Chips' Fun House ~ View topic

I have a pile of crap $ 700.00 last year's model, i think from walmart...(ha ha) computer. It has a AMD 3000, 512 ram, blah blah. It was free so dont tease to hard. I have added geforce2 4800 ti, (got for free...) and some sound blaster 64 card, or some shixnit. Ohhh, but i have a sick ass 26" View Sonic wide panal, that i bought off my crack head neighbor for 40.00....HA HA SCORE! ! ! ! ! ! Is it worth upgrading my crap pc with a better grafix card. What is a good AGP graffix card? Is my proccesor a pile of poopy or what? I have some money any could buy a new pc..... but would rather build a new one than buy. Is this as good as it gets? help me please?

Forum Soldier Joined: 07 Jul 2005 Posts: 353

Get a gig of ram, seriously anything less today is just silly. I would upgrade that before anything else. Next, get a better graphics card. Unfortunatly you're stuck with AGP, but go for a 256-512mb graphics card, depending on the amount you're willing to spend.

Other than that I dont really know what you would upgrade. If you're gonna get a new MoBo you might as well just buy a whole new computer. But if you do, make sure it has PCI-E since most of the new graphics cards coming out are formatted to that, and PCI-E is far superior anyway.

Good luck.

Forum Scout Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Posts: 86 Location: Texas

You might consider dropping $50 on a 256Kb GeForce or Radeon (ATI) for your current box. Then save your pennies and spend some time at newegg.com figuring out what to buy to do a major upgrade down the road a bit. If you reuse the case, power supply, disk, CD/DVD, montior, etc. you just need PCI-E mobo, processor, 1Gb RAM, and a PCI-E video card. Figure $400 and up. Like they say, speed costs, how fast do you really need to go??? (If you buy based on how fast you WANT to go, be prepared to empty the bank account. Plus then you need a better case and power supply anyway.)

I have a few hundred dollars for a graffix card, sound and ram. I have a sick tower...and all drives. I would need a processor and a new board.....whats that gonna cost me? I dont need th top of the line. Just desent. What out there? How much?

Well, you could just have sent an order to me
I would have happly thrown together a computer, and it would have been better then anything that come form Wal-mart.

but keep the Monitor, and get someone to replace your mobo (like yourstruly)
AGP has already been dumped. The 7600GS is the latest model for AGP. and the 8Series cards are already out for PCI-E.

A good processor depends on what socket you want
939 is old, no longer in production, but it'll last for a while, and it's cheap
754 is Intel's current board. It's a tough bast to put together, but intel has the world's best CPU so far.
AM2 is AMD's newest combo, combineing AMD and DDR2. It's new, and will last a few years, but it's preformance isn't that much of an upgrade.
For the 939- tons of the most powerful are hecka cheap The FX-60 is only a few hundred (I reccomend an FX model, or a 3700+, it's only 90 bucks now)
745 is all over the board, since it's still in production (???)
AM2 is also all over the place. (4200+)

But as for Vid-card, I'm not sure what your meaning of "decent" is.
Maybe a 7600GT would suffice for bare minimum for today's games.
7900GT is what I have. Plays FEAR and other games to the max, fine.
ATi's X1950 is a cool card, and comes with an equal price for the 7950, and better in performance.
The 7950 GX2 is a dual card config in one actuall card. A good deal for 2 GPU's.
The 7900GTX is pretty good, especially for SLi.
Tons of stuff out there.

The price for alll this is crazy, and it all comes down to what you choose.
I'd say anywhere from $500-$1200.
I'll personally help you choose your config, I know loads about this, Created my own compy myself.
So if you want some help, PM me.

PS Your Power Supply may need a boost too, possibly along with your case. We need to cram everything in there.