Help with upgrading an aging system

Suicide Slyde

I got a hand me down desktop system from my parents after they moved. In recent years I've been more into console gaming, though like any good nerd I was excited to receive an electronic gift, however I'm finding that the system might be a little too old. The graphics card is an nvidia 7600 GS and struggles to play the types of games I'm interested in. I mostly play strategy games like Total War, Dawn of War and Paradox Interactive games, on the computer so that's what I'm looking at upgrading for. I've downloaded the demos for Total War and Dawn of War, and while I can run them they are extremely graphically scaled down. The rest of the computers stats are decent though.

Windows XP Home, Athlon 64 x2 2.10GHz, 2 GB RAM, and screen resolution is defaulted to 1024x768.

So I'm pretty sure the bottleneck is the gpu, however the issue I'm having is that the motherboard is old and only has AGP slots available and that's my bottleneck in upgrading. The best option I've found is this. My question is, am I gaining anything by upgrading from the 7600GS to the Raedon 4670, or should I just wait until I can afford to upgrade both the motherboard and grahpics card? Also, if anyone can find a better AGP card my price point is $100-200.

TL;DR version:
Hand me down desktop, with aging graphics card and motherboard, AGP only
Windows XP Home, Athlon 64 x2 2.10GHz, 2 GB RAM, and screen resolution is defaulted to 1024x768.
Am I gaining anything by upgrading graphics, or should I just suffer with sub-par graphics and wait to update the whole system?

bowen

Seems like you should just build a new system rather than spend a few hundred dollars in upgrading select parts.

That's a 5 year old PC. Your bottleneck is probably both your CPU and your GPU depending on what you're trying to do. The fact that you're looking at AGP cards is a pretty dead giveaway it's time to upgrade.

maximumzero

I agree with Bowen. Yank out the HDD, Disc Drive, and keep the case (If it's not some name-brand case of course) and buy yourself a new motherboard, ram, and video card.

The money you'd put into an AGP card just isn't a good investment. It's dead technology. It'd be like installing a floppy drive into your computer.

Edit: You might have to buy a new case anyway depending on the true age of it. Same goes for the power supply.

bowen

Yeah I mean, might as well go the full mile with it. Buy all new hardware if you're serious enough about it. You can build a fairly sizable and decent system for less than a grand. I mean to find a bottleneck in that machine you'll probably spend that much trying to find the parts for it.

Falken

Since it sounds like you're interested in games from around the time that machine was built, just buy a used AGP card and have fun. Be warned though, newer games aren't going to happen. I'd guess you might be able to play tf2 at respectable settings.

I don't really understand the posts telling him to get a new one. I mean, if he's all "woo! upgrade" at a 5 year old computer, I don't really think he can afford to buy one on a whim. Besides, it's not like a setup like that has any difficulty doing any computery like tasks, the thing that normally causes people* to junk computers is "web pages render like ass" and he's got another 3 years or so before that should become a problem.




* people I know.

bowen

If he wants to get past "low" settings on those games he'll probably need to do more than just upgrade his graphics card. Sure they'll look nice but the rest of the computer may be the source of the crawl.

TheCanMan

You could grab an Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.9GHz CPU, an AM2 HSF, and this cheaper HD 4670.

Like others have said, it won't play recent titles very well, but that's about as far as you can push your upgrade.

tsmvengy

Don't spend $200 upgrading this POS. Save up and with $500 you can get something 10X better.

Suicide Slyde

So far the posts sound like my inner monologue. Not that you all haven't been helpful, but it seems to be the same kind of go around I'm having in my head. What I think I will do is hold off on upgrading and just build a desktop from new parts, salvaging the HDD and disk drive. I'm almost positive the PSU is as old as the case so that's probably not even worth keeping around. I guess I'll just have to live with DoW and Empire: Total War looking like ass while I gather the funds.

bowen

Yeah I mean it'll cost you almost as much as buying a new mid end PC for that much money. And you've already got half the components like keyboard/mouse/monitor/hard drive/cdrom.

Mugsley

You'll need a new PSU as well.

TheCanMan

If saving up for a new rig is an option, that it by far the better idea. But if money is prohibitively tight, that $200 upgrade would make a noticeable difference when playing the older titles you mentioned.