In A Sticky Situation, And Need Advice
 

Hey,

Well, about a week ago I bought myself a new XFX 7800GS AGP card for my rig, and all was going well until, well, the day after I bought it, when I realised just how bottlenecked it will be on my setup. I currently have a non-overclocked Athlon XP 3000+, 1.5gb ram and an Asus A7N8X motherboard.

I realised the other day that I could have sold my cpu and mobo on Ebay for about 100 pounds, giving me enough for a new Athlon 64 3800 CPU, then sold my old graphics card and some other bits for 50 pounds, giving me enough for a new mobo, and then spent about 180-200 on a new gfx card, which was exactly the price I spent on my new AGP card!

What do you advice I do? I was thinking about selling my week old card on Ebay for the same price, and hoping I get a buyer. Then carrying out the PCI-E upgrade. Or should I just overclock my CPU with a new heatsink and fan? Or maybe sell on my new card and wait a few months for the prices to go down for my desired components, but then having to sell my current components for less.

Any ideas?

I'd just sell the card again if you're short on money, save up for a complete upgrade and check again in a few months when you can do a serious upgrade.

The 7800GS isn't THAT bad of a card. If you're strapped for cash, I would simply keep what you have.

I'm a personal fan of overclocking. It can yield surprising results if you do it right. I would get a new heastsink and fan with some Arctic Silver 5 and overclock. You might want to make sure that your RAM is capable of supporting a higher FSB if that's what you're going to overclock. Raising the FSB is preferable over raising the multiplier because it yields better results. A 3000+ should overclock very well (depending on what motherboard you have) from what I've read. I think it's a pretty cheap way to go.