Originally posted by Sephiroth@Nov 23 2002, 07:42 PM
K, here's my specs, and I'm not sure what I want to upgrade 
Asus A7V133-C
Athlon XP 1600+
512 PC133 CL2 SDR
80 Gig 7200 RPM ATA-133 Maxtor Diamond Max HDD
32X Sony CD-RW
Geforce 4MX 440 4x AGP
Sound Blaster Audigy
etc. etc. etc. (ethernet, router, etc.)
I've got three options to upgrade.
1: An Athlon XP 2000+
2: Buy an identical Maxtor drive to the one I have now and stripe raid them in RAID-0
3: Add another 512 megs of sdr, giving me a gig total.
Which would you pick and why? I'm a big gamer, though not worried about upgrading my video card until after Christmas when the NV30 cards (drools heavily) are avalible, plus the G4MX isn't too bad as long as I don't run it at 1024 x 768 @ 4X FSAA.
Everytime I upgrade my box I'm never too sure what to get, lol. If I do go with the RAID array I'm going to dread backing this 80 gig drive up on CDR's (nearly 40 gigs of stuff to burn, 
lol), as I think you have to format and remove all the partitions on both drives before creating an array.
To answer your questions:
1) You will get only a marginal difference if you upgrade from a XP 1600 to XP 2000. I did this on my comp and I hardly noticed any performance gain.
2) Getting an additional drive does no harm to anybody. You may consider that option if you plan to work around with a lot of big files and also if you plan to have a ftp server. Also if you plan to keep all your downloaded programs on your hard disk rather than back them up on cdr's you may consider this option.
3) As FreeUS said, unless you plan to run a server you really dont need to get 1 gig of ram, especially sdr ram. Adding additional ram over 512 mb for gaming systems is not going to give you any performance gain, rather I have seen systems take performance hits.
I would suggest to hold on to your money and wait for a month or two till you get some more money and get a newer and better motherboard and faster ddr ram. You will probably be able to buy at least an Athlon 2200 for the same price you will be paying for the 2000 right now. There is a lot of performance difference between the 1600 and 2200.
As for the graphics card, I would suggest that you buy the nv30 cards 2-3 months after they become available in the market. That way you may probably pay a little less than what the prices will be when the cards actually hit the market.
Now for the backup solution. This is what I did....I was in the same situation as yours if not worse. I had to get rid of my Raid config and I had almost 90 gigs of data to be backed up before I undid my raid config. Thats more than 125 cds of data. Who in this blue world has the time and patience to sit down and do this? I had 300 bucks to spare for 1 month. I went to Bestbuy and bought a DVD writer for 250 bucks + Tax and also bought two 15 pack recordable media. I backed up the entire 90 gigs + on the 30 dvd's in about a week's time. Once i was done with my backup, I returned the dvd recorder back to Bestbuy and got my 250 bucks + Tax back. Bestbuy is one of the few stores where you can buy computer and electronic stuff and return them within 14 days for a FULL refund (No restocking fee).
Hope this helps!
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