What do you guys think I should upgrade first? I would upgrade everything I need to but I am running a little short on cash so a little help please? My Rig is in my signature... ~Temporal~
I'd vote the PSU, especially if it's some no-name brand and not 350W. I've not found anything that a good 350W can't handle in this day and age. It's sill to invest good money into everything else and then get it all hosed with a crappy PSU. I'm not sure which 2.4 you have, but it's still good for anything right now, so that would be the bare last thing I'd upgrade. The motherboard you have works, but for some extra performance, a dual-channel DDR motherboard with the i865/i875P chipset would be a nice bump. Actually, the peformance of the i865PE boards from some companies can beat the performance of the i875P ones, and cost less in most cases (depends on features). I'd wait on the RAM, because if you're looking for a major system overhaul, you'd be better off to buy 2 sticks of PC3200 (400MHz) DDR and get a dual-channel motherboard to go with it. The Radeon 9000 is basically a rebadged version of the 8500, and as far as gaming goes, I've been able to run UT2k3 at 1280x1024 @ 32 bit color pretty smoothly and with a good chunk of eye candy turned on. It's not the fastest thing available, but it's still a pretty good card and not something I'd be tossing out just yet. The hard drive, after the PSU that would be the best thing to get a new one of. If you want to go with an SATA drive, I'd wait and get that with my motherboard upgrade, since a majority of them, especially with i865/i875P boards sporting ICH5R with built-in SATA.
