Oh crap. Another "help me buy a videocard" thread ;)

AltTabbins

AltTabbins

Fully [H]
Joined
Jul 29, 2005
Messages
20,486
Ok.
Im usually one to comment on these kind of threads, but im really stuck right now. My girlfriend has a pretty old computer (Dell Dimension 8100 P4 1.5ghz 384megs of ram and an ATI 9200se card).

Upgrading this thing is a beast :(
Ram is weird and has to be paired to work, only has AGPx4 (but has a 400mhz fsb??!? lol).

Anyways, I wanted to suprise her and upgrade her computer. Right now, she does a lot of graphics design and is completly hooked on the MMO game "Second Life". As is, her pc plays everything on low and at parts, gets around 10-20fps. It hovers around 30-40fps in "good spots" <---- what she calls it.

Problem #1: I want to get her a new videocard. Her crappy 9200se is holding her back from playing the game at good fps and im sure her ram isnt helping her. With the videocard, I was thinking a 9800pro or a 9600xt. The game doesn't take much and I think if I got anything new-gen, it will bottleneck or be overkill.

Problem #2: WTF?? Why is the ram for this beast (1gig or 512mb) cost me an arm and a leg. Some of it costs as much as $500 for a gig and MOST of it is either in 256mb or 128mb sticks. Anybody know where I can score a deal on some of this ram?
LOOK>>>> http://search.ebay.com/search/searc...from=R8&satitle=dimension+8100+ram&category0=

Thanks ahead of time :)

P.S. This is just a temp thing to hold her over till we can finish her a project pc (it will take a while before we can afford to get all the parts together)..
 
RDRAM is crappy, overpriced ram. It would be cheaper to get a new board and DDR400 for that sucker.

That way you can have AGP 8x and get maybe an X800XL or 6800 depending on your budget. I think, actually, a 6600GT or even x800GT would be a killer card for that.
 
I dont want to get her a new motherboard/processor yet. We are working on her project pc (it will be finished in a few months and I just need something to tie her over for now)..
 
RDRAM is a money pit and I have never seen a deal anywhere. What I have seen however is that you can buy the amount of RAM you would like and a matching motherboard to move the processor to for the same price as one stick of RDRAM. Good luck. :D
 
Looks like im going to just stick with a videocard upgrade for now. Her new motherboard has PCI-E so nothing too fancy seeing that we will have to get a pci-e card sometime soon (saving up for a 7800gt).

so what is it boys?
9600xt OR 9800pro.......... Sounds like a really dumb quesiton lol but cheaper the better.
 
dude it would be considerably cheaper to sell her vid card mobo and ram and upgrade all three you should be able to get a mobo that supports ddr ram pretty cheap on ebay then you sell the ram (and if it is worth so much you should get a fair price on that) and buy 1GB of pc3200 then buy a 9550 - 9600xt and it should be fairly tanky :cool:
 
I would say buy a new mobo and go with standard ddr400 which is much cheaper. You can get a gig of that for $89. You could probably get a 9600xt for the same price or spend $100 and get a much better card (9800pro) IMO. If it only temporary you might want to go with the cheaper one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top