Upgrading PC?

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I only have one more upgrade left that I can do to my current PC, and that is to upgrade my video card. My question is wether or not it would be worthwhile to do it or not.

I have a Dell Dimension 4400
1.6 gig P4
1 gig PC2100 SDRAM
128 Meg Geforce FX 5700 video card


I can bet an ATI Radeon X1600 512 meg for about $163.00, will I see any notable performance with this upgrade?

 

No methinks, not enough to warrent the price of the card at least. I'd imagine that with you're current setup the bottle neck would be with the processer and not with the graphics card. This would definetly be the case with an X1600, especailly with 512mb. BTW, are you sure that X1600's even come in AGP form. AFAIK most manufacturers only make them in the PCI Express form. Also it wouldn't be worth buying an AGP card with the intention of using in you're next rig, because there are not too many being made with AGP ports.
So, yeah I'd sugest perhaps just saving up for a new rig. BTW 1gb of SD ram!!! jeez thats extreme.

 

What's extreme about 1gb of ram?

 

It took me about 20 seconds to find about 16 of them just on Newegg.com alone. AGP hasn't been completely abandoned...yet.

I'm also trying to figure that one out...unless he doesn't know that all DDR RAM (including DDR2) *is* SDRAM...then I just don't know what Stu is smoking.

 

Yes, but ordinarily you wouldn't refer to DDR (with 184 pins) or DDR2 (240 pins) as SDRAM. Instead it would suggest the original variety (the 168 pin sort). To have 1gb of this stuff is quite unusual.
My bad about the AGP bit, I hadn't seen them until now (thanks for pointing that out Kittrax), I guess the AGP varity isn't really advertised quite as much.

I still think saving up for a new rig would be a better option than spending $163 on a graphics card that would be overkill to the nth degree on a system that can otherwise not be upgraded.

 

I guess I could put the DDR part in there!


After further review, I find that my motherboard only supports 4x AGP, so I really don't think that it would help much to get the bigger Video card. I geuss I will have to spend the bucks and get a new PC, and that will have to wait until I get my tax refund back.

 

Up until I built a new computer for my dad, he was running a *very* proprietary Compaq mini-tower. I did as many upgrades on it as I could...by the time he finally shelled out some cash for a new PC, he was running 1GB of PC133 SDRAM.

You have to realize that there are people out there still using 10 year-old computers with Win95 installed on them. Want proof? I my uncle called me up because his new USB mouse wasn't working. After booting up, I found that his OS was Windows 95a...which didn't support USB. I spent the rest of the day and about $100 upgrading his overly old clone PC (the company doesn't even exist anymore) with a "high end" PCI video card , a USB 2.0 adapter card, and Windows 2K Pro.

When all you use a computer for is word processing and the occasional spreadsheet...you don't need much.

Yeah...if you're limited to 4x, then you probably won't see much of a difference. It might be a good thing to wait until after the year's end to buy anything...let the prices go back down.