New Vidcard or MOBO?

[superbob]

I have a Athalon XP 2800+, 512Mb ram, NF2 MCP mobo (AU31), GF FX5700Ultra. what would i see the best from on an upgrade? i can swing $100 mabe $150 if i scrape real hard. I dont plan on doing any upgrades beyond this for probably atleast a year or more.

I play Dungeon Seige 2 and NFS MW currently and they play fine just with a few jitters every now and then at Mid settings. it does not pause long enough to interupt game play but it is enough to be annoying.

Heck my dads Sempron 1800+ at 1.5ghz, 512Mb ram, X800(something like that) laptop plays it close to the same as mine.

Again i would like to know what would give the best effect when i upgrade. i plan to add some ram soon as well but if i can get more effect from something else..

[SH64]

To answer your Q. i'd say video card .. maybe a 6600 if its in your budget ?

then comes the RAM .
heres the rule : more RAM = no stuttering/jitters
no stuttering/jitters > high framerate

& erm .. TBH .. get the RAM first , then the video card.

[superbob]

Gots the ram now i have 1Gb not much by most peoples standards but better. so you think that there is still room to expand on my current MOBO/CPU? if so thats awsome. i bet that Just geting a 256Mb card will up the anty quite a bit plus newer tech on the card is a plus.

I can go as high as 2 Gb o ram on this thing but 2700 in Gb sticks is F'ing expensive.

That added ram helped a lot but it still does a Jitter every few minutes.

What about this card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150157 or would that be over kill on my system?

[SH64]

If you are talking about jittering on NFS:MW , then maybe thats normal .. i get some even with 2GB of RAM. most likely its a game issue , but again 1GB RAM is much better than 512MB. & 2GB will ensure the smoothest experiance possible for all games today.

as for the 6800XT , i'd say get it if its in your budget!! theres no such thing called "overkill" for video cards.

[superbob]

well i dont want to spend extra money on something that is gonna be held back by my current Mobo/Cpu, thats what i meant by over kill.

Oh and i started playing around with settings and asking my freinds about that and we all agree that it seems as tho NFS: MW dont handle higher resolutions very well. I found that i can turn on all the options and the FSAA to 4X and it will run smooth but even if i force the particle system and motion blur off in the registry it wont play smooth at even 1280X1024.