OT: Technology and Geek Stuff Thread

[Topweasel]

Hey Coop, I have an older Dell computer(about 5 years) that my son uses. He would like to upgrade the video driver to be able to play games better. We already added RAM. If I list the specs can you give me some advice on what to buy to make this thing work better for him? If so, what info do you need.

Most important question is what kind of expansion slots it has. That is right around the death of AGP. This means you could be dealing with needing a AGP video card, a PCIe 16x video card, or if its using integrated video, it might force you to use a PCI video card. If you can PM me or Coop the service tag for the machine we could probably give you a better Idea of what you need.

[CGVT]

Most important question is what kind of expansion slots it has. That is right around the death of AGP. This means you could be dealing with needing a AGP video card, a PCIe 16x video card, or if its using integrated video, it might force you to use a PCI video card. If you can PM me or Coop the service tag for the machine we could probably give you a better Idea of what you need.

Ha! you are speaking a foreign language. I will send you the service tag after I get home today(what is it)

I think the current driver is an NVIDIA 5200

[Topweasel]

Ha! you are speaking a foreign language. I will send you the service tag after I get home today(what is it)

I think the current driver is an NVIDIA 5200

The service tag is a 6-7 Alpha numeric code labeled as such on the Dell Manufacturing sticker. On A desktop its usually on the side or at the top. It will also have a 10 digit code called the Express Service tag but that is mostly useless. Some Bios's have it listed in the menu. The 5200 is a bit telling. My guess is AGP but there was a few 5k series cards that were made as PCIe.

[Coop]

CG - TopWeasel answered it well. The AGP graphics technology is now considered legacy as it's been replaced by pci express. What OS are you running and please get me the service tag...

[CGVT]

XP. I'll get the tag when I get home today. Does what you are saying mean that it may not be worth it to try to upgrade?

[Coop]

XP runs pretty lean - if it's running slow in a normal environment (no viruses, malware, or bloatware hogging ram/cpu) I don't think you'll see much of a performance gain from upgrading the OS to 7.

Gaming generally requires fast hardware - performance is a combination of fast processor, RAM, Video card, and hard drive(s).

[CGVT]

I didn't plan on upgrading the OS, just wanted to speed it up a bit so he could play some games that don't run well on it now. Nothing really elaborate, though. We added some RAM and that helped, thought maybe a new video card would make some difference too. Obviously I don't know much about this stuff, but I imagine there is only so much we would be able to do and then it may not be cost effective to do anything at all. PCs seem to be pretty cheap these days...

[CGVT]

Coop, TW,

The service tag # is 41M9H51

I added 2 gigs of RAM a couple of months ago.

[Coop]

Here's what I see from stock configuration:

Dell Dimension 4600
Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz Processor
512 MB Ram
8x DVDRW
16x DVD-Rom (2nd optical drive?)
R350 128 MB Graphics Card
160 GB 7200 RPM Hard drive

Looks like the 4600 supports up to 4 GB of Ram. 2 GB is adequate for most XP systems, however if you're planning on keeping it, and especially because he's gaming on it, I'd max it out. It has four slots on the motherboard, meaning optimally you want (4) x 1 GB sticks of memory. You mentioned upgrading the memory to 2 GB..what quantities of RAM did you add?

Video card is an ATI Radeon 9800 Graphics card with 128 MB of RAM. You could purchase an upgraded video card - keep in mind though that Windows XP supports a maximum of 4 GB of RAM - video memory. For example, if you max the RAM at 4 GB of system RAM and you have a graphics card with 512 MB of video RAM, XP will only use 3.5 GB of that 4 GB installed.

You'll have to decide what you'd like to upgrade based on cost.

New Egg has good pricing, here's a link for video cards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%201069609639&name=AGP%204X%2f8X

I did not look up memory pricing - but it supports DDR PC 3200

Hope that helps...

[Topweasel]

The original card purchased with the machine appears to be a Radeon 9800 Pro. Which was an AGP card. I will look and see if there are any cost effective cards available that would be a decent replacement for the current 5200. Side comment what was in the system (the 9800 Pro) was a better card at the time then the 5200.....

I am surprised that this good of video card is available in AGP form.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121330

This is pretty good.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161237

This is from Nvidia and sits in between the top one and the second one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143069

The 5k and 6k Nvidia cards I would stay away from and the 2k ATI cards. Performance increase wouldn't be worth it.

[Drew]

Now that's some freakn' service!!!

[Panoptes]

You missed your calling COOP

[The Ken]

Win7 32-Bit should work for most normal users and 3GB RAM will be just fine (try to have 2 1GB paired with 2 512MB paired or move to 4GB and just figure on wasting the 512MB due to system cache

Win7 64-Bit has great driver support for 2-3 year old equipment and really 6GB RAM is all you need 4GB to Win7 and 2GB for your XP mode.

I ended upgrading my office system to a Q9550 16GB and RAID0 10K Velociraptor 2x DUAL PCIe NX8400GS video (I don't run anything graphics intense) on a HP DC7900 Vpro box (slow memory though) and it seems plenty poopy and it ran about $1300.00

I did go with 4 monitors initially but I about threw my neck out and went down to 3.

I was running a HP DX5150 AMD 64 with 1.5GB RAM and a 80GB 7.2K with an ATI dual video head PCI card and it always ran ok. However it didn't support True Virtualization.

My point, what we are seeing is if you want to run Win 7 with virtualization the cpu's that are older than 2-3 year don't typically support it.

If you have a CPU that does don't blow all you money on RAM CPU etc and take a look at a 10K SATA drive, they will make more of a difference than CPU, RAM is always good but really look at your performance and most users aren't cresting over 2GB hardly ever unless you are running some sort of real desktop publishing app or game.

[CGVT]

Wow! Thanks guys.

It came with 1 gig of RAM (2 512 cards) We added 2 gigs of RAM to the original so we now have a total of three. (all four slots are filled.

Top are you saying that it should have come with a better card than the NVDIA 5200? We didn't replace anything. The way it sits now (other than the added RAM) is how it show up when we ordered it.

Next question. If I upgrade to the ASUS AH4650/DI/1GD2 Radeon HD 4650 1GB 128-bit DDR2 AGP 8X HDCP Ready Video Card is it going to make a noticable difference?

Thanks again guys!

[Coop]

It gives windows more memory to work with - can't hurt. Since you're at 3GB now replacing the video card is about the only upgrade that would give a bit of a boost.