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**PurpleScotch** · August 05, 2007, 03:57 AM

Never mind guys, I've thought it out and I guess I'll have to buy a new PC.

**spartan_phalanx** · August 05, 2007, 04:03 AM

How much is "not too expensive"?

**PurpleScotch** · August 05, 2007, 04:06 AM

Something around $100->$500...

**spartan_phalanx** · August 05, 2007, 04:25 AM

What motherboard do you have? Do you have a PCI-e x16 slot on your motherboard? If so the 8800 GTS or GTX are probably the best choice. Your other system specs could hold you back though, details?

**PurpleScotch** · August 05, 2007, 04:31 AM

I think my motherboard is the older one, the PCI-bus or something like that (all I know is it doesn't have the express in the end). Does that mean all the G-cards I can get are as bad as the 9550 and need a new motherboard?

**westy159** · August 05, 2007, 06:31 AM

While at the repair shop ask them to tell you whether you have a PCI-Express slot or not. If not ask if you have an AGP slot. Hope fully you have an AGP slot at the very least, PCI for graphics cards is a thing of the far past.

If you have an AGP slot pick up the ATI Radeon X1950. (it will either end with 'XT' or 'Pro', XT is better but costs more).

If your lucky and have a PCI-Express slot, get the Geforce 8800GTS. This comes in a 320MB version for screen resolutions of 1280x1024 and lower and 640MB for higher resolutions.

If you are on the basic PCI slot theres not much you can do to really upgrade. Hold out to see if that Geforce 8 series PCI card really does come out I suppose.

**PurpleScotch** · August 06, 2007, 03:26 AM

I guess I'll upgrade my PC fully (as in re-building it

) new mother-board, new Graphic card, new cooling system..hehe.

My CPU is a Pentium4 2.66GHz, do I need a new one?

Also, can I add a new Hard-disk to my existing 3 hard-disks, as in can I have 4 hard-disks in one PC?

**Freddie** · August 06, 2007, 07:54 AM

Originally Posted by killerxguy

I guess I'll upgrade my PC fully (as in re-building it

) new mother-board, new Graphic card, new cooling system..hehe.

My CPU is a Pentium4 2.66GHz, do I need a new one?

Also, can I add a new Hard-disk to my existing 3 hard-disks, as in can I have 4 hard-disks in one PC?

If you’re going to upgrade you might as well go the whole hog and change the lot. I upgraded my computer from an Intel P4 2.4c Ghz to a Core 2 Duo E6400 after three years. If your CPU is an Intel P4 Prescott (mine was the one prior to this I can’t remember what code name they it, forestwood or something stupid) or latter you might be able to use it (LGA775 sockets), but no guarantees.

You like your hard drives don't you?

I to like a hard drive to, 1 for working on, one with a spare copy of XP ready to go in case of any problems and an external hard drive for backups. If your planning on changing the motherborad to a newer one and your hard drives are IDE (fat plastic ribbion about 6cm wide) based its likely what ever motherboard you get will only have 1 IDE channel which you will need for your optical dirves. Your hard dirves onto DVD, format them and buy a couple of new SATA based hard drives, there cheap as chips these days.

**PurpleScotch** · August 06, 2007, 06:36 AM

Any help?

**Ummagumma** · August 06, 2007, 07:40 AM

killerxguy,

The amount of hard disks you can add is determined by your motherboard. If they are PATA (old fat ribbon cable connections) you may be more limited than with SATA (newer, faster thin cable connections). My current mobo has 10 SATA connections on 2 controllers (4 use raid up to raid5, 6 on a separate controller use up to raid3) and an e-sata port too!

It only had 2 PATA connections though, and both are used by optical drives...

You could always get a controller card to add more sockets of either variety - sometimes a good idea if you want to use raid if the mobo controller is a bit patchy...

As for your cpu, if it is an LGA 775 socket chip you could keep it for a bit, slowly upgrading - first the mobo, then gpu.. then you could get a new cpu later. Some may argue that it would be wiser to wait for one large rebuild though, with a nice fresh OS install to go with it.

Hope this helps......