[KINNEY1978]

I am looking to upgrade a Dell Optiplex GX260 (Tower) so that it can support "Left 4 Dead" and other such games.

The current specs are:

OS: XP Home Edition Service Pack 2

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz ("Can I run this" only reads 2.79GHz)

FSB: 533MHz Cache 512KB

RAM: 1.0 GB

Video: Onboard Optiplex?

Power Supply: 300watts

According to "Can I Run This" when inquiring about "Left 4 Dead" it says that my CPU and Video Card do not meet minimum requirements which are:

CPU: 3.0 GHz P4, Dual Core 2.0 or AMD64X2 (or higher)
Video: Direct X9 compatible video card. Video card must be 128MB or more and should be DirectX 9-compatible with support for pixel shader 2.0 (ATI 9600 or higher. Or, NVIDIA 6600 or higher).

I obviously know that I need to make adjustments and/or purchase some upgraded hardware, but I would appreciate your suggestions and feedback on what to do to make the best changes for the least amount of money. Please be specific with advice (i.e. overclocking?, upgrade part specific, ect.)

Thank you in advance for your help. Please let me know if you need any more information.

Thanks.

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Dell is rather secrative about what their motherboadrs will support.
If your looking for specific info you may want to look in the games forum as,
here is anothers experiance with dell, just like yours.
http://www.geekstogo...de-t100257.html

[isimaster]

Dell is rather secrative about what their motherboadrs will support.
If your looking for specific info you may want to look in the games forum as,
here is anothers experiance with dell, just like yours.
http://www.geekstogo...de-t100257.html

[KINNEY1978]

I still have not been able to find an answer. Has anyone else actually upgraded their Dell Optiplex GX260? If so, which CPU and Video Card did you upgrade to? Thanks for your help!

[KINNEY1978]

I have more info about the computer.

My questions are: What is the best CPU that I can put in?
What is the best Video Card that I can put in?

Currently it has:

CPU
Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 478pin 280GHz 533FSB

Motherboard
Dell 02X378 Chipset: Intel i845G

Memory
DDR 1024 MBytes

[DarK_DemoN]

I have upgraded my Dell Optiplex GX260 to an Intel Pentium 4 (800MHz) and installed a Sparkle 8400GS MB 64-bit DDR2 DVI PCI-Express 2.0 video card to give me support for running running Windows 7 that i will upgrade to in about an hour. (according to the Dell forums this video card is required to get the resolution that Win 7 runs correctly outputted through VGA (hope it works))

Hope this helped!!

[Old PC]

Here’s what I’ve done to my mini-tower Dell OptiPlex GX260, which I consider to be the "almost" ultimate P4 gaming machine:

a) Upgraded the CPU to a Northwood 3.06 Ghz (cost: $12.00, ebay).
b) Installed a Katana III (scktn-3000) cpu cooler, along with a “standard” socket 478 bracket.
c) Relocated the stock cpu fan on the rear wall so that it sucks air out of the case.
d) Installed 2 Gb of single-channel RAM (G.Skill F1-3200PHU1-1GBNS).
e) Installed a 500W PC Power & Cooling Silencer (Dell compatible) power supply.
f) And the video card is a Sapphire HD3850 AGP. With a 256 bit memory bus, this IS the bestest and fastest AGP card for your system.
g) And to cool down the video card, I’ve installed an Accelero TwinTurbo Pro GPU cooler. During the FurMark tests, the GPU’s temp never rises above 55 C.

I’m running XP sp3, and it’ll run 97% of the games currently out there, according to Can You Run It.

It may not run at the highest quality video settings for some of the higher end games (like Crysis), but it certainly gets the job done.

As for "Left 4 Dead", my setup passes (the "bar" is about a third of the way past minimum: it would like to see a dual CPU, but so what... it'll still play it fine).

There’s still quite a bit of life left in the old girl yet