[rlt]

I have a Dell Deminsion 4300 with a Pentium 4 1.7ghz I have 2 hard drives a 40gb and 120gb. 256mb sd ram. A 64mb nvidia geforce2mx video card. 170 watt power supply. I want to be able to play the newer games. Should I buy another 256mb stick of ram and a new agp video card and another power supply. Or just build a whole new system. My current system will be 6 years old in January.

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At this point you would be best off just buying a new system. The amount you would have to spend to upgrade so that the new games such as Oblivion and FEAR would be enjoyable would be prohibitive. You would probably need to upgrade to 1GB of RAM. Also, your power supply might not be powerful enough to run the video card you would need, so you would have to upgrade your PSU. AGP is a dying technology so the cards available are limited and overpriced.

[kidnova]

At this point you would be best off just buying a new system. The amount you would have to spend to upgrade so that the new games such as Oblivion and FEAR would be enjoyable would be prohibitive. You would probably need to upgrade to 1GB of RAM. Also, your power supply might not be powerful enough to run the video card you would need, so you would have to upgrade your PSU. AGP is a dying technology so the cards available are limited and overpriced.

[jrm20]

I would go for getting a new system since that is one of your options.

There is no use upgrading that pc, you would be better off getting a new system like kidnova said. With the ammount of money you put into it just a little bit more and you could have a new system.

[rlt]

Here is my parts list let me know what you think.

Case
Cooler Master Centurion http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811119068

Video Card
Bio Star Geforce 7600GS 512mb gddr2 pci express x16 http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814141032

Power Supply
Coolmax 500w active pfc dual 12v rails http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817159040

Memory
pqi turbo 1gb ddr2 667 http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820141210

Motherboard
ECS NFORCE570 SLI ATX http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813135026

Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13ghz http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819115004

Let me know if I made any mistakes I am pretty sure everything is compatible. I have a hard drive and dvd burner already so I dont need that. Also on the vid card would there be a big difference in performance between a 256mb with ddr3 and the 512mb card with ddr2 i have listed.

[jrm20]

Here is my parts list let me know what you think.

Case
Cooler Master Centurion http://www.newegg.co...N82E16811119068

Video Card
Bio Star Geforce 7600GS 512mb gddr2 pci express x16 http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814141032

Power Supply
Coolmax 500w active pfc dual 12v rails http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817159040

Memory
pqi turbo 1gb ddr2 667 http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820141210

Motherboard
ECS NFORCE570 SLI ATX http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813135026

Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13ghz http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819115004

Let me know if I made any mistakes I am pretty sure everything is compatible. I have a hard drive and dvd burner already so I dont need that. Also on the vid card would there be a big difference in performance between a 256mb with ddr3 and the 512mb card with ddr2 i have listed.

I would look into getting a better quality motherboard.. That ECS motherboard doesnt look that great and the reviews are horrible. Iv never liked ECS after I built a pc with one many years ago and they arent that great. If you shop around you can find a better quality brand mobo for the same price as the ecs.

Gigabyte has a great motherboard for $90.99 and it is alot higher quality board than ecs is. It has all the bells and whistles.

The only thing is that the gigabyte conroe board only has one ide channel for up to 2 ide devices. There is nothing wrong with only 1 ide channel.
Ide is older and is slowly getting phased out anyway. It has 4 serial ata ports for sata devices on any future harddrive upgrades.


http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813128015

Edited by jrm20, 15 September 2006 - 07:56 PM.

[jrm20]

Let me know if I made any mistakes I am pretty sure everything is compatible. I have a hard drive and dvd burner already so I dont need that. Also on the vid card would there be a big difference in performance between a 256mb with ddr3 and the 512mb card with ddr2 i have listed.

GDDR3 on a video card is much faster than GDDR2. I would change that card also if you have the money that is.

Edited by jrm20, 15 September 2006 - 07:56 PM.

[rlt]

Ok thanks for taking a look I will check out the motherboard. What about the video card is there a big difference in performance in a 256mb with ddr3 and a 512 with ddr2.

[jrm20]

you just have to look around alittle bit.

I found the best deal on a 7600gt which is faster than any 7600gs. The GS is Slower than a GT. Even though this 7600GT has 256MB ram it is still faster than the 7600GS.

Look at the Core Clock and Memory Clock speeds.

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814150186

That would be the card to get.

[rlt]

Ok thanks alot I see what you mean about the clock speed.