please help with Computer Upgrade

[Insan3aznboii]

hi everyone i am new here and also fairly new to computers .. im trying to upgrade my 3 year old custom built computer that was built from a friend's friend.. first off im thinking i should upgrade the graphics card (i play alot of games online MMORPG) but i dont know what exact type of card i should be getting.. can someone please help me identify and recommends which type of card i should use? any other suggestions or upgrade of the computer please feel free to tell me..
heres is some information on my computer: Window Xp professional

Board: MSI MS-6702 1.0

Bus Clock: 200 megahertz

Processor: 2.00 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Display: GIGABYTE RADEON 9250 128MB (idk what type of card this is )

512 RAM Megabytes Installed Memory ( definitely got to upgrade ram maybe to 2 gigs?)


any help would be greatly appreciated.. thanks for reading

 

[JogaBonito1502]

I'm thinking you might wanna get a better processor/mobo (not 100% sure about the mobo, not so good at messing with them). first. But let's see what some of these other guys think.

 

[_-..zKiLLA..-_]

what kinda budget u on?

 

[LambOfGod]

what kinda budget u on?

Exactally, before we can recommend what to get we need to know what you want to spend.

 

[Insan3aznboii]

hmm.....seeing how much i have left from my income tax... i say about 250-300

 

[LambOfGod]

Man,

thats a socket 754, sporting DDR, and AGP....


I would upgrade the whole thing.....

Get this for the biggest graphics punch for your money.

AM2 Mobo
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16813138077R $30

AMD HD 3850
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16814129102 $180

AMD 4200+ Dual Core
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16819103206 $64

1Gig Patriot Memory
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16820220088 $22

$297.97


If you need take some more money off, cut down on the processor to say a 4000+ .... Your Graphics card is the most important thing in a gaming system.


BUT if you just want to pop in an upgraded Graphics card in your AGP slot, you cant do much better for $100 than the 2600XT

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102711

Good Luck

 

[worshipme]

If you pay a lot of mmorpgs, then you won't need a very good graphics card as games like that aren't particulary graphics intensive. Your whole PC is pretty outdated. To upgrade the CPU, you're going to have to upgrade the memory and graphics card (your graphics card uses an old interface called AGP, almost all new graphics cards use PCI-E) I'm assuming your motherboard uses DDR memory (DDR2 memory is the standard now) So you will need a new motherboard, RAM, CPU and video card upgrade. A bit like what lambofgod recommended, these would be good options:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103206-CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138102-Mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220255-RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102714-Video Card
That would bring your PC relatively up to date. As for upgrading your PC for the cheapest possible. I would buy 2 gigs of DDR RAM and pop in better AGP card. For this I would wait as the ATI Radeon HD 3850 is supposed to be coming out for the AGP interface.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231039

 

[bullzi]

If you need take some more money off, cut down on the processor to say a 4000+ .... Your Graphics card is the most important thing in a gaming system.

good system you found, although processor can be much more important these days with all the physics, you have to have the processor to feed the graphics card like in my system, my 4000+x2 majorly bottlenecks my 8800gts, but i dont think with a 3850 it will be too bad of a bottleneck

 

[Insan3aznboii]

man you guys are awesome! thanks for the big help i really appreciate this

also one more thing... since i am relatively new to computers can you guys direct me to a good step by step write up on how to put everything together from scratch? i want to take it out the right way and put all the new parts in the right way... it just scares me if i was to break something and my computer ended up not working

again thanks guys

 

[Computer Head]

I like http://www.buildyourown.org.uk for a guide to building your own computer.