What should I upgrade on my rig?

[Coburn]

Well, I have only 1 PC and it's specs are:

Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz HT(hyperthreading) Processor
2x 512 MB RAM sticks (1 GB system RAM)
on-board 224 MB SHARED vid card (crap, i know)
400W Power supply
SATA II 160 GB hard drive
19" widescreen monitor

Now, say I have $100 USD to upgrade it. What would be the best part (or parts) to upgrade for multiboxing / video editing / ect...? Basically, what (for $100) would benefit my PC overall? And where should I get it (like tigerdirect)?

[Saijyu]

From those specs I would say you would get the best improvement from some more RAM, that's my opinion. as for where to get it try NewEgg ('http://www.newegg.com')

[species6729]

a little more info will be nice.

1, what type of mb do u have.(this will show if you can upgrade you cpu or not)

2, what type of ram( ddr, ddr2)

on top of my head, I will upgrade the ram first, a 4 gb from newegg will cost about $50

2nd I will upgrade the video card, a ati hd 2000 series will cost about $50

3nd upgrade a low end 2 core(e5200 2.6) will cost $80

I was running on a single core 2.0ghz, and upgrade to the e2160 1.8ghz, wow will play a lot smoother on the e2160 eventhru it is a tat slower. On my single core, when I launch multi. instance of wow, sometimes 1 or 2 wow will fail to launch, i may need to relaunch the fail instance a few time before all instance of wow is up and running. :D

[aomdmm]

a little more info will be nice.

1, what type of mb do u have.(this will show if you can upgrade you cpu or not)

2, what type of ram( ddr, ddr2)

on top of my head, I will upgrade the ram first, a 4 gb from newegg will cost about $50

2nd I will upgrade the video card, a ati hd 2000 series will cost about $50

3nd upgrade a low end 2 core(e5200 2.6) will cost $80

I was running on a single core 2.0ghz, and upgrade to the e2160 1.8ghz, wow will play a lot smoother on the e2160 eventhru it is a tat slower. On my single core, when I launch multi. instance of wow, sometimes 1 or 2 wow will fail to launch, i may need to relaunch the fail instance a few time before all instance of wow is up and running. :DHe has a P4... What type of mobo he has doesn't matter as the P4s are on a 478 socket and all C2Ds are 775 socket. The only thing that bit of info would help with is whether or not he can use certain graphics cards, how many DIMM slots he has, etc.

Best upgrade is RAM though since you only have 1 gig. Since the price of RAM is so low atm you can easily get 4 gigs to max you out, assuming the mobo has the slots for it.

The next upgrade would be an independent vid card, actually I might even get that first since it will benefit you even more than the RAM since you don't currently have one.

Honestly, I'd just save the money for a few months and build a whole new system, you can build one a million times as good as what you have for about 300-400 reusing some of the old components (case, PSU, monitor, mouse/keyboard)

You would be MUCH better off just saving for a bit, if you need help putting together a shopping list and finding the cheapest components for either option to get you the most bang for your buck, feel free to ask... its what I do!

[Coburn]

I'm not too worried about upgrading the CPU. It's an eMachines W3615, if that helps. I can use DDR2 PC-4200 RAM, up to 2 GB.

For my vid card, I would either use one of my PCI x1 or PCI x16 sockets.

I think I might go for RAM. Where would be the cheapest place to buy 2 GB of RAM for the eMachines W3615?

[Wilbur]

Your entire machine is crap. Trust me, save your money then splurge a few hundred dollars at newegg.com on a new Mobo/CPU/RAM/GPU/PSU.

[Coburn]

Your entire machine is crap. Trust me, save your money then splurge a few hundred dollars at newegg.com on a new Mobo/CPU/RAM/GPU/PSU.Well ok then...

Oh, I almost forgot. Vista has ReadyBoost. I have a 4GB flash drive that is compatible. If I use 3 GB of that flash drive as ReadyBoost, would that make a substantial difference?

[Vairdin]

Way more ram boy! You needs it and id also suggest a new mother board... AND SCREW VISTAA!!

[mikekim]

if you are running vista you need at least 2Gb ram. and pickup the best available gfx card that will work in your machine.

personally I would take Wilburs advice and scrap the machine and pickup somethig better

[wowphreak]

Ready boost aint gonna help.

If yeh really cant get a new pc and want to make due I would suggest yeh install XP and more memory.
with 2 gigs yeh might be able to run 4X wow if yeh strip xp down to the bare min and reduce all graphics to lowest res

Bacially all the box can run is vista and maybe one app.

[Coburn]

Ready boost aint gonna help.

If yeh really cant get a new pc and want to make due I would suggest yeh install XP and more memory.
with 2 gigs yeh might be able to run 4X wow if yeh strip xp down to the bare min and reduce all graphics to lowest res

Bacially all the box can run is vista and maybe one app.I think ima downgrade to XP... Vista is nice, but it's to ass slow, even for a great PC.