Help Upgrading

[Haro287]

I recently got my sisters old computer for my Birth-Day. My long time friend and computer geek (in a good way) helped me out by giving me an extra ATI 8500 Graphics card he had. Now I am addicted to the net and PC games like never before. I play Call of Duty, America's Army, Counter-Strike, Etc. Here are my specs so far:

Processor: Intel Pentium III, ~ 800MHz

Graphics Card: ATI RADEON 8500 Series

Memory: 512MB RAM

Sound Card: SB Live! Wave Device (Creative)

I need to upgrade my processor ASAP and possibly my Video Card as well. I can barely pull alot of the games I play and they look ok, but not what they could be. I have learned alot about PCs, but I don't really know what kind of stuff to buy when upgrading. Like ATI vs. nVidia and AMD vs. Intel as far as price and performance goes. I have about 250$... Please help!

[liljim]

Well,for what its worth....I like AMD Athlon XP and Nvidia.$250 isnt alot to work with therefore i would look into motherboard cpu combos and vid cards (such as inno 3d) with the preferred chipset.The GForce 4 mx440 cards run quite well for the money.would be a good place to start looking.

[Restek]

It really depends what sort of money you want to spend - your motherboard will only take certain processors. So the first thing to do is find out what the best processor it supports is (find out the motherboard type using (eg) sisoft sandra (http://www.sisoftware.net/) and then check the manufacturers website for this info), and decide whether that processor is good enough for you. If it's not, then you need to get a new motherboard too!