wanna upgrade need suggestions.

right. my current rig is in my sig. now i want to upgrade for better performance. there are a couple of things ive been considering. one is another gig of ram, a better graphics card, a better psu, and a better cpu heatsink.

what do you guys think i should upgrade. ps im gonna have about £130.

so my options are.
1.sell my graphics card (hopefully got 100 pounds with the heatsink on it) thatll leave me with 230 and get something like an 8800gts.

2.get another gig of ram a scythe ninja or equivilent, and maybe a psu,

wait....DDR133....is that right? Isn't that like PC2700?...that's 33mhz faster than when DDR first apeared.

Tough call though for an upgrade. the 8800GTS would be good if you run really hi resolutions. But other than that I think your 1gb RAM will bottleneck performance, especialy in the near future. I'd hold off for an entire overhaul because spending cash on DDR ram is dumb IMO because everythings DDR2 now.

Add another GB of RAM. Who cares if DDR is a "dead end" as that is what your system uses and will give you the best benefit.

A new mobo with drr2 ram? I can imagine that cheap 512mb pc6400 would beat 1 gig of pc 2100.

I don't think you would benefit of a 8800, since you are pretty botlenecked by the ram.

hmm yeah another option i was thinking of but forgot to mention was going sli, just buying a sli mobo and another 7900gs,

so i could go like:
8800gts
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/productinfo.asp?WebProductID=539475
Which is like all my money gone
Or:
Ram
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=117457
and maybe either a scythe Ninja or Infinity

or:
Sli
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Products.ASP?CatID=28&FilterCategories=391&Thumbnails=yes
+
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=499273

SLI is definetly NOT worth it. The cost of the 7900GS and an SLI mobo vs selling the 7900GS and getting an 8800GTS...the 8800GTS is cheaper. Also the 8800GTS will whipe the floor of with 7900GS's in SLI.

Who cares if DDR is a dead end? Well I sure as hell care. as for cheap 512 pc6400 beeting 1gb of pc2100...maybe in benchmarks but only having 512 of RAM means after 512mb of memory your going to pagefile which is 100x worse than RAM...

I'd say hold off unless you can get 2gb of PC3200 and an 8800GTS for cheap. Your 1gb of PC2700 won't sell for much. The thing you got going for you is a very fast CPU and good GPU...perhaps search around for a 1gb of PC2700 very 40 bucks or something. Buying 2gb of PC3200 is gonna cost around 150.

With a 17" CRT, I wouldn't go for a high-end DX10 card just yet. The one you've got can keep you floating for at least another 6-9 months.

My suggestion is to get another gig of ram and save the rest for a 19" LCD or a cheap DX10 card, when they arrive. Or you can get one gig of ram and spend the rest on booze and women.

yeah i very flukily came across this pc2700 stick while trying to fix my aunties pc. so i might ask my m8 who recently nlew his pc up and doesnt really game anyway if he'll swap me one ofhis pc3200 sticks for my pc 2700 one buy nother gig stick a scythe ninja and a tiny soldering iron. then bring on the volt mod

what do you guys thin of ram from ebay?. like this for example

SLI isn't worth it because two cards cost more than a single card of a higher generation or grade, which beats two older cards in SLI mode anyway, let alone the fact that while you get more joint bitrate (sort of like Dual Channel for RAM, no?) and more RAM over two cards, there are just those things the card won't do, e.g. the hardware support of this or that. If you like experimenting, I believe you'd be better off with custom cooling and big OC (maybe volt mod or something) on your current card or even a new card. Still, I doubt you really need an 8800. Besides, 8600 is barging in. I believe 8300 has been presented as well. 8800 cards will get quite a lot cheaper quite soon, as I predict. Especially the moment ATI comes up with DX10 cards. Perhaps get some cooling etc for your 7900 that will work on an 8800? You then just sell the card and get the 8800 when it's cheaper and use the cooling from your previous card, and overclock (as there will likely be menaces of 9900 by that time, eh).

As of now, I believe you need RAM. The fastest your mobo supports and the processor can handle. Two gigs if you want, but not more. You can sell your current chips and buy 2 * 1GB, preferably a matching kit, the fastest you can get - your mobo may support this or that frequency as the maximum, but within one frequency, you have chips with different latencies, e.g. CL 2.5 or CL 3 sticks within the DDR400 range. I don't know to what extent fast RAM and CPU-RAM exchange rate affects a gaming rig's performance, but going for 1:1 rate at the lowest timings possible is always a good idea (and a sensible margin to allow for higher FSB from overclocking is a good idea as well) - it's just not worth overpaying.

Another suggestion would be to look at ebay and used component markets and see what you can upgrade cheaply, i.e. pay not much more for what you buy than you will get for what you sell. You can always buy a new component first and then wait for a good price on your old one (i.e. wait long enough for the bids to rise well, don't hurry and sell for any cash, but don't wait until the price of that component class falls, of course).

And what kind of soundcard do you have? Maybe you'd like your aural experience to match your visual one and at the same time take some load away from the CPU? I've recently got the "revelation" that pumping up the graphical side of one's rig while neglecting the sound isn't really such a great idea, nor does it allow full enjoyment. At this point, I'd rather get an X-Fi Gamer for myself than a new CPU or a new graphics card, I think.

yeah i was serously considering voltmodding my 7900gs. it does 615/750 on stock volts. all it takes is one solder (apparently)(or even pencil?!?) the max temp ive seen is 51c on a 64 man game of bf2142 with settings maxed. o/cing this cards a vit odd. its completely stable 24/7 @ 750 i move it to 755 itll hard lock within minutes on 2142. the max ive seen the gpu is 630 itll hard lock at 650 but i only played with it for 10~15 mins b4 going to sleep last night.

if i plan on lots of volt mods ill need to buy a low wattage soldering iron. my current one is to big and to hot. i did get another one last christmas. but i forgot it one day and left it on for a long period of time. after that day i couldnt solder with it because it just torches anything it touches including the solder.

im thinking 10-15w soldering iron? any suggestions?

edit: ps i asked my m8 if he would swap ram i think hes gonna :O so ill see how high i can take this proc tomorrow

Edit2: so odds are im getting a scythe ninja. need suggestions on a 120mm fan?

maybe Scythe Mine heatsink scores pretty good temps at 22dba

A fan for Ninja? Well, if I had to pick something, I would like to test them. It's all about some balance between power and silence and some fans are better than others in both regards. Unless I found some outrageously attractive parameters for a bargain price, I'd rather go and test the fans for the sound and the flow before buying one. Chances are you hate certain types of sounds more than others. For example, I don't mind the whoosh as much as I do bearing sounds. And bearings come in several varieties. I don't think more advanced automatically means less annoying and I don't think the loudness level in dba corresponds to how annoying the sound is, either. Besides, people have various tastes and various tolerance levels. For example, my 80mm expulsion fan sounds like the sea and I like, while it's several times louder than without it. It just makes the whooshes. But if I were to face bearing sounds of comparable dba levels... Dear. That would be murder.