[Kayne Bishop]

Thanx in advance for reading this

5 years ago I bought what I thought was a top of the line Dell Dimension 4600. I have had some problems, and while it was never worth the almost $2500 I paid for it, It has served me well until now.

The only real upgrades I ever made to the system hardware was to [bleep] a CDr Drive, and a second HD to my configuration. The hard Drives went up in size and now I have 4 ATA hard drives, a 320 gig an 80 gig, and 2 40 gigs. - (the 40 gig drives are in a usb external enclosure) I have wanted to upgrade things like my Pentuim 4 chip (2.4 GHz) to a faster one (3.2 GHz) and my Ram from a total of 512 MB to 2 GB. How ever I found out today that In order to play my new PC Game I need pixel shader v1.1? (at least) my Video card is a I need GeForce4 MX 440 and I am beginning to feel that all hope is lost.

There is no way That I can afford a New computer and While I can buy slightly newer systems from various sites like pricewatcher, or computer-show and the like, I have yet to find one that has the same number of usb ports my current one has (8) and is the right shape and size to fit the only space I have for it. Also,If I do, I may have to get rid of my ATA/IDE components since Everything is SATA now.

That would be a waste of money. Money that I don't have. As much as I would like a brand new flashy gaming PC that could handel my office stuff, as well as my incessant love of Photoshop, Video, and music making, I can't afford it. I can't afford to upgrade to Vista and I certainly can't afford to but upgrades to all my software. Aslo I truly Like XP and am content to stay where I am.

The question is , can I ?

Considering the upgrades needed. and my crap budget, does anyone have an Idea as to what I should do, or what I can do under these circumstances. In a perfect world I would want to keep the four dives I have now. There is a lot of info stored on them.

Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

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I have some answers for you, but I need to know one very important thing - is your computer the 4600 or the 4600C? The 4600C is the slim one that looks like this.

[The Admiral]

I have some answers for you, but I need to know one very important thing - is your computer the 4600 or the 4600C? The 4600C is the slim one that looks like this.

[Kayne Bishop]

No Sir, It is just a plain 4600 with a kinda chunky case as it was purchased in late 2003. I humbly await you opinion. hank you

[The Admiral]

If you want to keep your computer, which I totally understand, here are some options you have for your video card. Since it is an older computer, the interface has to be AGP. Although it may seem pricey, I would highly recommend the Radeon X1300, it has a lot of power for an AGP card, and well worth its price at 100 USD.

That upgrade, plus some super-cheap RAM, like this set from Crucial will give you the umph that you need to play your game and handle multimedia. I would hold on the processor upgrade, what you have should be sufficient since the RAM is going to speed things up and the graphics card will make things look a whole lot better.

Edited by The Admiral, 09 December 2008 - 12:20 PM.

[Kayne Bishop]

That actually sounds Do-able I was checking out Price watcher, and I saw a 3.2 GHz Intel chip for like 7 bucks and I was a bit wary of it, even though the company says its the real thing.

So if i don't need to worry about replacing that i guess i am fine. my only question now is, would it be safe to delete the old nvidia drivers? I assume I can't just add the new video card to the old one, besides, I don' think there is that much room.

Thank you for you suggestions

[The Admiral]

What you're actually going to do is pop open the case, take out the old card, and put the new one in. Windows won't be able to find the right drivers, so it will use its own. Then you'll grab the right drivers from ATI's website or a CD that comes with the new card, and install them. Reboot, and you should be good to go!

[Kayne Bishop]

That sounds easy. Thanx a lot .

[The Admiral]

You're welcome! Good luck, and feel free to come back if you need any more help!

[pearl-28]

This topic title couldn't be worded better. I have the exact same exact issues, with a different configuration of 4600, bought at about the same time!

I upgraded the following:
Now I have 1.5 meg RAM
New video card that supports two monitors (Nvidia GEForce )
External hard drive

I've run out of disk space on the original 40 gig drive.
The cd writers and readers are pathetic.
I don't have enough USB ports, and one never worked anyway
I'd like a webcam

Can this PC be saved? What would you recommend?

I'm not a gamer, but I'm a heavy user of some online databases and business applications. I'm running XP Pro.

Thanks, and let me know if I should have started a new topic.

[The Admiral]

Hi pearl-28, and welcome to Geeks to Go!

We'd like for you to go ahead and create a new topic in this System Upgrading forums. Posting in someone else's can confuse the original poster, you, and our helpers. Me and the other hardware staff will be happy to talk to you about upgrading your system, but it would be best in another thread.

Thanks!