Suggestions for upgrading my boring system please.

[clueless]

Hello and sorry for the long post for my introduction but I am going nuts trying to work this out.

At the moment I have an M55Plus-S3G with the AMD Athlon X64 AM2 4400+, 4gigs of DDR2-800 RAM and am using the onboard graphics under MS Vista. I have had this set-up for a while and it is getting slow and so I am looking for a sensible upgrade. I have no interest in over-clocking or tuning of any sort and I don't play games.

The challenge that I am having is that most boards cost about the same price and many use DDR2-800 RAM but I can find no information that suggests what processor I should team with what RAM.

For example, if I wanted to keep my 800 RAM, what would be the most sensible processor to team with the RAM and which of the many mobos should I plug them into?

Would there be any point in keeping the CPU and RAM and changing the mobo? If this is a sensible option, which mobo should I be looking at?

If I said I could start again, my absolute maximum budget for a new mobo, CPU and RAM would be £200 but what sort of combination of mobo, CPU and RAM should I consider?

I am open to all sorts of suggestions but need a noticeable increase in performance. 

Thanks in advance for any help you would all care to offer - I'm grateful to share the headache.

[bofh1971]

Hi matey

have you tried just reinstalling vista?
the outgoing o/s has a habit of slowing down, clogged up with temp files

also check out the "auto defrag" it might be set to some silly time where it never gets to finish

your spec seems fine for what you do, a little bit of an "if it aint broke" situation

are you thinking of win7?, your system is well peppy enough to be a media system and general web/office use

I dont think you would see much of a day to day difference compared to the amount you would spend

good luck anyway

when upgrading its always a good idea to upgrade motherboard/ ram and processor all at once
especially since the nice new AM3 stuff takes ddr3 ram

you could just get a am2+ board and am3 processor on there but it would be limited to lower FSB speeds

Cheers
Bo

[clueless]

Hi Bo and thanks for taking the time to reply.  

The challenges that I described with my current set-up are only the basic ones, there are other nuisance value things too and so I think my solution is going to have to be new innards.  

Looking at the 785GMT plus 9650 and 4gig of ddr3-1066 - it's going to make a hole in my cash but it should at least last me a while.

Anyone have any thoughts or comments please on that for a solution?

Thanks again Bo and anyone who chooses to throw something into the pot.

[bofh1971]

Getting a socket 3 motherboard will  give you a little extra clout with your chosen processor, but if I were on a budget I would pick up a nice am2+mobo that takes DDR2 1066, along with an Athlon II x2 240, which funnily enough I built recently, popped in a gts250 graphics card that was on special and two 160gb cheapo hdd's in raid 0 and the thing flies, in fact its a proper gaming rig and cost me with case drives psu dvdrw etc £270.

Here's 4 quid off for starters
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/170230
£ 70.78
I would add two of these
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159919
£ 60.00
and one of these
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168975
£ 48.57

Budget am3 system
I could go for the lower CPU and lose .3ghz but for the sake of 4 quid
Good luck