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Ok looks like the wife is going to get a tax refund for about £450 or $900 due to her using her own car to get her to her clients at work, so she can claim back her petrol costs, which this year are £450 (and thats only cause she been working for that company for only 3 months, next year will be nearly £2000 )

So anyway as we combine all our money (both our wages go into the same account and we don't have separate accounts of any kind) Tracey has said we both can get half each so thats £225 for me and her.

So what can i do with £225 or $450?? Well initially it looks like not a lot if i want to go for a big upgrade, as that amount will only cover a new motherboard and processor and maybe not even that, and i would probably need more ram or new DDR3 which is expensive at the moment so what other options are there to upgrade my system that are going to last a couple of years.

My sysytem specs at the moment are.

1000w Antect True power Quatro that i bought a couple of months ago (still to be installed), so no PSU required.
CPU is Athlon 64 X2 Dual core 4200+
Ram is 1gig Crucial
GFX is ATI/AMD 1950 Pro bought last september
M/B is EVGA something or other but SLI compatible
1 x Samsung CD-RW IDE connection
1 x LG DVD-RW IDE connection
1 x Raptor 10,000rpm 74Gig Sata HD
1 x Samsung Spinpoint 501J 500Gig Sata HD
1 x Seagate hunk of junk 80Gig HD 4 years old IDE
19" Samsung Syncmaster 957p CRT monitor
X52 Hotas
Track IR 3 Pro, No 6 DOF vectoring on it just left right up down.

Basically i am quite happy with my system at the moment but you know how it goes always looking to improve!

I am thinking maybe another Gig of Ram and a new 22" or 24" monitor might be the way to go and wait till next year for the main PC upgrade.

But maybe i could get 2 8800GT's and SLI them.

Opinions please

Wow, you guys get tax refunds in the UK?

I would say monitor upgrade to be honest. 22" wide screen is sweet and snowBall has a 24" and loves it. You can easialy build a great system with the now cheep ddr2 ram but thing is in a year ddr3 will be the king of the hill idea and cheep. So for the cash you have to do a motherboard replacement with ddr3 and cpu um ya its going to be pricey now. I got 2 gigs ddr3 ram at 150$ with mail in rebate when 75$ could get me that in ddr2 ram. So for right now I would say get that new monitor, and other external things like a new keyboard or mouse or those nice speakers or da da da. so next year you get a great system upgrade and a lot cheeper then now and have those new toys to make the new system worth it. I got the 22" last year so sort of did the same thing lol

I'm bot sure if Newegg.com ships to the UK, but you could get these parts for around $450.00 +/-:

Intel Quad Core CPU 2.4GHz - Retail $248.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819115017

ASUS P5K-E MB - $149.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131196

Corsair Dominator 1066MHZ DDR2 RAM 2GB - ($89.00) $49.99 after $40.00 rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145043


I just got a 2nd 8800GTX to run SLI, cost me $400 after rebate. Should help my system last another good year or so before upgrading the MB, CPU, and RAM. I wanted to get the 2nd 8800GTX now, as I wanted to make sure I got the same exact card as my first 8800GTX, and I wanted to get it before it wasn't available anymore. Only thing I'm worried about now is the case temps in the Summer time. At idle, the (2) 8800GTXs are running at about 70 degrees Celsius. At load they get up to about 85-89 degrees C. With no A/C in the house, the room my computer is in gets up to around 90 F degrees in the Summer. I hope this doesn't pose a problem with the two 8800GTXs this time around. We'll see what happens.

no, do not do a 22" monitor with that graphics card unless it is a crt. and you do not want a crt that big. when you go to a flat panel monitor, it has a default resolution. other than that resolution it looks like junk, so you should run it at the default resolution. with that graphics card you will experience slow down at such a high resolution. in order, i would upgrade graphics card then ram then monitor....

Steel has it

um was doing a x800 with a 22" no issues

You can certainly get an 8800GTX for $450 or less.

VEGETA wrote:um was doing a x800 with a 22" no issues

Ahem!! Except the fact that you lagged all to hell in some of our RTS games.

Softball wrote:You can certainly get an 8800GTX for $450 or less.

VEGETA wrote:um was doing a x800 with a 22" no issues

Ahem!! Except the fact that you lagged all to hell in some of our RTS games.

Oh snap!

Softball wrote:You can certainly get an 8800GTX for $450 or less.

VEGETA wrote:um was doing a x800 with a 22" no issues

Ahem!! Except the fact that you lagged all to hell in some of our RTS games.

Um that was the processor which is 5 years old now lol

And your point is? It's still one of the faster chips, even after 5 years.

Well i think i'll go for the monitor upgrade as i have been running 1600 x 1200 on all my games since i had my ATI 9800 Pro and had no real issues with any of them since most of the games i play are older games anyway IL2, Falcon and Lomac although i had to turn lomacs settings down at that res, and i had no FSAA or such turned on.

With my present card the 1950 Pro which is a hell of LOT better than my 9800 pro, i have Full FSAA and AA on and the games run fine and if i get a 22" monitor them most of their native resolutions are 1600 X 1200 anyway so would not affect anything but if i go for 24" then native is 1920 X 1200 and would probably have to turn off FSSAA and such but at that res would probabaly not make any differenceto the quality.

So i'm on the hunt for a 24" monitor and 1Gig ram although already found the Ram.

OK had a look about and 24" monitors are still to pricey at the budget i have, so a nice 22" with 1680 X 1050 res Should do the trick. Top of the list would appear to be the Viewsonic VX2255 WMB for about £195 good reviews and 5 Ms response time with reviewers saying no ghosting visible on any games they tested on and with a very good display performance colour wise although seemingly not that great for HD movies but i have my 40" Samsung HD tv for that anyway so no worries there.

Any other opinions on monitors appreciated.

Steel i hear what your saying about the monitor and card but it will not be to long before i get 8800 of one variety or another or maybe better by the time i get to upgrade and any performance issues will not make it any worse than my 9800 Pro had anyway and that still copes well with the majority of the games i play any way, so i might just have to put up with some distorion on IL2 as all my other games seem to support 1680 X 1050 but not IL2.

i have a viewsonic 2235 and am happy with it...

Cool thanks for that Steel i think that is the same as what Veg has also, it seems to be a good make.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824009094

buff And I have this