How hard is it, and what should i get?

[bded]

I wanna upgrade my processor, i have upgraded my ram form 512 to 2 gigs
and my video card. here are my stats:

Processor:
1.80 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP 2200+
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Memory Modules:
2048 Megabytes Installed Memory
Slot '0' has 1024 MB
Slot '1' has 1024 MB

Main Circuit Board:
Board: MSI MS-6593 1.0
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 07.00T 04/02/01

Display:
Radeon X1300 Series (Omega 3.8.252) [Display adapter]

the thing is, i wanna play some of these new FPS coming out soon, but according to System requirements lab i meet the minimum on everything but processor .

should i get a new processor? what should i get? is it difficult to do it myself?
money is an issue, or i would just buy/build a new PC. You know where i could get a new PC and make payments?

[lav_coyote25]

any of the big box stores will help you out there.... just watch out for the exorbitant amounts of interest youll have to pay....

or - save your money... and when you have enuff - pay cash. 

[Watermelon]

I wanna upgrade my processor, i have upgraded my ram form 512 to 2 gigs
and my video card. here are my stats:

Processor:
1.80 gigahertz AMD Athlon XP 2200+
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Memory Modules:
2048 Megabytes Installed Memory
Slot '0' has 1024 MB
Slot '1' has 1024 MB

Main Circuit Board:
Board: MSI MS-6593 1.0
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 07.00T 04/02/01

Display:
Radeon X1300 Series (Omega 3.8.252) [Display adapter]

the thing is, i wanna play some of these new FPS coming out soon, but according to System requirements lab i meet the minimum on everything but processor .

should i get a new processor? what should i get? is it difficult to do it myself?
money is an issue, or i would just buy/build a new PC. You know where i could get a new PC and make payments?

No,your bottleneck is the FSB,you can overclock your cpu a bit if your memory is capable of running at 333Mhz or higher.

currently it's 133 * 13.5 = 1800mhz memory 133*2 = 266mhz
with overclocking it will be 166 * 13.5 = 2250mhz 166*2 = 333mhz

the gfx card is probably one of the best AGP cards that is still available,so upgrading to new one makes little or no sense.

[Kayiaxo]

geforce 7900 is on agp under the name of gf7800.

However if he means by new fps these 3: Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3 and Crysis then his pc might fall short to make the game playable.

[Watermelon]

geforce 7900 is on agp under the name of gf7800.

However if he means by new fps these 3: Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3 and Crysis then his pc might fall short to make the game playable.

geforce 7xxx on agp and his system will never perform as good as it's on PCI-E and system with faster system memory,the AGP aperture got mapped to system memory will be too slow for texture swapping(assuming those new games will require GB's of texture swapping every second)

in short, to play new state-of-art commercial games at full speed/details you need a brand new pc,upgrading your exist system won't work.

[lav_coyote25]

hmmm seems to me thats what i said already... ;D

[Ziasod]

AMD 2400 CPU'S where real commen maybe there sum around second hand?
never liked thoose cpus much there extreem hot. no use overcloaking.

[Kayiaxo]

geforce 7xxx on agp and his system will never perform as good as it's on PCI-E and system with faster system memory,the AGP aperture got mapped to system memory will be too slow for texture swapping(assuming those new games will require GB's of texture swapping every second)

in short, to play new state-of-art commercial games at full speed/details you need a brand new pc,upgrading your exist system won't work.

I was just stating there is a lot more powerfull agp card on the market.
Also checking performance of the card on agp it isn't that bad, it's like i said a gf7900 named as gf7800 because it performs that way on agp.
So he gets the performance of a gf7800 which easely beats a gf8600 for exemple, not bad at all.
And between, DDR memory isn't bad at all as system memory, the clock slower but the latency is lower as well, putting them on par with a lot of ddr2 memory.
On top of that Ultra-deluxe-kill myself memory only brings like 5% fps boost on average, so except if his memory underperforms more then it should that isn't the main bottleneck.
Graphic card is the most important for games, then comes cpu speed and amount of memory on 2nd place and on 3rd speed of memory.

And I also said that for nextgen fps his pc might fall short, with that I ment it's better if he upgrades his PC.