So I've been contemplating all sorts of things recently. The graphics card market isn't any good right now and won't be for 2-3mths. And the cost of a new rig could be delayed (and/or better spent on fun things like holidays). So I got thinking, the main thing I need my machine to do is play music and HD content. It does both of these fine, but my new TV appears to need HDCP to accept a 1080p signal. So really all I need is a new GPU and Windows 7, right?

I have Windows 7 (just haven't installed it yet) and my spec is as follows:
Antec Super Lanboy case
Tagan 2Force 480w PSU
Asus A8N-Sli Deluxe (with passive chipset heatsink upgrade)
Athlon X2 3800+
2gig of 200Mhz RAM (2x 1gig kits)
nVidia 7600GT 256mb
Plextor 712SA SATA DVD
Samsung Spinpoints:
1x500gig (boot&data)
1x750gig (data)
1x1tb (data)

I'm about to run out of space, so will order a new F3 1TB to replace the 500 (which was reporting a boot disk failure yesterday, but when plugged into another machine shows up fine, so maybe it's just XP playing up?)

If I get a £30ish GPU with HDMI and then install Windows 7, will I be alright? I presume it'll have to be the 32bit version with just 2gig of RAM. I could order another 2gig kit and go to 3gig, but will that make any difference?

It won't play games, but tbh I haven't be able to play recent titles for more than two years anyway, so it's not like I'll be missing something I can now do.

If this build sees me through till the summer, I'll probably be happy tbh. Thoughts? Will it be man enough for Win7?

Personally I'd go for 64bit Windows 7, a cheap gfx card with HDMI & a couple of GB more RAM. Should run Windows 7 fine.

That's very, very near the machine I'm typing this on! Windows 7 is slower than XP to load, but not too bad once it has started up.

I can only buy 2gig kits for my board because of it's age. Is 3gig gonna be enough?

Am I being silly and really I need something newer (i.e. AM3/P55)?

You are not being silly at all. Windows 7 runs OK with just 1GB, but better with 2GB. I probably wouldn't bother upgrading.

If you can sort out the graphics, you should be fine.

Right, got impatient. Currently typing this from the above machine on Win7 Pro 64-bit, using a spare Western Digital EIDE 160gig drive as system! Looks very pretty and seems to be running pretty quick tbh.

If my 76GT will output HD over the DVI-HDMI lead I have, I'll leave it at that!

Managed to get a driver for audio, but unsure about tons of stuff so may be back later....

Thanks guys

Ok HELP!! Should I have installed 32bit? I can't get .mkvs working and a little reading suggests 64bit is a pain in the ass

I confess, I've only have the 32 bit version now due to "reasons beyond my control". However, I used 64 bit during the free trial and I think I played mkv files no problem using Media Player Classic or VLC, but I can't be totally sure. It's pretty much the first thing I'd try though, since 90% of my anime is in that format these days.

I thought you said it was very old!

We still have Win 95 machines and Pentium and Pentium II machines are work... Also an 8086 doing service in a corner! Now those are old, yours is a veritable spring chicken!

I have a similar system:

Athlon X2 4200
A8V
6800GT
2GB 200MHZ RAM

It's running Win 7 64-bit Home Premium with no problems.

I have VLC installed which so far has played everything I've tried including .mkv files.

The biggest problem with 64-bit in my experience is getting drivers, though it helps that most Vista drivers will work for Win 7.

OMJF!

I'd love to have machines as "old" as that.

It's twice as powerful as any machine we have at work, and that includes the servers

It even has more drive space than our entire office combined, including our off-site kit.

Twice as powerful? Most our users have Athlon 1.2Ghz with 256MB RAM! I'm trying to get them to either 512MB or 2GB, where I can - not allowed to spend money actually replacing them...

Damn guys, ok, ok! I spent out at the time! The X2 was an upgrade from a 3000+ single core and I added the RAM about 6mths ago. .mkvs seem ok now that I've installed the DirectX redist. No output from my GPU to the TV though, so I'll order a new GPU and HDD today and leave it at that!

I thought 5yrs old was pretty old.......

That is almost exactly what I have except that
Its a X2 4400
And my GPU is a 7800

But I have the same mobo and if you upgrade the BIOS then you can go to 4 GB of RAM – which I have just done so.

I Run Win 7 64 Pro – and have to say between have 2 GB and 4 GB of Ram not noticed anything real speed change for Day to day stuff – although have not done any video encoding since I upgraded the memory

Overall you have a good system and really only need to upgrade if you want to play the latest games at a high res