£350 to spend on computer upgrades what do I buy?

[indigoagogo]

I have a full Indigo licence and I want to tackle a project in a couple of months time that I been waiting to work on for ages now. The problem is I really need a computer upgrade.

I have a desktop with an under powered Intel 2Ghz core duo chip on a LGA775 MB, on board graphics, 8gig ram, running win XP64bit on two 1TB 5400rpm SATA drives.

I also have a dual core Win XP laptop with 4GB ram for a networking slave

I will want to do some outside work mainly. Desert-scape large scale.

Where would I be best focusing my money?

My ideas are :-

Drop in a quad chip from ebay q9550 = £140ish, q9450 = £120, q6700 = £90ish, q8300 = £90ish, 8200 = £60ish *

Buy a graphics card to help with the load but would this be useful with outdoor acceleration? Which one? *

Buy SSD drive to add to the 2 HHD drives

Buy win7 64Bit

Forget upgrading and buy a 2nd hand machine as another slave?

* an upgarde in my cpu and graphics might mean I need a new case/power supply as my old 350Watt can't cut it or doesn't have the connectors!

Any ideas would be welcome!

[Decade]

You could ...
Get a new motherboard :
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =MB-391-GI
CPU :
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =CP-360-IN
8GB RAM:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1517
Quality 520w Power Supply
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1088
for about £330.

The 2500K, even at stock speed would offer very approx twice the performance of the older Q99XX series (I speak from experience having made a similar transition at work).
You could probably run that off the 350w power supply, just I think it's worth the investment in a high quality supply.
You would still be on crappy on-board graphics but they will be significantly less crappy than old on board graphics.

Alternatively, you could drop back the CPU to a:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =CP-366-IN
saving £70 and stretch a bit (coming to £360) to get a £100 graphics card, such as
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =GX-269-AS
or :
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... ubcat=1576

Graphics card acceleration means you have to use Pathtracing Render Setting which is not so good for interiors or glass materials & really shows its benefits on scenes with complex geometry, so if your scenes have complex geometry, this might be the better route.
Additionaly, for your modelling in whatever package you use, you would get much better viewport performance.

[indigoagogo]

Cool thanks. I didn't think I'd be able to exchange all that lot but those prices are very good!