Need advice on a gift for brother.......

[MrCraphead]

As everyone knows, the holiday season is coming, and I'm thinking about getting my brother (who's in the 8th grade) a computer component for Christmas. Currently, he has a Micron PC with:

PII 400
64 MB SDRAM
Intel Starfighter AGP 8MB vid card (???)
4 GB HD.

What i'm asking is, what should I get him? a Celeron? extra 64 MB of RAM? a cheap vid card, b/c anything else is better than that POS he has. : ) a new HD? These components could be used, he wouldn't really care, so that makes things a bit cheaper. Any advice? anyone? Thanks.

 

[IsOs]

If he's like other kids that keep on installing every software/games they could find, your most effective upgrade will be to increase harddrive space. If on the other hand, he is using a relatively few apps and games, changing video card or cpu would probably give him a noticeable change. Be aware that CPU change might require flashing of the BIOS.

Probably, the least expensive gift will be increasing the RAM.

Goodluck.

 

[toph99]

i'd say get him another hard drive, and then he can buy the ram

 

[MrCraphead]

Actually, now that I think about it, I think his HD MIGHT be enough for him. The only real games he plays a lot is Counter-Strike. : ) He says his FPS is horrible, so I guess would a CPU, RAM or vid card upgrade yield the most performance gain?

 

[toph99]

the video card would give him the best boost in FPS, the ram would be nice too(and it's so cheap now)

 

[MrCraphead]

Any other suggestions? anyone? I'm still torn between a Celeron 633, 64MB of RAM, and a GeForce2 MX.

 

[paulip88]

For counterstrike, you the two things that would help the most would be the following:

better video card
more RAM
high speed internet connection.

For the video card, anything like a TNT2 or GeForce would do. Voodoo2 or better would work fine too, seeing that he doesn't have the fastest CPU and he probably does not need to use ridiculous resolutions like 1600x1200.

4GB is probably adequate. A Celeron probably won't be much of an upgrade.

 

[CountyRescue]

get him a radeon and a cusl2 with a 700e

 

[MrCraphead]

paulip88, so you think a Celeron 633 won't deliever much performance gain from a PII 400? OpenGl, in Counterstrike relies a lot on CPU power though.

Countyrescue, if i could get those, i'd get them for myself, not my brother.

 

[CraigRT]

Celerons are pretty slow it wouldn't gain much i don't think in speed...
U could try getting a 133 EB PIII CPU in the lower speeds like a 600EB... that would work much nicer than a 633 Celeron.. depends on how much you can spend tho. and about the 64 MB of RAM. that would make the least significant impact for his system unless he is using win2k. windows 9x works pretty good with 64 MB of RAM. and also, a good video upgrade would help alot too, Counterstrike would be pretty bad on an 8MB video card, video card prices seem to be going down pretty good right now a Voodoo5's prices have been cut in half and a GF2 MX is also very cheap.. I'd say upgrade either CPU or video, 1st for me would be video.

 

[MrCraphead]

well, I don't think his motherboard would be compatible with a EB processor. I suppose you're right....a vid card would be a big boost in performance. thanks!

-Tim

 

[Supradude]

get the MX and the ram! will definitely help him get some FPS in CS...

 

[kponds]

the first thing I would buy for this system for improvement in gaming performance is the video card. Either the GEForce MX or the great deal compgeeks has on the refurb Annihilator PRO DDR at about $105 shipped. Secondly, I would throw another 64 Meg of RAM at it as well as RAM is so cheap right now.

Personally, I wouldn't go with the Celeron II unless I felt I could overclock it which may be difficult to impossible with that motherboard. I would probably wait a while for a PIII

 

[paulip88]

The thing you have to keep in mind with the Celeron is that its doesn't deliver the same kind of performance as the clock speed would suggest. Its small cache and FSB really limit what it can do. You might see some slight speed increase with the CPU upgrade, but probably not that much.

Better price/performance would be the video card. I imagine that you he has an Intel i740. That chips really sucks hard.

 

[Jgtdragon]

The bang for the buck to improve his performance is more ram since ram is so cheap now.

 

[Viperoni]

Get an MX + 64mb extra ram.
He'll be kissing your feet

 

[kinkyboy702]

I agree with viperoni. That vid card is not that great at games. The standard in ram is 128 mb nowadays, so you might want to consider upgrading that. But I think your best bet is a GeForce 2MX or if you want to shell out a little more, then get the GeForce 2 GTS w/ 32mb DDR ram. It's much better, but I don't know your price range. Cheapest way to go would be ram, though.

 

[MrCraphead]

Thanks everyone for your help! Seeing how his current video card is an Intel based card with 8 MB of RAM, I think the GeForce2 MX would be the ideal cheap solution. The RAM is also a very good idea, I might persuade my parents to get him the RAM......or maybe I should by the RAM and have my parents get him the more expensive stuff....... Thanks!!!

Oh, and another thing about the RAM. Do you think it would be wise to get him some cheap-o RAM like that Zeus brand or something? Do you really think his system would require Crucial or better quality? I've seen some 128MB PC-133 Zeus RAM for about $45.....very hard to pass up........Thanks.

-Tim

 

[MrCraphead]

wait, which one would be better? a Guillemot GeForce2 MX w/ 32 MB SDRAM, or the refurbished Creative GeForce Annihilator Pro (GeForce 256) w/ 32 MB DDR SGRAM? Thanks.

 

[Cerb]

The el cheapo RAM would likely work, but test it out in your own comp first (That is a hideously low price...worth the generic risk, IMHO). If possible, get that refurbished annihilator...otherwise a GF2MX. With the GF2 GTS 32MB DDR cards now down to around $150...they look nice. For the CPU, a PIII 600 or 700 (or 733...) would give a big performance boost. The celry would definitely not be doing too much good.

 

[paulip88]

For RAM, I would think that generic PC133 should do, since his comp is running at a 100MHz FSB and thus would only require PC100 RAM.

As for the video, I'm would go for the refurb, if it was substantially cheaper. It should be a significant improvement over the Intel card, and I'm not really sure if a faster card would get much of a performance boost, seeing that the CPU isn't *that* fast.