Working from a tight budget, what are the priorities for upgrading? I could coast longer on this MB/CPU by doubling the RAM. I could replace this MB/CPU/RAM with a newer, faster trio. I could leave the MB/CPU/RAM alone and upgrade the graphics card. Other combinations are possible. Which one makes the most sense if the highest priority is bang-for-buck?
The best bang for your buck is generally RAM. It's cheap. It's a major, major factor in performance. Moreso than a Graphics card (not that the latter isn't a factor, and of course if you use something old enough you'll get a bad bottleneck). My non-expert opinion on what you should do to follow, but this is a good general rule of thumb.
I liked the Abit motherboard's configurability (jumperless with all options in the BIOS). Is that arrangement standard yet? On the other hand, the VIA chipset was wonky and I encountered a few strange sound-related anomalies not traceable to my soundcard, presumably because of the MB. What would be a good MB/CPU replacement? Do any reasonable boards still use PC2100?
FWIW jumperless was well on its way to becomming the standard last decade/millenium. I don't know of any boards that don't use a jumperless setup, but then I don't closely follow the Mobo scene. I'm sure there's some out there somewhere, but I think you should expect to find any decent commercial board to be jumperless. People don't want to be hassled with it.
You can still get PC2100-based boards I'm sure, and you'd get them cheap, but you'd be buying a no growth system, and maybe just making a lateral move (or a slightly forward one if you get a better chipset). I've had one for over 2 and a half years (early next year it will be 3). I feel like I'm seeing PC2700 boards less and less, in favor of PC3200. You could bring your RAM onto one of the above AFAIK (but maybe not), but you wouldn't be taking full advantage of things obviously.
Is there something you'd like to play but don't feel the system can do it? I wouldn't upgrade based soley on that, but your predicted gaming future is something to take in mind. Is your system doing a good job on current games?
If you go Mobo/CPU/RAM (replacing your core system, in essence), an
Abit KV7 will run you $53 at newegg. A gig of
PC3200 will be 150$ish (that's corsair there, and I'm assuming 2 512 DIMMs. A 1 gig one is probably a bit more expensive). A nice CPU, say an
Athlon XP 2800+ will be 140$. For $340 (pre shipping, and assuming I haven't erred on compatability in some way), I'd guess you'd see a pretty big performance change, even with your "old" graphics card (which is still a good card, I'd guess). Your upside is better with this setup. Down the road (say a year), you could upgrade into a much better graphics card and better enjoy having it than you could with the current setup (even if you just double the RAM , or double the RAM and add a better processor). You could probably get something really good for cheap ($100-150).
You would need to be mindful of power. You need to find out if your current powersupply will be able to handle this (if not, that makes it a more expensive upgrade). You're almost halfway to a pretty good system sans monitor - see Naednek's proposed setup above (and if you needed to get a new case, you'd be halfway or more). And you need to read up on whatever chipset you are getting. I have no idea if I've chosen something that has been problematic for people (and you likewise need to make sure you can disable on board audio & that this won't be a problem, if you want to use a sound card). It looked like a pretty good Mobo, though, essentially one that could be fitted with a much better processor, graphics card, and RAM than your current setup. And we could fit it with those things for a reasonable price (or what looks like one, anyway). I don't know how the rest of your system is doing, from the sound card to the hard drive. If you are pleased with all of those components, this option could be your best bet. And in a sense, this
is a new system. It just depends on how you look at it.
If you stay with the current system, I'd double the RAM first, and possibly consider a new CPU second. I doubt a graphics card upgrade would be a waste, but IMO it would probably not be an effective use of your money. $75 or so to double it with PC2100 - you should see better performance and that's really cheap. You could probably upgrade that processor to something nice for another $75 - again seeing better performance and we still haven't spent too much money (my guess is that a graphics card for $150 wouldn't be a big upgrade). That's cheaper than the above, but then there is less you can do with this system you are working with, and these upgrades would more or less be the last you ever did on it (maybe a graphics card down the road, but you wouldn't want to go overboard unless you figured that card would carry with you onto a new system sometime thereafter). The advantage here is that it's just less of an expense. RAM or CPU/RAM isn't necessarily the "most performance per dollar" winner, and I'm honestly not sure which would be better. An advance of just upping RAM and maybe even RAM/CPU is that it's a quick and dirty performance boost that can get you over the hump to the next new system.
