I have a 2 year old computer which I am looking to upgrade. I was hoping I could get some suggestions.

I have a:

939 ASUS A8NSLI-Premium motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
1GB Crucial Ballistix RAM
EVGA 7800GT 256
Seagate Barracuda 500Gb
450 W Antec PSU
Antec Sonata II

I want the biggest performance increase I can get for around $200. Any help is appreciated.
I was thinking of upgrading to an opteron 185. Is that worthwhile?

For the price you may as well just go for a cheap am2 + or intel 775 setup as there's no point in upgrading that further. The performance increase will be far better than just getting the opteron. Also 2 gigs of ram is always good.

Its a dead end but short answer memory is cheapest. Sometimes you can luck out, I looked for over a year at many sites then one night newegg had opteron 185 for 179.00. Sold out within minutes. must have been a lone tray or somehting. looking everynight for over year paid off I guess. I ordered it right away. Any money you spend on mobo stuff like memory/cpu will be a loss. A new video card can be moved to a newer system when needed. I was hoping too upgrade my video card with a intergrated physx and Dx10.1 but the GTX 280 doesn't meet my expectations.

As far as the CPU goes your wasting money trying to upgrade. There may be a few dual core Opterons floating around, but they wont provide much of a boost. Your best bet for that system is to OC your 3800+ and get another year-year and a half out of it. I would put that $200 towards a new GPU. HD4850 is making a big splash in this segment, but you could also grab an 8800GT(S) and another GB of ram.

I am not sure what can be done for 200.00$. Since, socket 939 cpu are almost completely gone it would be hard to improve on that unless you want to go with a used cpu, optron might still be bought new but I am not sure what gain you would get going that way. A 4800 could prove a good upgrade but even on the second hand market they are often still sold a steep price. A 4800 + another gig of ram would be nice but realistically not that easy to do.

Lets see what can be done, assuming that you're GPU is PCI-E

Intel system

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128337
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819116063


AMD system :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128090
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103194

RAM:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820145590

This adds up for around 240-250

I am sure that if you dig newegg some more you can probably close the deal near 200$. If you're into overclocking than an after market is in order. I didn't go with the cheapest possible but I think those 2 suggestions would make decent systems.

HI
"I want the biggest performance increase" you are asking very vague question, performance to do what? browse the web, email, lol, maybe you play games? which then?

i would get another 1 gig of ram
also if you are gamer(and depending what games you wana play), new vig card, but i believe 939 only support AGP (except few MB's) so that wouldn't be future proof but mostly waste of money if you plan to get newer system in year or so!
amd x2 4400, 4800 looks like the only place to buy them is eBay, but they go over 100$

so in any situation you need to get system to total of 2GB of ram
and then depending on what you do,
new vid card or buy new (0r used) CPU(4800 or atleast 4400) of ebay and that will be $200

Wrong many socket 939 support PCI-E, not all of them but a good many.

He has an SLI mobo, PCI-E FTW

Ummm... Last time I checked, you couldn't SLI two AGP cards. Give the OP listed the A8NSLI Premium motherboard, I'd guess s/he's got a PCI-E graphics card.

@ OP
I'd have to agree with the others (and I'm in the same boat with two s939 systems). Add a gig of RAM, upgrade cheap to AM2, or wait until you can do a complete build with better components.

-Wolf sends

Edit:

ASUS M2A-VM AM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail - $65
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Brisbane 2.7GHz - $77
WINTEC AMPX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 - $40

Should be a decent upgrade for < $200

My bad there about AGP comment

but still it all depends on the reason for upgrade
+1gb ram and video card if you have trouble playing games and want to get more FPS
+1gb and CPU if you work with CPU intensive programs(+everything non GPS related)

or you can just buy new AM2 motherboard+ram+CPU, since current parts on market cost less then for older system (DDR vs DDRII for example)
but that would still put you in same boat as with old system if you wanted to get better gaming performance, you get boost from new CPU and ram but not as much as from new GPU

I agree, doing this is your best bet.

Only one thing though, the mobo you suggested can be 50/50 right out of the box, and also it has a lot of compatibility problems with different RAM brand/types etc... I built many office systems with that board, and like I said, without any exageration, it's almost a 50/50 chance of either getting DOA or RAM compatibility issues. The problems often stems from really old versions of the BIOS being shipped with the board itself, but unless you have different RAM types/Brands lying around to test it out, you can get stuck quickly.

My 2Cents.

Thanks for all the help guys. I think I'll go for the 2GB of RAM and save the rest of my money and put it toward a completely new build somewhere in the future. Just trying to squeeze a little more life outta my pc =).

I say for your money, you could even go with a cheap AM2 rig like some already suggested. Take it from someone who tried cutting corners already, by the time you buy all the old stuff, you might as well go to newer hardware that you have upgrade paths with.