Hardware: The life of a Athlon XP system

oXYnary

I don't want Vista. I want to wait for at least direct x 11 before upgrading. Can I get by in the meantime with upgrading to 2 gigs and a 10.1 512 dx like a 3850 agp card for a total of about $250 to slug along with content creation and being able to experience new games (minus official dx10 support)? For the next year or so without a total new platform upgrade?

I saw the mention that Windows 7 is most likely next year at the earliest.

Right now:
Athlon XP 3200
1 gig 3200 ddr
256m 6800 Geforce.

boothy

Yeah, more ram definitely! Just watch you dont get a graphics card that would be too limited by the processor..

glib

I'd go 4GB of ram considering it's so cheap. I noticed a big improvement when I went from 2GB to 4GB, especially if you have photoshop, 3dsmax (or maya, or both), mudbox and a web browser open most of your day.

oXYnary

I think the nforce 2 platform cant see beyond 2gigs.

Edit: Actually 3, but one of memory sticks would not be in dual channel which would reduce bandwidth performance I believe.

Ben Cloward

I have and old AthlonXP machine that I just bought 2 gigs of RAM and a new processor for. The got the fastest processor that the board would support. It has an Nvidia 6800XT graphics card. The RAM and proc upgrades made a huge difference and only cost me about $130 total. It's almost like having a new machine. It's a little sluggish by today's standards - but still very usable.

oXYnary

Ok I will limp along.. got this.

SAPPHIRE 100228L Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X HDCP Ready Video Card - Retail

$124.99

OCZ Platinum 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K - Retail
Item #: N82E16820227210

$69.99


Already Maxed on the cpu.