Hello! I'm new here.

I built my current PC a couple years ago and it's served me well, but I'd like to run EVE Online with all the bells and whistles turned on so I'm going to need to upgrade my video card at least. This is what I have at the moment:

MSI K8n Neo4 Platinum motherboard
Radeon X800 video card
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.01 ghz
1GB of RAM
No sound card (just using on board sound)

What do you guys think I should do to make this setup a little more modern? I'm looking at spending maybe a 200-400 dollars.

I was browsing around for a new video card and noticed the ATI Radeon 3870 uses something called PCI-E 2.0. I think my current motherboard only has a regular PCI-E 16x slot. I've read that it should be compatible, but will the 3870 be limited at all by my current motherboard?

Thanks!

E1200 o/c'ed to 3ghz $50
GA-P35-DS3L $80
2x2GB DDR2-800 $30 after rebate
HD4850 $180 after rebate

$400 can buy you this a HUGE gaming upgrade.

There would be no problem putting a HD 3850 into your X16 PCI-e ver 1 slot on the K8n motherboard.

For about $258 before rebates you could get yourself an Athlon 64 4000+ 2.4Ghz CPU, 2GB of DDR 400 (PC 3200 RAM) and a 8800GT video card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814141074


For around $400 (before $50 in rebates) you could get a NForce 560 AM2 motherboard, 2GB of DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) RAM, X2 4800+ 2.5Ghz CPU and one of the new HD 4850 video cards.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814131111

Nice. You guys suggest I get a new motherboard? I'm liking the 400$ options you guys gave me. So you suggest overclocking an intel CPU akhilles, and you suggest AMD WR2? I wasn't really planning on overclocking so I'm leaning towards WR2's $400 newegg list.

Hmm...The ASUS manufactured 4850 is five bucks cheaper than the POWERCOOLER with the rebate. Was there any particular reason you suggested the Powercooler over other manufacturers WR2?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121253

No. You can chose based on the best price on the day you order. Just be sure to check the total cost - not all cards have free shipping option.
The Asus has 3 year warranty and the Powercolor 2 years. And at $5 cheaper the Asus is the better deal at the moment.

Cool. That's what I ordered. Thanks again.

Well I put it all together and it's working great. Thanks for the suggestions! I haven't overclocked it at all. Should I? I've just been playing Eve Online recently and it's running smooth with all the settings maxed.

Glad everything went well for you.
Before doing any overclocking a good burn in stress test and benchmarking session is usually a good idea.
You can setup 3DMark06 to loop through its tests and have it run overnight. http://www.download.com/3DMark06-B [...] 92454.html
Maybe even add one or two instances of Prime95.
Some people like using the burn in test from Passmark http://www.passmark.com/

After you get a good idea of what the stock PC's performance is like you can then try your hand at overclocking. Run benchmarks again to test the stability and see what kinds of performance gains the overclock is giving you. Then you'll know if the overclocks make sense for you.