I think it's time to Upgrade the PC

[haws bah gawd 0]

Well, I've had my PC for a little over 4 years, and I figure now is the time to start looking into a few small upgrades. The main thing I want to upgrade is my video card, though with the age of my motherboard, I am a little concerned with just how much of an upgrade I will be able to get.

 

I installed a trial version of EVEREST, and below is some information on my Motherboard

 

Motherboard:

CPU Type Intel Pentium 4 560J, 3600 MHz (18 x 200)

Motherboard Name Dell Dimension XPS

Motherboard Chipset Intel Alderwood i925XE

System Memory [ TRIAL VERSION ]

DIMM1: Samsung M3 78T2953BG0-CD5 1 GB DDR2-533 DDR2 SDRAM (5-4-4-11 @ 266 MHz) (4-4-4-11 @ 266 MHz) (3-3-3-8 @ 200 MHz)

DIMM3: Samsung M3 78T2953BG0-CD5 [ TRIAL VERSION ]

BIOS Type Phoenix (10/11/04)

Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)

Communication Port HUAWEI Mobile Connect - 3G Application Interface (COM5)

Communication Port HUAWEI Mobile Connect - 3G PC UI Interface (COM6)

Communication Port ECP Printer Port (LPT1)

 

This is some information on the Video card I have

Display:

Video Adapter RADEON X800 XT Secondary (256 MB)

Video Adapter RADEON X800 XT (256 MB)

3D Accelerator ATI Radeon X800 XT PCI-E (R423)

Monitor Dell E172FP [17" LCD] (M160944D0GFS)

 

I don't know if this information is enough to go on, but if it isn't, I will try to provide more. I figure I probably won't have some graphical powerhouse like Crysis running anytime soon, but any information on a more recent video card (if you think one is even needed) would be great. Thanks in advance!

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

you're probably not gonna be able to do much of a cpu upgrade because it's a dell. they are notoriously stingy with their bios, so it's not gonna recognize it if you toss a core 2 duo in there or something. a gpu is much more likely to be a source for an upgrade, and you can probably upgrade that pretty easily. what's your budget?

 

you might have to upgrade your power supply too, depending on what kind of gpu you get.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

actually, meh, judging by the size of your monitor and inability to upgrade your cpu, go for something like:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814121289

 

or

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814130377

 

i own the latter card. i have it in an old ass AMD64 3800+ build with a 1920x1200 monitor, and it runs most games at pretty high settings at native resolution and i have no complaints. great card. the ati model is supposedly very good as well. either one would do you well. most games are gpu intensive anyways, so i wouldn't worry too much about the cpu, but you still won't be able to play some games (the new gta iv, for one)

[haws bah gawd 0]

Thanks for the reply. I think I'm going to give the second one a try. I'll let you know how it works out. I didn't know Dell's were to stingy with their BIOS. It reminds me of an old Packard-Bell computer that I had in the early 90's that you could only upgrade with Packard-Bell parts. Lame.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

you can upgrade the gpu easily, just not the cpu. the problem is basically that it won't be able to recognize the architecture. it's the same as if you'd yet an old intel board and try to throw a penryn core 2 duo in it; it won't read it right. at best, it'll clock it down to the last gen architecture that board supports and at worst, you won't boot at all.

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

System Memory [ TRIAL VERSION ]

 

 

 

Well there's your problem...

 

 

 

 

I got nothin else.

[haws bah gawd 0]

^^^

 

Hah, the program I was using to get those stats was a trial version, so some of the stuff was labeled "Trial Version".

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

Haha

 

I figured that, but I don't get to use "Well there's your problem" as much as I'd like to.

[muzz 0]

What sort of things were you hoping to run?

 

[haws bah gawd 0]

My computer seems to have issues running FEAR (admittedly the last PC game I bought, and Crysis looks like a pipe dream and nothing more) in high res, so I just wanted to beef up the video card and add a stick of RAM.