Advice on PC upgrade

[121]

My PC is crap and struggles with 3d graphics. It's been a while since I upgrading it and I need some advice to get things up to speed again. These are my current specs..

2600+ AMD Athlon
512 Ram
GeForce FX 5200
W2K Pro

I want to play all the new games at full resolution and have a PC that can handle heavy 3ds Max scenes.

What IYO should I upgrade to get maximum performance?

[Dark Ride]

what kind of ram do you have and how much money do you want to invest ?

my suggestion would be to get a new graphics card (ATi Radeon 9800XT, ATi x800 Pro, GeForce 6600, geForce 6800GT, ... etc)

More RAM - another 512 MB of RAM would be perfect.

[fkdup74]

if it was me doin the upgrade....
i would throw another stick of RAM (512 MB) at it...
what are you runnin? PC2100? PC2700? not too expensive
and get a vid card with 256 MB (but theyre not cheap)
i would say ATI over nVidia, but i am having issues with them atm :(

[Samurai]

Don't forget if you're going to get a new graphics card, ensure your motherboard can support it, otherwise you'll need a new one of them too. Thankfully, they're not that expensive for a decent one, but a graphics card will be the one that hits your pocket.

As Dark Ride asked, how much do you want to invest? Where are you from?

If it's not too much, I'd go memory. Another 512MB stick should suffice.

Samurai

[lynx]

Graphics card - major improvement, but highest cost.

OS - minimal improvement but greater stability, needn't cost you a penny.

Which processor, Barton (Model 10) or Thoroughbred (Model 8)?
What mobo, and what speed is your memory ?

I'm just thinking that if your cpu is an unlocked Barton and your memory and mobo are fast enough you could get some improvement by raising the FSB and reducing the multiplier.

If not, they are probably ok anyway. Check memory usage. If there's not much free then more memory would probably help.