advice on upgrading

[fender87]

Hey i am planning upgrading my old system to keep it going for a few more years, heres what i have planned to buy. Im keeping it to a budget below 500 but would still like to be able to play games on it.
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mobo - MSI P35 Neo2-FR Intel P35cpu - intel 2 quadcore 6600 2.4ghz
ram - Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5
graphics - Asus Geforce En8800gt 512mb
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Im upgrading from a 5 year old system pent 4 3ghz ht, with ddr ram 1gb geforce6800 gtand still using a pata hard drive. running XP prof. Gaming is really starting to lag now with company of heros running at 11fps and my card heats up to 85c

I didnt build this machine so installing upgrades will be a steep learning curve, some questions i have.

1. does this seem like a reasonable upgrade to last a me couple more years?
2. will my old hard drive hold me back?
3. installing new hardware does it require a reformat?
4. I would like my system to be able to play company of heroes smoothly, and the upcoming starcraft 2, warhammer online can u see that happening?

if anyones able to offer any advice it will be a great help.

Many thanks in advance.

[Darthtanion]

1- It should last, but what power supply are you using now? If it is too low in power, you will either not be able to boot your new build or you will suffer from stability problems. Also, does your old board use a 20-pin primary connector? Odds are good that your new board doesn't.

2- It will slow down your performance some but as long as it is one of the 7200RPM models, it shouldn't be too drastic. If it is one of the really old ones that has a spindle speed of 5400RPM, I would highly recommend an upgrade to a nice SATA drive.

3- Installing new hardware doesn't always mean a reinstall of Windows, but it is ALWAYS a good idea to reformat the drive and reinstall when you replace the motherboard with another that uses a different chipset, so yes, I would anticipate having to reinstall Windows.

4- This system should be playable for the games you are looking at, and the mainboard and processor are strong enough that if it starts to lag too much with future games you can just upgrade the graphics and be back in business.

Good luck!

[fender87]

thx for the advice :)