Good job. I'm in the process of building one for around $500 dollars. I think it is cool to see how far you can take it performance wise for not a lot of $$$.

Ignore all the comments from those whose parents buy their stuff for them or have nothing better to do with their time and money. I can appreciate trying to build and game without breaking the budget of the family I support.

don't get suckered into thinking 512MB of RAM or GDDR4 RAM will help performance). Those cards are very low in terms of power draw, and any power supply that's currently in your system should be able to handle the extra load.

RayvinAzn

I was actually looking at doing a similar upgrade to 3850 or 3870, is the 512 Mb really not worth the extra $20-30 on a tight budget?

Thanks for the recommendations.

It looks like all the Radeon 3850s are PCI Express 2.0?Does that mean I need to spend $100+ on a PCIE 2.0 mobo to take advantage of the 3850 or will it even work in a PCIE 16 mobo?

Thanks.

Or will the performance of the video card be bottlenecked by the CPU/Ram.

I've got a hard spending limit of $350 that I want to use to get a new Video card & CPU/Mobo/Ram. Should I stretch and reach for a Radeon 3850 to go with a AMD 4000+ CPU and 2 Gb DDR800, or will the the GPU be bottlenecked by the CPU and RAM. In that case, I could go for better balance with a cheaper Radeon 1950xt or 2600pro and get a AMD 5000+CPU etc.

I am looking to run Bioshock and HL2 and am interested in knowing what kind of performance I can expect with either of the above approaches. Is decent performance in Direct x10 even possible with this setup or should I set my sights for DX9?

Thanks.

Thanks for the suggestions. I may try to wait a month or two and let prices drop on the Radeon3850.

I am wondering for my $350 limit upgrade what can of performance I can expect with the configuration below or should I skimp on the CPU/Ram/Mobo to saveenough for a3850. Would that system perform well in gameslike HL2 and Bioshock or would the GPU be bottlenecked by the other hardware?

Thanks forany input.

GPU $115 Saphire Radeon HD2600XT 512 MB GDDR3

CPU $85 Athlon 64 X2

RAM $65 2GB DDR800

Mobo $85 Gigabyte GA-M61P-S3 AM2 Nvidia

Looking for advice on an upgrade of a ~ 5 yr old rig I built. I have a self imposed limit of $350 and want to find the best GPU/RAM/Mobo/CPU combo. I am not a major gamer, but want to play two games I just got (Halflife 2 and Bioshock) as gifts at reasonable settings. I am hoping my Antec 430W PSU will suffice but will upgrade that only if absolutely required and not included in the $350 limit.

GPU:
$115 US (all prices are from Newegg and include shipping)
SAPPHIRE 100218L Radeon HD 2600XT 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

CPU:
$85 US
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Brisbane 2.5GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor Model ADO4800DDBOX - Retail

MOBO:
$85 US
GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

RAM:
$65 US
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

Going over the $350 limit is not an option, but other combinations within the price limit would be fine. One other dumb question: How big a deal is it if my harddrive isn't SATA? I can get a new one, but it would have to come within the $350 and drive down the specs of my other components. I was hoping to keep my current hard drive for now and upgrade it to SATA in 6-12 months.

Thanks in advance for your help.