Hi all. It has been a while since I have posted here on these forums but I am having some serious conflicting thoughts so I thought I would seek some opinions that hopefully will help me decide.

I will be purchasing a new graphics card and a new processor soon but I am having a hard time finding something that meets the budget and will perform better than my current set up. I want another Nvidia vid card and I want a dual core AMD processor......one key thing you should know is that I currently have a socket 939 MB so my options are limited I know. Price range I"m looking for: Vid card (no more than $160)....Processor (no more than $150). Here is my current set up, please let me know what cards and processors would be a good upgrade for me and let my 939 socket live another year. As a side note...I love online gaming and I like video editing.

Current set up:

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ (socket 939) Codename San Diego
ASUS A8N5X MB
2g Ram (dual channel)
Nvidia e-GeForce 7900GS GDDR3 256MB
Windows XP Home Edition

Thanks in advance for your help.

Opteron 180 Denmark will equal the 2.4 GHz clock you now have, and give you dual core; it is only $20 over your budget, and free shipping and no tax: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819103582
Be sure to read the reviews, they are a pretty good clue as to performance from other users.

Opteron 175 Denmark will give you 0.2 GHz less clock, but is on budget and free shipping: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16819103584

Vid. Card: here is the MSI card, which I have never used but am seriously considering for my next build; it uses the Gforce 8600 architecture (don't drop below 8000 on that), supports SLI if you ever decide to get into that, Has dual DVI-out (VERY nice touch, if you want to use VGA there is an adapter supplied-check to see that your LCD monitor has DVI-in, some don't). Remember it is PCIe x16, so make sure your board has that slot. The only "iffy" thing is that there is no fan, it uses a large heatsink with heatpipes. This is really nice because it will be totally quiet, but make sure that you will have room; that heatsink looks pretty big in the photos. If you have some space on the side of your PCIe slot you should be fine. After mail-in rebate you should be right on budget. This card is getting excellent reviews, be sure to read them for additional tips. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814127287

Hope this gives you some ideas; check out the details carefully before you buy, and post back and let us know how it goes.

Thanks for the quick reply Ranchhand and I hope you had a great Thanksgiving

Good suggestions. On a side note...how much do you know of the manufacturing company MSI? I am familiar with eVGA but have never owned an MSI product. Are they reliable?

On the scale of reliability, MSI stands about 66%. They specialize in medium to low performance equipment, and there are many that love their products. Since the video card is actually using Nvidia drivers I feel more confident in it, and the card is getting great reviews at Newegg. This is not considered a high-end card, those can run you $400 and more. But for your price point it give you a lot of bang for the buck. I will purchase this soon but have never used it so I cannot give you a firm experience rating. And I am not an avid gamer, either. BTW - Newegg has a great selection of EVGA cards also-I was looking at a couple.