I recently upgraded to 32bit Windows Vista Business. My old system isn't cutting it anymore so I'm planning to upgrade.

My budget is about $300.

I'm not a big gamer but I do occasionally play Half Life 2 / Counter Strike and BF 2142. Would like to be able to play newer games but I certainly don't need a high-end gaming system.

I'm a web developer so I spent most of my time working in Visual Studio, doing database work, browsing the web, etc.

Current Hardware:

Athlon XP 1800+ @ 1.49GHZ
ASUS MOBO (not sure of model)
1 GB RAM
RADEON X800 GTO

I'm looking at going with:

AMD Phenom 8650 Toliman processor from New Egg ($99.00)
ASUS M3A78-T AM2+/AM2 Motherboard from New Egg ($149.00)
4 GB RAM


My questions:

How good will the video performance be considering that it's an onboard controller? Will it still be significantly better than what I've got now? (I plan to add a separate board down the road when I have the cash)

Any opinions either way regarding this combination?


Thanks for the help!

Looks like a good budget choice. I don't know about onboard graphics (I've always had a graphics card). I'm guessing you could play a bit of half life 2, but BF2142 is probably not going to work.