Another request for suggestions on upgrading...

[molecule]

Well, a while back I picked up the Dell Dimension 8200 that's listed below in my signature. I wasn't thrilled about buying prebuilt, but I needed a computer right away and they were willing to finance me. What can I say, I'm po'.

Anyways, it's time to start thinking about an upgrade. I'm not thrilled about my current computer's gaming performance nowadays, and the unupgradability of the Dell has been irritating me since I bought it.

I'm only going to have around $500 max to upgrade. I'm thinking I want to go for a good CPU, MoBo and RAM. I'll keep my current video card, hard drives, sound card and NIC. This will line me up for some upgrades later... like a RAID SATA setup and a new video card.

If I decided to go with A64 3000+, a decent MoBo and 1GB of RAM, would you say I would get a substantial jump in performance from what I'm running now? Any suggestions or ideas on a better upgrade route?

Thanks!

EDIT: Didn't mention that I have a new case purchased... no PSU however, I'll need to fit that into my budget as well. And if anything other than stock cooling is needed... (o/c'ing would be nice, but not necessary).

 

[Mr.Radar]

It'd be a substantial increase in performance! You probably wouldn't be able to OC much on the stock heatsink. For PSU I'd go with this 400 watt Sparkle. Sparkle underrates their PSUs so it should be able to do about 500 watts in real world performance.

 

[sandman001]

Newegg is selling the 2800+ and a mobo from $200 and I think it comes with farcry.

You won't be able to OC too much with the motherboard, but it'll definatly be an upgrade. Then, you could pick up 2x256mb of some decent ram and have a little cash left over.