I've seen from time to time posts on here about computer hardware and nearly everytime someone has offered really helpful advice. So I'm hoping the same will go for me.

I've been given the opportunity to buy some hardware from a friend for fairly cheap, however the hardware is semi-old I'm still unsure if it would be worth it. I mainly use this PC for gaming (not hardcore gaming though) and the setup I've got now is as follows:
Abit NF7-S Motherboard
AMD 2500+ Processor
1GB Ram
ATi Radeon 9800 pro 128mb

The hardware that I'm being offered are one of two processors: AMD 64 3500+ or AMD 64x2 3800+
Additionally, he'll give me two NVIDIA 6600GT PCI-E 128mb cards (for SLI). All for "under $100".

for me to do this though, I must buy a new motherboard and ram, the board I've been looking at is the " EVGA 122-M2-NF59-TR". I've not started to look for RAM, mostly because the whole "Timing" part confuses me.

So the advice I seek is which Processor would be best to have, and if the "upgrade" would be worth the money? As I said, I'm not looking for a super high-end machine, but something that will hold me over for 3-4 years like this machine has. I've done some readings on the hardware offered, but as usual haven't found any of it super helpful.

I appreciate it!

 

It's a very good buy for the money, if I was you I'd probably go for it - it'll definately be a big step up from your current setup. Go for the 64x2 3800+. Just budget yourself around $100 or so for an AM2 (i presume?) sli board and $50-125 for 1-2GB of DDR2 memory. You've not mentioned what power supply you have in your current machine but if running an sli configuration you'll need something half decent like a 450w+ psu so expect to spend around $50 on that.

 

I looked for the A8N-SLI and Newegg didn't seem to have it, I think I might go with the EVGA since it's cheap and looks like it can last me a bit. I did however find the specs for the A8N and apparently it uses DDR ram rather than DDR2... thats a good thing for me money wise since I've got 1gig of Kingston Hyper X DDR ram that cost me a fortune when I bought it.

Thanks for such a speedy response, I was expecting at least a days wait.

 

Excellent!

I'll need an AM2 if I get the 3800+.

I appreciate the information, now to go and find some decent RAM and order my parts.

 

quad sli is out, but the tests/reviews i've seen showed little or no improvement over dual sli. the bottleneck is at the CPU before 4 GPUs can be harnessed.