How would you upgrade this computer?

[tkrisz]

How would you upgrade this computer if you had some 50-200$?
I'm particularly interested your opinion on the graphic card.
Planned os: win 7 + Ubuntu dual boot.
Many flash videos are planned to be watched.
Games: mainly graphical browser games (e.g. the west, travian, farmerama, fb games), no hardcore games.

System information report, generated by Sysinfo: 2010. 11. 28. 3:19:22
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gsysinfo

SYSTEM INFORMATION
	Running Ubuntu Linux, the Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic) release.
	GNOME: 2.28.1 (Ubuntu 2009-11-03)
	Kernel version: 2.6.31-18-generic (#55-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 8 14:54:52 UTC 2010)
	GCC: 4.4.1 (x86_64-linux-gnu)
	Xorg: unknown (07 May 2010  06:33:21AM) (07 May 2010  06:33:21AM)
	Hostname: Pumba
	Uptime: 0 days 16 h 3 min

CPU INFORMATION
	AuthenticAMD, AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
	Number of CPUs: 1
	CPU clock currently at 2000.000 MHz with 512 KB cache
	Numbering: family(15) model(47) stepping(2)
	Bogomips: 4020.82
	Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow up rep_good pni lahf_lm

MEMORY INFORMATION
	Total memory: 2009 MB
	Total swap: 1906 MB

STORAGE INFORMATION
	SCSI device -  scsi1
		Vendor:  ATA      
		Model:  SAMSUNG SP2504C  
	SCSI device -  scsi4
		Vendor:  ATA      
		Model:  Maxtor 6L080L0   
	SCSI device -  scsi5
		Vendor:  PIONEER  
		Model:  DVD-RW  DVR-111D 

HARDWARE INFORMATION
MOTHERBOARD
	Host bridge
		Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
	PCI bridge(s)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 PCI Bridge (rev a2) (prog-if 01)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 PCI Bridge (rev a2) (prog-if 01)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 PCIE Bridge (rev a3)
	USB controller(s)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2) (prog-if 10)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a3) (prog-if 20)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a2) (prog-if 10)
		nVidia Corporation CK804 USB Controller (rev a3) (prog-if 20)
	ISA bridge
		nVidia Corporation CK804 ISA Bridge (rev a3)
		Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 815a
	IDE interface
		nVidia Corporation CK804 Serial ATA Controller (rev f3) (prog-if 85 [Master SecO PriO])
		Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 815a

GRAPHIC CARD
	VGA controller
		nVidia Corporation NV44 [GeForce 6200 TurboCache(TM)] (rev a1)
		Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 81ae

SOUND CARD
	Multimedia controller
		nVidia Corporation CK804 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a2)
		Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 812a

NETWORK

NVIDIA GRAPHIC CARD INFORMATION
	Model name: GeForce 6200 TurboCache(TM)
	Card Type: PCI-E 
	Video RAM: unknown
	GPU Frequency: unknown
	Driver version: NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  185.18.36  Fri Aug 14 17:35:21 PDT 2009

[mitchd123]

imho, it looks like a fairly balanced system. I don't normally say this but it looks as if CPU may be your limiting factor, or speed to memory. Flash is pretty CPU intensive. I don't think a graphics card is going to buy you that much because the flash based games don't hit a graphics card the way a locally run game would, or playing a DVD locally. what you should do is run perfmon or some performance tools in linux eg: top, to see what the bottlenecks are when you are playing flash videos, etc. For win 7 you might benefit from another 1Gb of memory, but at 32 bits there not sense in going all out on 4gb or 8gb of memory at this point in time. I see your drives are 7200rpm, you may want to look at optimizing your drives using hdparm. You can test the performance with something like hdparm -tT /dev/sda and see the results. For the money you want to invest, you may benefit from a small Sata based solid state drive, if your system supports sata. You could invest a million dollars in any system and there's always a bottleneck or limiting factor. The only way to know what the current bottleneck is, is by running some performance tests. The bottleneck can move too. For example if memory is the bottleneck, and you add memory, CPU can then become the bottleneck. If you upgrade the CPU, then the bottleneck may become the drive, or memory again. Don't believe all the ads you read...check the performance monitors, and avoid any setting that says something like "average". You want to read disk queue, not average disk queue.

[Mobidoy]

imho, it looks like a fairly balanced system. I don't normally say this but it looks as if CPU may be your limiting factor, or speed to memory. Flash is pretty CPU intensive. I don't think a graphics card is going to buy you that much because the flash based games don't hit a graphics card the way a locally run game would, or playing a DVD locally. what you should do is run perfmon or some performance tools in linux eg: top, to see what the bottlenecks are when you are playing flash videos, etc. For win 7 you might benefit from another 1Gb of memory, but at 32 bits there not sense in going all out on 4gb or 8gb of memory at this point in time. I see your drives are 7200rpm, you may want to look at optimizing your drives using hdparm. You can test the performance with something like hdparm -tT /dev/sda and see the results. For the money you want to invest, you may benefit from a small Sata based solid state drive, if your system supports sata. You could invest a million dollars in any system and there's always a bottleneck or limiting factor. The only way to know what the current bottleneck is, is by running some performance tests. The bottleneck can move too. For example if memory is the bottleneck, and you add memory, CPU can then become the bottleneck. If you upgrade the CPU, then the bottleneck may become the drive, or memory again. Don't believe all the ads you read...check the performance monitors, and avoid any setting that says something like "average". You want to read disk queue, not average disk queue.

I will have to second that, yes your card is old but it wont help you much for what you want to do... 2 Gb is more than enough so yeah, cpu would be what would make the biggest impact.

[cascade9]

Depending on if your moterhboard supports it, a X2 socket 939 CPU would be a big improvement.

A video card upgrade would probably help as well, but not as much as CPU.

mitchd123 is right, a SSD SATA drive would help...probably a bit out of teh price range though. Even then, its only going to help with loading times, for desktop use then CPU would help a lot more. A newish SATA drive would also help, but not as much as a SSD (newer drives are faster.....the WD EARS (5400) drive I'm using now is faster than the old 7200 I was using before)

[Fafler]

Adobe has promised us hardware accelerated flash video playback for some time now. When it comes out a, new low-end Geforce card like the GT210 or GT220 will do wonders. This already works under Windows.

Besides that i'll have to go with the others. CPU is the way to go. You current CPU seems to be socket 939, so the Manchester and Toledo Athlon 64 X2 CPU's should fit your system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of....2C_90_nm.29_2