo floppy drive from compusa in like a week...

yeah, you could do what axhed said, get another 128mb PC2100 stick, that would give you 256 megs running in dual channel. Since the board has three slots, you could later buy a 256 meg stick, and have the 1x256 on one channel, the other 2x128 on the other channel, and still run dual channel RAM.

newegg has a samsung floppy drive for $7 (plus $5 shipping), I seriously doubt compusa can beat that price, but I guess it's worth a try.

Of course, like I said, you can flash the BIOS on that board without a floppy, right from windows. Just install the Asus Update program from the CD that came with the board. I can vouch it works flawlessly, I've used it on two different Asus boards. Personally, I wouldn't bother buying a floppy if the only thing you want it for is BIOS flashing.