Help upgrading HP Pavilion 8765C

[InbatElendil]

I have a HP Pavilion 8765C (details here)
which I have been looking into upgrading both RAM and the graphics card. The HP site should be accurate for my specifications except that I have 384MB of SDRAM (I had another 256MB added professionally several years ago) and a Geforce 4 MX-440 (added at the same time as the RAM) and these have been sufficient for my gaming/office needs but lately I feel that they're not just enough.

I'm having some difficulty in determining what cards and RAM upgrades are compatible with my PC. I've spent considerable time over the past few days browsing newegg.com and other sites and am considering the Visiontek Radeon 9600XT (here)
or the Visiontek Radeon 9600 (here)
As both appear to be compatible with my motherboard, which only supports AGP2x,if I'm not mistaken. Prior to this I'd been considering the Sapphire Radeon X700 (here)
But this doesn't seem to be compatible. Could someone clarify which of these cards would work best (or at all) for me? Or if there's one that's better within the $80-$150 price range?

As for the RAM I'm having even more difficulty. According to the site I had earlier for my computer I have only two RAM slots for a maximum of 512MB and yet most RAM upgrade help sites (like Crucial.com's) tell me that the HP Pavilion 8765C has three slots for a total of 768MB. I've looked in my BIOS and have Slot 0 reading as ?not installed? but am unsure if this means that there is no slot 0 or that there is merely nothing currently on it. Slot 1 has the 256MB card while Slot 2 has the original 128MB card that came with the computer. If it matters I'd like to spend no more than $60 on the RAM.

I greatly appreciate any help with my situation and realize that ideally I'd just buy a whole new computer as this one is rather dated however that isn't within my price range as of now. Thank you and I'll post any more information reqeusted on my computer if that would be of service.

 

[unfalliblekrutch]

i'm not sure the 9600s will work, since AFAIK, they're agp8x cards, which have a different voltage than 2x. same for the x700. As far as ram goes, you need sdr ram, which is getting rare to find. I've never seen a motherboard with 3 slots for ram, it's either 2 or 4. but i could be wrong on that. Chances are, you have 2 slots. I had an HP slightly older than yours that recently broke down, and it had 2 slots.

 

[InbatElendil]

Hmm,the Visiontek websites has this for the 9600XT:
System Requirements
? Intel¨ Pentium¨ 4/III/II/Celeronª, AMD¨ Duron/Athlon¨/Athlon XP¨ or compatible with AGP 2X (3.3v), 4X (1.5V), 8X (0.8v) or Universal AGP 3.0 bus configuration (2X/4X/8X).
? Windows 98â ME, 2000, XP
? 128MB of system memory
? Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
? DVD playback requires DVD drive
? 300 Watt power supply or greater recommended

The 9600 base merely says that AGP2x or better is "highly recommended"
Wouldn't this indicate that they would work with my board (trying to remain hopeful here)?

 

[cheesehead]

I have some SDRAM for sale, if you're interested.
Neither of those will work. AGP2x-4x and AGP 4x-8x use different connectors, and different voltages. An older-model GEforce4 TI might be a good bet.
Also, with a T-bird, you won't notice much of a performance improvement. That processor's just too slow to run modern games. You're better off just replacing the entire machine, possibly retaining the HDD and optical drives.