Upgrading Quandry..... MB, VC, Ram??

[bpatters69]

Hello All,

This is my first post in the forum. So far so good. This forum looks really great with a lot of helpful information. Now for my question.

I own a Dell Dimension 8100. The specs are P4, 1.3Ghz, 256MB Ram and a NVIDIA 32MB Geoforce Card. I am starting to get into some of the higher end games such as Medal of Honors and others. Needless to say, the rendering on the graphics is pretty horrible and in some cases the graphics come to a complete stop.

My options in no particular order are:

1. Upgrade my Video Card to a 128MB version
2. Upgrade my CPU. Dell says I can upgrade to a P4 2.0 Ghz
3. Increase RAM
4. Play simpler games

Option 4 is out. The best of the three in my mind is probably #1. I just don't think a P4, 2.0Ghz upgrade is really worth it.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Oh, yeah. I am running XP Pro.

 

[Sonic587]

Sadly, everything in there is a bottleneck. This makes it a tough choice. How much are you thinking of spending?

 

[bigboxes]

Welcome to AT forums bro!

If I were you I would not upgrade your Dell. As Sonic587 said, your whole system is pretty much a bottleneck. I'm not much of a gamer, but I would think that you should at least have a 2Ghz cpu, 512k ram, & one of the newer vid cards. Take some time, read AT and learn how to build your own pc, and save your nickels!

 

[Boogak]

What's your budget? Honestly, it would be best to just start over and build a new system. Your P4 is probably the Williamette core (slow with 256k cache) and your memory is probably either the ridiculously expensive RDRAM or the obsolete PC133 SDRAM variety.

But if you are on a really tight budget, definitely go with option #1 if you want to just get better gaming performance. Don't even bother with option #2 or #3, at that point it's better off just getting a new PC.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Like everyone said, pretty much everything you have is slow and not upgradeable. If you can't spend much money then a better video card is your only choice, but be careful - a "128 MB RAM" video card can still be horribly slow, like the nvidia fx5200.

A 9600 Pro or XT would help your gaming a little bit, but you really are probably better off waiting until you can spend at least $700-1,000 for a complete new system (see the second thread in this forum for suggestions).

 

[bpatters69]

Thanks all. I kind of figured that upgrading my video card was the only option that made sense. Other than games, the PC is fine for what wifey and I do with it. Gaming is cool but there are other ways I could spend my time.

Would Over Clocking be an option worth pursuing?

On another note, any one in the market for Medal of Honor and Doom 3? Just kidding, I will unload these two on eBay.

Thanks again. Bill