[watto23]

hey people,

I'm looking into a few upgrades for my computer and would appreciate some advice.

I recently upgraded the RAM in my dell dimension 8400 to 4GB with 4 x 1GB, DDR2-PC2-5300 RAM sticks. However, I have found out my computer is actually only utilising 3.25GB of RAM because I am using Windows XP 32 bit.

I have a copy of Windows 7 and would like to install the 64 bit version so I can get the most out of my RAM and it gives me an excuse to upgrade my processor to one that runs a bit faster and can deal with 64bit.

I believe I need to get a processor that is compatible with my mobo but im not sure which one I have or what processors are compatible with it. Here is the specs from my motherboard:

Board: Dell Inc. 0U7077
Serial Number: ..CN4811151L0210.
Bus Clock: 800 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Inc. A05 03/16/2005

If anyone can help I would really appreciate it.

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A seven year old machine is only just about borderline for 64-bit processor support, though not totally unheard of.

Upgrading to 64-bit in order to use an extra 0.75Gb of RAM seems a bit extreme. You should also verify whether all of your hardware works under a) Windows 7 at all, and b) in a 64-bit environment, because that machine was brand new in 2004 and a lot of legacy hardware does not work under 64-bit anything. If none of your hardware will work under 7, it's realistically a pointless upgrade.

[Neil Jones]

A seven year old machine is only just about borderline for 64-bit processor support, though not totally unheard of.

Upgrading to 64-bit in order to use an extra 0.75Gb of RAM seems a bit extreme. You should also verify whether all of your hardware works under a) Windows 7 at all, and b) in a 64-bit environment, because that machine was brand new in 2004 and a lot of legacy hardware does not work under 64-bit anything. If none of your hardware will work under 7, it's realistically a pointless upgrade.

[watto23]

Well thanks for getting back to me. Yeah I have been doing a bit of searching on forums and they all seem to say its best to just get a new computer or build one from scratch. I don't suppose you might be able to help me in that respect?

I want to use it to play games like 'football manager' which requires a good CPU as it has a large database, the graphics card is not as much of an issue though. Should I decide what system I should get based around a specific processor?