Most bang for my buck...

[Pi]

Hello thar, lately every game I have been playing I've been averaging like 10 FPS in, all the new MMORPG's or shooter games they just run so slow on my PC. We bought a package from dell like 2 years ago, haven't upgraded it since so I know it's not top of the line or hell even decent it seems now. I'm not real educated on hardware and stuff like that so I figured I would ask here.

Basically what I want to know is what would give me the most cost efficient improvement for my computer right now. The info I get when I right click on my computer and go to properties is :

Dell Dimension De051 Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.53GHz 2.53 GHz, 512 MB of RAM


What should I do to make games run faster on my PC? If you need to know any other stats tell me how to get them and I'll see what I can do.

Please and thanks

 

[snoblo]

What kind of graphics card do you have? I'm no expert on graphics cards, but those make a huge difference. And if you have some extra cash and an open RAM slot in your computer, you could get a 512mb or 1 gig ram stick to put in; it's nice to have at least 1 gig of ram nowadays.

 

[Pi]

Card name: Intel(R) 82865G Graphics Controller

Yea I'll prolly get some more RAM soon. I think that's my vid card? Straight from dxdiag

 

[AltF4]

Three things: (in order of importance)

1) For gaming, you're going to want a real Video Card. What you have is built-in support on the motherboard. It's not an actual card, just a little chip. It'll get you by, but it's not very good. You'll notice a huge improvement immediately if you get even a cheap, modest video card.

2) RAM. Games are requiring an increasing amount of RAM. 512 isn't what it used to be, I'd say that is the very minimum to be able to run games smoothly. What you really want is a Gig or more.

3) Hard Drive. Get something with not just a lot of space, but something fast. Games very commonly put cache files on your hard drive, or work directly off of it. Having a good SATA (not IDE) hard drive will improve this dramatically.

 

[Pi]

Thanks for your help, would you mind making any recommendations? As far as HD and the Video Card goes I'm not sure what to look for. Preferably something 'cheap' but decent, as you said. I heard newegg.com is good for prices?

 

[Agamemnon]

Just all depends what games you are playing, how demanding they are, and how much you are willing to spend.

If you are looking to play the latest and greatest titles an NVidia 8800GT graphics card would be a good bet. Make sure your board has a PCIe slot though. These can be found for right around $200. If this is too pricy, theres also the 8600GT and the Radeon HD 2600 XT. These can be found for under $100. Brand should not really make a difference here. If EVGA is among the cheapest I would reccomend them. If not XFX and BFG are also some good companies.

After upgrading video card next thing I would do is RAM. Need to find out if you use DDR RAM or DDR2. If DDR prices will be a bit more expensive than DDR2. You can find 2 gig of 800Mhz DDR2 RAM for under $50 easy. Not exactly sure what 2 gig of regular DDR memory would run you, but I'm sure it's around $100.

Unless hard drive is giving you some real problems, I don't think changing that out should be your main concern as of now. If you want to though, find out if your board has SATA ports and if so get a SATA hard drive 7200 RPM and atleast 8MB of cache. I got a Seagate Barracuda.

Newegg is good. They have great customer service from what I have experienced. Buy.com is also another good company. I have had problems with Tigerdirect, so I would try and stay away from there.

 

[Lawlb0t]

Why are you telling him to waste money? Buddy, save up and upgrade. Theres no point spending money even if you have a PCIe slot. The best card that you can get for AGP is the HD 3850, and it costs as much as a 8800gt. Save up and do a whole system overhaul. The 45 quads are coming out soon, so you can probably expect the q6600 to drop. DDR is a waste new, its only good if you can get it used from someone who doesn't know what it is worth.

That celeron is going to bottleneck that 8800gt/HD3850 like a mofo.

 

[KOdEx]

Why are you telling him to waste money? Buddy, save up and upgrade. Theres no point spending money even if you have a PCIe slot. The best card that you can get for AGP is the HD 3850, and it costs as much as a 8800gt. Save up and do a whole system overhaul. The 45 quads are coming out soon, so you can probably expect the q6600 to drop. DDR is a waste new, its only good if you can get it used from someone who doesn't know what it is worth.

That celeron is going to bottleneck that 8800gt/HD3850 like a mofo.

^ What he said... Also when you buy a processor NEVER get a Celeron/Turion for gaming, its pretty much a defective Pentium/Athlon. Don't get me wrong those processors a perfect for word documents, checking email, surfing the web and maybe listening to some music but other than that spend few extra bucks and get a Pentium it's worth it. Its also kinda standard at least 2GB of ram now.

Good Processor Names (They don't use Pentium Any More).

Core2 Duo
Core2 Quad
Athlon64x2
Phenom

Honestly don't get anything else for a processor listed here unless it says something like black edition, but those usually cost more than the rest of the computer put together.