Choose my upgrades....

[Nugzy]

I havent played much video games lately but I would like to start again. I purchased a Dell XPS Gen 3 in Nov. 2004. I want to upgrade this rather than build a whole new PC.

What I Want: I want to play FEAR, Half Life 2: Episode 1, Prey, and Oblivion. Only those four games. I want to be able to turn all of the feaures up to fully experience the game, while still getting playable framerates. My monitor is 2005FPW (20" WS), with a resolution of 1680x1050. Im not looking to OC anything, as Im not that experience with computers and I dont want to break anything.

Video Card: Money is an issue, but I dont mind spending more if its worth it. I am thinking of purchasing the Nvidia 7950 since its only $100-$200 more than something like a X1900XTX, and it gets similar performance to 7900GTX SLI/X1900 Crossfire. Another reason is, I dont have an SLI/Crossfire motherboard and if its possible to avoid buying one I will avoid it. Since Im only playing at 1680x1050, will I get similar performance with everything maxed from a x1900xtx and a 7950 or will the 7950 still perform better? Im not concerned with DX10 being around the corner, Im just looking to play these games right now, and I will likely sell the graphics card and wait for DX10 (while playing Wii to hold me over). Im just wondering if the 7950 will give me any gained performance over x1900xtx at resolutions of 1680x1050.

Motherboard/Processor: I have a P4 3.4 ghz w/ HT. Im not sure the motherboard that Dell used, is there a way I can find out without opening my PC? Will this processor be enough, or am I going to need to upgrade?

RAM: I have 2GB (2x1GB) of RAM, so that should be alright.

Cooling: I have a regular XPS Gen 3, so will I need any additional cooling solutions or fans with a new x1900xtx or 7950? If so, which is recommended?

Any help anyone can give is much appreciated.

 

[nooh]

Nugzy , how are you ?

You said you have a dell but in the dell do you know if the 7950 can be used. If so go ahead .
Its a brill card and if you are not bothered that in the next 2 months the price is likely to drop by 30% then go for it.

I myself have bought the XFX XXX version but i did get a discount and the price is the same today as when i bought it. But even then it did drop £30 in the last three weeks. Probably drop more today but thats a price you pay i guess.

The card will play every game at max and if you have a dual core then you will get even more out of it and gaming memory.

The dual core only makes a difference where it has been coded to make a difference but this will help a lot in gaming in the future.

Try and overclock the pc if you could , you should be able to push that to 4GHZ.

The thing about this 7950 is that make sure your CPU is not bottlenecking it.