Should I upgrade?

[RoyalBishop]

Heres My PC

Mobo.DFI ultra-d Lanparty nf4
Cpu.Amd 64 3700
Ram.Ocz 2x512mb pc4200
Vid.6800gt 256mb
Psu.Ocz Modstream 520w
Hard.WD 74g Raptor
Case.Asus Vento 3600

I was thinking about giving this pc to my Brother so he can upgrade from his 10 year old dell. I use Adobe CS2 mainly and I do play alot of fps games so I believe this pc is not able to keep up with what I would and want to do later in the year. So the question is should I upgrade my pc or just give it to my Brother and build a new system?

 

[PorscheMaD911]

What games specifically can't you run well that you would like to?

Try popping a new video card in and see if that gets the fps / detail level to where you want. You're laughing with PCI-E, so any video card upgrade you do is easily transported if you decide to go for a full build down the line. I wouldn't bother buying more RAM for your platform though.

 

[imported_Tick]

I would wait till Vista comes out, and until DX10 is more generally available. Wait 3 months, that should be the perfect time to upgrade.

 

[RoyalBishop]

I can play mostly any game out there, I just have to be on low or medium settings. I did borrow a friends 7600gt and tried dark messiah, there was about a 20 fps increase.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you have a PCI-E slot, you could just spend $200-300 on a video card instead of $1,000-1,200 on a full PC.

But if you want to give your brother a PC, then maybe a full system is the right choice.

A bad choice would be trying to build a cheap new system that isn't much faster than what you have now. A core 2 e6300 and 7600gt would be only a small step up that will have you back on low-medium settings again next year.