Topic: Upgrade critique

[General Tso]

I'm looking to finally ditch my socket 754 AMD motherboard and chip and move into something with PCI express.  Yes, I'm still rockin' the AGP.

I game, at best, 2 hours a week.  My current game is Forgotten Hope 2, which is a mod for BF2.  Granted BF2 is now 4 years old, FH2 really pushes the boundaries and doubles the specs for the vanilla game.  I can run vanilla at all high video settings, 2x AA and get a solid 60 fps with 1.5 GB of RAM, my 64bit 3200+, and 7800GS.  I'm not looking for bleeding edge technology, obviously.  I would like to have the ability to play newer games, however.

I'm going to recycle my current case (ATX), SATA hard drives, DVD drives, soundcard (Creative X-fi Xtreme music from about 3-4 years ago).

I'll be hopefully only replacing the PSU, motherboard, CPU, RAM, and graphics card.

Here's what I've pieced together:

Motherboard:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128392

Graphics Card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130469

PSU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371020

RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16820231193

CPU:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103649

Any comments, suggestions?  I would like to keep this around $600 for now.

Thanks!

[Smonkey]

AMD is a good idea, they are much cheaper than Intel. I would go with an X4 instead tho, they arent much more $20-$60

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103674

I would stick with AMD for the GPU as well. The new 5000 series ATI cards are better then the comparative Nvidia cards. The 250 GTS would be in the same category as this card the Radeon 5770 and the reviews show the 5770 is about 25% better.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131181

And I would get a more powerful PSU, modular is nice, but not needed.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139006

I take it you want that mainboard cause its got PATA, Im guessing your ROMs are IDE?
I just did I build and made everything SATA. I can see saving $40 to $60 so you can re use your current ROMS but I hope your not getting this board so you can keep your floppy!

[General Tso]

Yeah, I have two IDE DVD Roms/Writers.  I wasn't planning on using the floppy, unless one still needs it for RAID drivers.  I'll be moving to Win 7 on this build, so hopefully no floppy drive needed.  I just hope I kept the case plate to block up where the floppy drive is...or I'll just have more cooling.

My HDs are 4-5 year old SATA WD.  They will be compatible with SATA 3.0, right?  That will be the first thing I'll need to upgrade down the road, because they will probably fail at some point.

[Smonkey]

Yeah  SATA 3.0 is backward compatible, and you dont use floppy to raid anymore. You dont even need floppy to run a mem test.

[Andro-blahhhhh]

Even if you needed those old drives you could always use an adapter to make it work.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812206002

Or make them external drives. I did that with my old hard drives from my last build. SATA is so nice!!!

[Elmo]

I am really happy with these power supplies and the ATI 4870 for around 150 is great mid range card and floppies have not been in my last 3 pc's but i always grad a cheap DVD burner there so cheap these days.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817163109

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102825

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118032