This or that?

Im pretty good with PC's and such, but ive come to a dilemma: CPU or graphics card? Im expecting many of you to say CPU, but heres my system thus far:

Pentium 4 CPU 2.4ghz 800fsb
128mb ATI radeon 9600 Pro
1280MB DDR memory
80GB 7200 HD

The situation is like this: my motherboard can go up to a 3.0ghz, and my graphics card is an AGP slot. I built this pc about two years ago. The reason i want to add this is for 3d gaming, also movie editing, converting and burning. In my situation, would it be better to get the extra 600mhz processor or go for a more powerful graphics card? Whats your picks for graphics cards too? I dont have a ton of cash so something in the 175-200 dollar range would be ideal.

 

Quite the dilemma. I don't know about the games, but if you are going to do video editing, which means encoding, you are going to want a bigger processor. Video editing is CPU intensive.

You also need a good video card, which you have already. If your intent is to do alot of video editing, you will also want a large hard drive, which you may or may not dedicate to video productions.

 

I am not to familiar with the radeon cards, but from what i do know, that sounds like a really good card. I would spend my money on the CPU. however i am a newb, and i am not even sure how you buy CPU? how do you go along buying 600 mhz ?

 

maybe a stupid suggestion, but what about upgrading both by buying used products, and the re-sell your old video card and CPU.

I have always subsidised my upgrades by selling the old components, and there are a lot of people out there that have upgraded from P4 3.0 to something higher.

same again on the card, upgrade to a 9800Gt or someting like that. A lot of gamers upgrade frequently. Maybe there is somebody reading this thread that has one of the components for you for a " nice " price

 

This is the motherboard i have:

http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=P4P800-VM&langs=09

Looks like i can get a Prescot CPU after all! woo-hoo!