Building a new PC advise pls

[pcoltas]

Ok the machine I have now I built when I started uni in 2004 so its 2 years old now, think its time for a new one. Basically these are the specs, its had a couple of upgrades over the 2 years (gfx card and extra dvd burner) but its essentially the same pc as it was in 2004:

* Intel Celeron 2.4GHZ CPU
* 1.5GB DDR RAM
* NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT 256MB
* 400GB HDD (2 x 80GB, 1 x 200GB, 1 x 40GB)
* Lite-On Dual Layer DVDRW
* Aopen Dual Layer DVDRW
* Artec CDRW

I had to buy a RAID card because of all the drives Ive got and the case is now full to capacity.

The main thing im looking at upgrading is the CPU, been looking at some dual cores but not sure which brand or even which model to go for, maybe an amd athlon 64 x2?

Also thinking of doing away with the RAM and getting some DDR2 (maybe 2gig?), dumping the two 80gig and the one 40gig hdd and replacing it with a 300gig drive (so would have 500gb in total)

Im not sure about the gfx card, ive only had it 5-6 months and it cost me £112 so im a bit reluctant to replace it already.

I want to beef it up so it can handle flight sim better, I dont think the gfx card is a problem I think its the CPU and possibly the memory thats holding it back.

Any ideas/suggestions greatly appreciated

TIA

:)

[duffy90210]

CPU and Hard Drive is your bottleneck by your specs, if you dont wish to change too much, check the motherboard and see whats the fastest it can take, if it will take a 2.8GHz P4 or more then you should notice a huge performance increase on FS2004, they can be found on eBay for around £50-£60.

Hard drive can vary, but they are so cheap, aim for a 7'200rpm with 16MB cache as your main drive.

If your budget can go further, then a whole new board and CPU will give you a fresh clean and faster start, the Core Duo would be the way to go, but going this route meant new board and memory also, so it will be a huge upgrade bill.

HTH

[pepsik]

probably just need the cpu upgrade, celeron have a lower L2 cache so they run alot slower than p4's. The extreme edition P4's have the highest L2 cache with 2mb, and prescott P4's have 1mb L2 cache. I would start there and then gardually work around to the memory, there is an ASUS motherboard that has 2 ddr slots and 2 ddr2 slots along with agp and pci-express for gradually working hardware up to the new standards, there is a drawback as the pci-e slot is only 4x.

[thedvdmonster]

i wouldn't waste money upgrading until vista was out and about fully.
any pc built today will be half the pc once vista is out as all new hardware and software will be built to be fully comaptible.
stick your money in the bank and be patient