Alright, here's the beef.... again

AMD Duron 800
Abit NF7-S motherboard
Crucial 256mb DDR 333
Jaton GeForce4 64mb MX440 w/TV out PCI
Western Digital 18.9gig 7200rpm HDD
LG 52x24x52x /16x CD-RW/DVD combo
Windows ME

I have been playing some games recently and well, I think I need an upgrade somewhere. Mind you cash is limited.

When I run Splinter Cell at 640*480 res with almost everything medium, the game lags, but the HDD red light dosent come on, so I dont think its a lack of memory there. Probably CPU power. Also, the sound sometimes gets choppy. the NF7-S mobo comes with NForce integrated sound so I think again the lower CPU is causing the sound to be choppy.

Breed runs laggy and the HDD light is constantly on, need more ram? The minimum for that game is a 32mb vid card, recommended 64, which is what I have. I just have it PCI instead of AGP.

As well, watching DVD's sometimes the movie freezes for like 2 to 5 seconds before resuming.

UT (original) dosent seem to have a problem, and CS with RU4.0 runs fine. (I use bots, I dont have the internet)

VHE takes a while to load though. between 10 and 15 seconds.

I was thinking about getting:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 266FSB (Retail) or
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 333FSB (BARTON BOXED)

There is a price difference of about 40$ between each. So I am wondering if its really worth the extra 40 to go with the 2500+. I also want to get a second stick of ram. And if I get a new CPU, I need a new PSU with the second power connector to the mobo, the 4 pin one.

By the way: whats the difference between barton boxed and retail?

pricewatch is just a repository of pc part manufacturers, just look in each categories of the pieces you have interest in.

the link will take you to people whom will sell you the part at the price quoted.

usually there is a phone number to contact with, but i have use emails as well if it were not a 1-800 number.

delivery turn around times is as long as the mail takes in your area to go both ways, plus construction time at the source.

my times have been 10 days to 2 weeks.

thats not pricewatch

and get the boxed version, usually it will have a cooling fan already mounted..

[edit] after looking at pricewatch, your price seems fair..

at pricewatch, press cpu, then search out 2500 barton

wildcard indeed has access to win 2000 pro, but the silly s**t is to forking lazy to use it.. in spite of the fact that his recent upgrade offered him a chance at a clean format.

*tsk *tsk

The best parts to upgrade are CPU, Motherboard, Video Card and OS. 256MB of RAM is fine as long as you don't have lots of processes or spyware on your computer. 512 is better in all aspects and seems to be the bar for todays computers. You can get a 2500+ for about 15-20 bucks more than a 2000+ and it's a lot better in every aspect. And so far as I know retail and boxed are the same thing...no CPU comes with the heatsink attached...it just doesn't make sense. Volcano fans are noisy and only perform okay. I would imagine you could get a pretty good upgrade for that system for about 300-400 CDN.

*shakes head sadly*

do you guys intend to insult? or just think i make this s**t up to sound important?

THIS link should take you to a site that sells cpu's with the associated cooling fans..

geeze guys, if you are gonna call me a liar, at least pick something important..

*mumbles to self*

my apologies then gorby, i am only just getting into this field..

my bad

my choice bud, for what its worth,

1) new 2500

2) new video card, your pci card is causing much more harm than the 256 ram is. even if you only got the agp version of your current card, you would notice a big difference.