Upgrading but confused

hello everyone,about 3 years ago i bought a new computer which has a gigabyte GA7IXE4 motherboard. 750 Amd Duron processor, 256 SDRam i recently bought a NVIDIA Geforce4 MX440 with AGP8.

My problem is this, i am addicted to playing games and i recently got some new ones but am unable to play them properly due to my spec. i dont have enough money or knowledge to upgrade myself without help so i was hoping i could pick your brains for advice.

I dont want to buy a new case as i dont have room for another comp, my case i called e-star and it is an ATX (not sure what this is but someone told me). I want to buy only a new board, processor Amd Athlon atleast 2gig, and the system should be able to take DDRRam. i have two boards that i have looked at they are

AsRock K7S41 or K7S8X And
MSI KT4AV

what i really need to know is whch one is better and will they be able to fit into my old case (thats important) and also will they accept my harddrive/floppy/cdrom and other periferals?

im a bit confused coz when i go into a shop they go on about so many things that i feel like they are trying to sell me something i dont need. I just want a board/processor/ which will fit in my case,take ddr ram and i will be able to play games happilly ))

can someone please advise me

Thank you

Bunty

 

Before your going to get to many suggestions we have to know what we are working with. Please provide details about your case, dimensions, fans, psu, if it is a clone atx midtower it should fit a variety of moboz, howerver you will need a new psu if you don't already have one, 350watt would be min., 400watt better., also cooling is a great concern, if you don't have at least an 80mm lower front, 80mm out the back at cpu level, you will be doing some modding or getting a new case, the newer cpuz run hot and require adaquate cooling, period, if you are gaming you may require a hsf for your cpu that is better than a stock if you plan to overclock. What ram do you have? if it is older ram it will slow down your mobo, if it's 200 or 266 ram and your new board and chip are 333 or 400 it will slow down to the ram so your sorta wasting your money. Well, thats some of the bad news, the good news is that if you stay with an XP cpu and not A64 you can get some pretty good deals on mobo/cpu bundles, but you will need DDR pc3200 ram or at least pc2700 to get the best performance.

 

As far as boards go i'm sorta partial to MSI, also i would stay away from any onboard graphics if you can, people seem to have a had time disabling it sometimes, better to just avoid the problem. since you have an agp 8x card you don't need it anyway.

 

im a little confused on how to get the information you requested about my case, All i know at preent is that it is a estar case atx serial number 081144446.how do i get information about psu and fan stuff? it you could tell me i will try sorry but im not very knowledgable on hardware stuff.im still learning

thankyou

Bunty

 

No offence but you've got a lot of homework before starting your project, asking some questions here won't cut it and note if you are looking to play modern games your MX card isn't going to work very well.

Start here:

http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=91

 

I have a system with the nvidiaGF4 MX440-64 megs ram and it plays Doom 3 on medium settings quite well so as long as your not looking at cutting edge performance you should be ok for a while. As far as your case goes i'm still looking into it a little, i'll assume your in the UK because google keep sending me to UK sites for E-star, if you open the case you will be able to verify how many fans you have, where there are placed and look on the label of your power supply for make/model and wattage.

 

Does it look like this?

http://computing.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/ps_9436078/100216323.html

 

My 2 cents.When I decided to upgrade I asked Compaq about my case they said it was an ATX.so I ordered my parts,gutted the old machine,when I got my parts in from ZipZoomFly,guess what the board didn,t fit.so off to the local Comp store so i didn,t have to wait on the little big brown truck...MORAL; get out the old tape messure and check your messurements with those provided by vendor on board specs.

 

The case looks exactly like this one

http://computing.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/p.../100216323.html

except for the fans on the sides, i opened my case and there was no writting on the power unit. On the back of the case where the power cable goes, it says 230v if thats help. Im thinking of selling my old machine and buying a new one the msi board, and better case and a better graphics card. will that be advisable.

If yes then can someone suggest to me a good case that will take the msi KT4AV board and which graphics card i should get providing im not looking to spend too much coz i cant really afford to do so.

is ebay a good place to sell my computer, only the tower not the rest of the stuff such as monitor and periferals. How much could i get for it please.

Thank you everyone

Bunty

 

Actually the ASRock K7S41 isn't a bad board. I built a nice Duron 1200 POS system with it about 6 months ago. It is still serving me well. I don't know about using it for gaming though(because of the SiS chipset). I would spend the extra $40 on a quality motherboard, and cheap out somewhere else(CDRW instead of DVD, 80GB HDD instead of 120 etc etc). ...

 

I doubt your going to get much if anything for an old pc, maybe $50 if someone just needs a basic pc, as far a cases go Antec or Enlight because they come with a good power supply.