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Memory or video card upgrade

N

newz

Junior Member
I am looking for some advise about upgrading a 1.9 meg Pentium 4 desktop computer. It is actually my nephews 3 year old dell. He likes video games and would like to get better perfomance. He only has 256 meg of memory and a gforce 2 card. He plays world of warcraft and other games like that. Considering the cpu is no long top drawer....which upgrade would help the most.... more memory (how much?) or a newer video card? Which card? I am worried a new video card might be too much for the puny 250 watt power supplies that dell typically uses.

Will the older cpu negate any major improvements.

 
memory, 256 is not enough for anything now adays.

the system is pretty dated, idon't know how much power WOC needs but i would try another stick of 256, should help performance somewhat.

 
Both! Corsair XMS Extra Low Latency and a ATI X800XT Platinum Edition 🙂

Should be able to play games with.
 
roguerower ur nutz he is tryin to choose not how much can he blow on 2 items when you can build a newer sys for the price of those parts.



Will G.

PS you could get 256mb and a bit better card and win both ways...
 
Just seeing if he was crazy enough to do it. I would purchase another 256 stick and then look at maybe a ATI 9600, if you can afford it. If not search ATOT for a used vid card. I've seen some crazy prices. I bought my X800 Pro for $320 off of here, $80 below MSRP. 🙂
 
Do both unless you're really tight on money. Go up to at least 512MB ($25-30 for 256MB). Upgrade to at least a GF4 Ti4200 (can find used for less than $70). Or maybe a 5700LE ($75 new at newegg). I have a buddy who sometimes plays WoW on two different machines and his lower end box is a P4 2Ghz with a Ti4200 (not sure of the memory (512MB or 1GB). That's not too far off your nephew's system. Does your nephew's Dell even have an AGP slot? If not, there's a $89 5700LE PCI card which is about the best you can do in PCI these days (unless you can find a PCI Radeon 8500/9100 used).
 
Once again some great suggestions. I agree with ShellGuy that we shouldn't sink too much money in this aging computer. Within a year he will probably buy a new system. The dell box does have an agp slot so I will look at an ati 9600 or ti4200. Last night we ordered a stick of memory from crucial. I am sure that alone will make a modest improvement.
 
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