upgrade advice?

Question

i am upgrading my p.c in the spare room,at the momoent it has a athlon 3200+,1gb ram and a nvidia geforce 6200(128mb)
i have a budget of £100 to spend on it and have found a 1gb corsair ddr3200 memory module for £51,and to compliment it a geforce 6600gt(128mb) for £46
at the moment my memory configuration is bank 1)512mb 2)256mb 3)256mb = 1gb
so i will take out one of the 256mb modules and replace with the 1gb module giving a system memory of 1792mb
adding this improvemt with the geforce 6600gt is this a worthwile upgrade considering the budget and the processor it has
any feedback will be usefull
thanks

Answer 1

The 6600GT is a significant upgrade on the 6200. 6200's were never designed for game use whereas the 6600GT is.

Upgrading the RAM is always useful.

One of the machines I have is an Athlon 64 3200, with 1GB RAM and a 6600GT. I can pretty much run any game on it (obviously not at full detail), but they are very playable. I haven't tried something like Oblivion yet, but games like CS:Source, Call of Duty 2, Age of Empires 3, Dawn of War, etc all run really well.

For the prices you're talking about it's a bargain upgrade. Don't worry about the CPU yet, to change that you'd need to change EVERYTHING. So go with this upgrade - it should hold you out for a while.

Answer 2

You have done your homework well, for £100 that is a noticeable upgrade.

Did similar myself with a 6600GT (from an ATI 9600SE) off ebay and an extra 512MB RAM and it makes the world of difference. Games like Medieval Total War II which were not playable before run nicely now.

In fact your PC is now well an truly Vista ready if you want to go down that route ;-)

Answer 3

dont know about the parts but make sure your motherboard is compatable with them or you will have spent the money for nothing

Answer 4

Go to http://www.crucial.com and run a system scan this will tell you what you can use.