[achtung]

Well, I'm in a bit of a predicament.  I can't make my mind up whether to wait about 5-6 months for a new pc or to upgrade this one for that time period.  I was thinking mainly about a new vid card, here's my system's specs as of now:

Pentium 4 2.80ghz HT
1 gig 400mhz DDR RAM
80 gig internal HD 160 gig external HD
GeForce FX 5200 128mb AGP

I know the vid card is the big limitation, but I don't know if upgrading would be worth it, because I'm really not sure about when I may be getting a new system.

So, any suggestions?

[Grug]

I'd probably go the Graphics card. The rest of the computer seems fine.
Maybe a 6600GT ?

IIRC they are one of the best mid ranged cards available, and play near any game on full graphics.
What kind of monitor / resolution do you run at?

[achtung]

19 inch Dell monitor, usually 1024x768 on desktop games around 800x600.

EDIT: Oh, and the monitor is a CRT.

[Grug]

Should be cool then.
For the higher res monitors (as is the case usually with LCD) you often need a higher end card to keep up in games.

But yeah, should be fine with just an upgraded card. That's the card I'm going to aim for when I get this new computer.

[Ulala]

*shrugs* I'm waiting to upgrade my system, mostly so I can afford it when the time comes. But that's because I want to move everything up (SATA, PCI Express, dual core, etc etc).

[Taristin]

Well, just SATA alone was a major performace upgrade on my athlon 2800+ system. 1 gig ram and the SATA drives makes it quick. And the 9600XT, though starting to show it;s age, works nicely.

[CP5670]

A video card would provide a huge performance boost but it depends on how much you can spend. The 6600GT is the best AGP card you can still get at a decent price. Anything better than that has either disappeared from retail channels or is extremely overpriced compared to its PCIE counterpart.

SATA doesn't make any difference on its own aside from the neater cables. It's just that the industry has switched over to it and the faster drives these days are all coming out on SATA. I'll probably switch to SATA once the prices of those new raptor 150 drives come down a bit.

[achtung]

Sooo.... I should just go ahead and upgrade and try to suck a little more life outta this thing?

[Kosh]

I wouldn't recommend upgrading. The biggest limiting factor is your video card, but as I understand it most new motherboards have no AGP slots. You board has no PCI-X, so really what is the point of upgrading it other than to waste money?

[Taristin]

wait until the new AMD socket is out and cheapens a bit and then upgrade.

[Ghost]

Do CRT monitors really affect performance? Because LCDs are too expensive for my tastes, and the ones I've seen aren't bright enough.

[achtung]

CRT monitors are better than LCDs in many respects, namely, frame rate, response time, color, and lifespan.

[CP5670]

I think he meant that you can use low resolutions on a CRT and could get by with a weaker video card. Although LCDs are generally brighter than CRTs. That can be a good or bad thing depending on your preferences.

It's a pity you can't buy the good CRTs anymore, except used off ebay. The few that are still available are low end garbage.