i see.. it's just i hate vista, i have it on my grandmothers PC and i have not found a damn thing i like about vista, all it does is give me problems ^^ so i am not going to use it on my gaming PC.

Honest opinion - wait until you can afford the smallest upgrade that will do what you really want. If you have P4 2.4, you probably won't see the full benefit from a new PCIe card if you can even install it. Yet, there's no point in getting a new Core i7 with that 8600.

I'd strongly suggest looking into a motherboard/cpu combo like the one mentioned earlier, getting 3gb of new ram to go with it (obviously) and a budget third party graphics card. That would probably set you back $500 or so instead of $300, but would be a far better investment.

FYI, I just upgraded yesterday:

Intel Core i7 @ 2.66 GHz
6GB Corsair DDR3 memory
Gigabyte EX58-UD5
EVGA 285 graphics card w/ 1GB

Counting the $150 service plan, which I already used after doing something very silly trying to install the factory CPU fan improperly, a cheap new hard disk for temporary storage and an OEM copy of Vista 64 premium. the total was almost $1500, but I shouldn't need to upgrade again for well over a year.

BTW I don't endorse Vista and only upgraded to XP from 2000 under duress to play AoE III less than two years ago. However, since I needed a new 64-bit version of Windows anyway, Vista it was.

I've done the cheap route before and ended up regretting it as the system I gradually replaced piecemeal never performed that much better than what I already had, esp. when I held onto an AGP mobo long after I should have switch to PCIe.

i have no idea what your talking about.
My PC runs great... my ONLY issue is my CPU but my motherboard just CAN'T hold a better one, my graphics card is fine. it should last me another year atleast.

Also is there a way to get more out of my CPU i have now? i heard about something called clocking or something like that..

Overclocking, but I wouldnt do that unless you know what you are doing. A CPU not overclocked correctly will have serious issues and can even burn out.

So lets keep things simple and not go confusing anyone with SLI/Overclocking etc.

Essentially you want a new board, CPU and Ram for the new board. The best your likely to be able to get around the $300 mark is the ones I specified on the first post I made. You might find better deals around but Im not too familiar with good US stores.

If you go with the MSI option you will be able to see about doing other upgrades later.

edit: The reason I didnt suggest Intel's chips is because the i7 chips are double the price of the AMD chips in the US. In fact an Intel dual core chip sells at the same price as an AMD quad core chip.

Then MSI it is!

ok is there a way to reduce the stress on my CPU?
I want to make the most of my old CPU untell i get the funds to upgrade.
I want to push my PC into top output and see if i can sqeeek some play out of some of these 3.0Ghz games ^^

The best way of getting more out of your processor is by asking it to do less

Make sure you are only running the absolute minimum of applications that you need. If you look in the Windows System tray and there are more than about 4 icons you need to question what they are and if you need them. Most software these days wants to install stuff that starts automatically with your machine - and simply is not needed.

You may even have stuff starting automatically that does not show up in your system tray and isn't needed.

IOBit Advanced System Care (the free version) includes a tool to look at what is starting automatically at boot/logon and will let you turn things off. Leave anything relating to your virus/spyware blockers but just about anything else is worth thinking about turning off.

But avoid all the advice on the Net about turning off system services - almost all of it has no positive effect and could make your system unstable.

Some people use little utilities that claim to boost performance (in games) by dumping unnecessary stuff out of system memory before the games launch. IOBit have a free one called GameBooster I think. Personally, I have never found them much use - and Windows is actually pretty good at doing this for you these days.

The next thing to do is in the games themselves - reducing quality settings and even resolution will make massive differences to performance. The most effective things to turn down/off are usually shadows, anti-aliasing and resolution. If the game has a built in benchmark option then use that with different settings until you find a combination that gives you an acceptable performance - I usually try to aim for an average of around 40fps but averaging around 30fps is not too bad. If the game doesn't have a built in benchmark then use something like Fraps.

Oh, and I advise - to start with at least - leaving the graphics cards own configuration settings on "Application defaults" or "Application controlled" (whatever your one calls it) - i.e. not forcing things on or off via the cards control panel. You can get some improvements using these but its confusing trying to do it through the game and here at the same time - and some games just don't like it. So, start with the games own settings.

Looking from the hardware side of things you should first make sure that the RAM you have installed is running at its optimum settings. But this could involve messing with the BIOS and if you are not comfortable with that then its not worth it.

If you are comfortable you need a little utility called CPU-z which will tell you what your RAM settings are and what your RAM settings should be. If they are not optimum you can then go into BIOS and change things - carefully.

I personally would not recommend overclocking as worthwhile gains are only obtainable if you start buying extra kit - cooling systems - and you are specifically trying to improve things for zero cost. The most you will be able to safely over-clock without advanced cooling is 5 to 10% and you wont notice the difference.

i thoink i just heard my brain explode...

so thats what that noise was?

Quote: i thoink i just heard my brain explode...

Welcome to the world of PC gaming

The best advice I can give is: don't fiddle with something you don't understand unless you can afford to buy a new one (or live without it).

Oh, and: electricity bites.