Quote: " I am sure Preston will be along to help"
Am I that predictable?
Well, yeah, like CR said, upgrade the GPU first. Then spend money on other stuff.
For what you listed for your own upgrades, I'm guessing you have an 8x AGP slot. Here is what I can suggest if you're going to stick with it:
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=14-145-109&depa=1 - NVIDIA GeForce 6200 ($122)
Your bottom line budget new-age card. Gives you all of the new stuff, great OpenGL processing power, and is powerful for cheap. It's been given the best budget video card rating on several sites, from the benchmarks I've seen can run Doom 3 at 1024x768 at max settings at 20 FPS, and you can waste your money on other stuff if you choose this one.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-135-160&depa=1 - NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT ($210)
An even better card, and dubbed the Doom 3 card. Very powerful AGP card, that has a fast core and ram in it. Has all of the stuff the 6x00 series has, and is my personal choice for this matter.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-170-074&depa=1 - NVIDIA GeForce 6800 LE ($246)
Another powerful for cheap card. The only problem is, I've never seen any reviews for this card, only it's non LE counterpart, so I can't give an opinion for it. Lets just guess it's a watered down 6800.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-140-045&depa=1 - NVIDIA GeForce 6800 ($265)
The 6800 was the first of the new-age NVIDIA card that came out (if I'm correct) and it's a pretty powerful beast on it's own. The only problem with this one is it has half the ram its PCI-E counterpart has, but it is about $100 cheaper.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-122-195&depa=1 - NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT ($379)
The creme de la creme of the AGP NVIDIA cards. Has 256MB stuffed in it, a fast core, and the memory itself is fast. The only problem is it's price. Buying this will blow your budget, but hey, at least you'll have that $10 window you wanted
Now, all of these cards require a pretty hefty power supply. CR says that you'll need at least a 450 Watt power supply for your comp if you choose one of these bad boys, but lets suggest a 500 Watt, just in case. If you don't have one, then here is one meant for standard ATX Cases/Mobo's/Something:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-182-006&depa=1 - Roswill 500 Watt PSU ($17.99)
For Micro-ATX however, this is the best I can find (it's pretty expensive too, so maybe getting a new ATX case would be a good addition if you have Micro-ATX now):
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=17-104-124&depa=1 - A GPD 450 Watt PSU ($68.50)
Now, if you had a different processor (such as P4 or AMD 64), your board could probably be upgraded for PCI-Express, which means you could get cheaper, or better versions of the same cards. You would also be expanding your choices into ATI territory if you wanted (though, I'd stay with NVIDIA "The Way It's Meant to be Played" cards). But since you're stuck with your AMD Athlon XP processor (damn you socket A mobo's and your lacking of the PCI-Express slots) you'll be stuck with AGP until either of us finds a mobo which supports Socket A and PCI-Express
Now, you also want speakers and more ram for your compo. You want PC3200 at 400 Mhz. The only memory sticks I can see that are of PCx3200 at 400 Mhz are DDR2 SDRAM 240 Pin sticks. Those are nice and expensive, $89 for a 512 stick at newegg, and even more than double that for a 1GB stick. But here's the link for what I'm looking at:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-161-633&depa=1 - Wintec DDR2 PC2 3200 400 Mhz 240 Pin DDR SDRAM 512MB Stick ($89)
Now if you want two of these, you'll be set back $178, which should go fine with every GPU+New PSU except for the 6800 GT. That thingy wants your wallet all to itself
As for the hard drive, I personally wouldn't bother, since I've been using a 32GB for the past four years, and I'm fine with it...
...Though having to uninstall one 6GB game to install another one when I want to play it is a bit of a hassle.
Adding speakers to that, you'll be limited to anything costing $37 or less if you choose the 6800 and the two sticks of ram. This is the cheapest I found, I'm guessing its 5.1 surround sound, and that it comes with a subwoofer:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-161-633&depa=1 - DCT OG-560 5.1 Multimedia Speaker System ($23.59)
And with that, your budget is spent. But don't forget to limit yourself with tax and shipping if you can't spend any more than $400.
And thats all I've got to say. The rest is up to you.
Intel Celeron 1.3 Ghrz | 512 MB Ram | NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 128MB
MSVC++ .Net 2003 | Wings3D | CharacterFX | Gimp v2.0
Prayne de crabug ahm rinedere be-yogt iglo kes gron
