Assistance with Rig upgrade needed

[mroctober]

I currently have a Dell 8250 with the following @ 2.4ghz 800 FSB, 768 ram, DVD rom, NEC 3500 DVD-RW, ATIX800XL PE (AGP), Audigy ZN Platinum, PVR250 card, and Z5300 speakers.


I want to upgrade to a new rig with AMD. I want to be able to keep my DVD-RW, ATI card, PVR250, and my sound card.

What would you recommend I buy? My price tag needs to be under 1000.00



Thanks everyone.... 😀

 

[dhlucke]

Your rig is pretty good as it is. What are you upgrading for?

With these types of questions I generally suggest buying a new monitor before a new rig. If you really want to upgrade something get some more memory or a bigger/faster hard drive.

That's my opinion at least. Especially considering you want to stick to AGP.

 

[pickxx]

I currently have a Dell 8250 with the following @ 2.4ghz 800 FSB, 768 ram, DVD rom, NEC 3500 DVD-RW, ATIX800XL PE (AGP), Audigy ZN Platinum, PVR250 card, and Z5300 speakers.


I want to upgrade to a new rig with AMD. I want to be able to keep my DVD-RW, ATI card, PVR250, and my sound card.

What would you recommend I buy? My price tag needs to be under 1000.00



Thanks everyone.... 😀

You have two options....thats it.
Swtich to AMD and get a PCIe or stay with your AGP card and upgrade the rest of your machine.

Switching to AMD is best if you get a PCIe card....you could use AGP but you would be spending a lot of money for not much performance upgrade.

You could upgrade your cpu(3.2c), speakers(5500's), more ram, bigger hard drives, and that would only run you about 600-700bucks.



Franklyi could build you a KICKASS AMD machine for about $1400 that would be twice as fast as what you have now....but it requires going to PCIe. If you stick with AGP you have almost no room to get better.





one more thing....do you have an X800XT PE or an X800XL

 

[endyen]

I dont know Pickxx, when was the last time you sat down at a Dell?
I think an A8V 3rd eye, an A64 3800, and a reformat would do him wonders. Then again, a lot of that would come from getting rid of the excess bagage dell loads into the start meu.
So mroctober, the first thing I would suggest is that you do a reformat, and load only the software you use. If you dont absolutely need it at startup, dont have it on your start menu. See how that goes. If it helps a lot, we may have a few other tricks, if you tell us what you use your system for. (I'm guessing games, but specific tittles would help)

 

[pickxx]

He wants to upgrade to play games....He has a Dell...aka INTEL!

All i was saying was for a grand you could only slightly upgrade. his rig isn't bad....but without upgrading a video card yu dont have much room to upgrade....because for games the graphics card is the #1 thing that you need to spend your money on.



And btw, i used a dell about 12hours ago....i had to troubleshoot a customers at BestBuy, they brought a laptop in for software and i left them with a LONG list of things to do dealing with spyware, viruses, star menu stuff, reformatting, and all kinds of stuff.

And also my dad has one, and i use it about once a week when i am over at his house.


Dell is great if you dont want to build your machine....but it wont do everythig you want at the right price point and for games...its a joke.

 

[mroctober]

one more thing....do you have an X800XT PE or an X800XL[/size]

I have the X800 XT PE. So from what everyone is saying I should pretty much just upgrade some more on memory? As it is right now I have 768 (i must install in groups of 2) Should I be able to see a big improvement with 1024 (1 gig)


I do mostly play games on this rig. I play WOW, COD2, NFS: MW, just pretty much all of the new titles.

I have reformatted this machine a few months ago, my startup is very limited as it is (I think so anyways, if you offer some advise on what I could do, it will be helpful)



Thanks for everyones responses.

 

[mroctober]

You could upgrade your cpu(3.2c),

How would I go about doing this?

 

[mroctober]

If I were to "upgrade", would this be something I should look into.

Would I see a performance increase compared to my dell?

ATX Computer Cases
1 COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-WW Black/Silver Aluminum Bezel, SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
Model #: CAC-T05-WW $54.99


Internal Hard Drives
1 Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM
Model #: ST3250823AS $102.50

total 615.66 with shipping
Memory - System
2 CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model VS1GB400C3 - Retail
Model #: VS1GB400C3 $84.55 $169.10 (2 sticks)


Power Supplies
1 Thermaltake TR2 W0070 ATX 430W Power Supply - Retail
Model #: W0070 $39.99


Processors
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail
Model #: ADA3200BPBOX $152

 

[pickxx]

If I were to "upgrade", would this be something I should look into.

Would I see a performance increase compared to my dell?

ATX Computer Cases
1 COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-WW Black/Silver Aluminum Bezel, SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
Model #: CAC-T05-WW $54.99


Internal Hard Drives
1 Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM
Model #: ST3250823AS $102.50

total 615.66 with shipping
Memory - System
2 CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model VS1GB400C3 - Retail
Model #: VS1GB400C3 $84.55 $169.10 (2 sticks)


Power Supplies
1 Thermaltake TR2 W0070 ATX 430W Power Supply - Retail
Model #: W0070 $39.99


Processors
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor Model ADA3200BPBOX - Retail
Model #: ADA3200BPBOX $152

Thats a HUGE amount of money for a small increase....And you dont have a motherboard listed....and the Venice is socket 939 ONLY and very few socket 939 boards are AGP.

Personally i say rock what you have and save your money for like 8 months then do a full system upgrade when your money would be better spent.

 

[mroctober]

Yeah I think you are right. I will probably wait until later next year.

Do you think it would be smart to upgrade to 1 gig of ram?

And also, do you know of any cases that will be compatiable with the inside of my dell 8250? (I mean easy in and easy out)


You guys have been a tremendous help to me.


Thanks again.

 

[pickxx]

Nah....keep it how it is....The RAM upgrade would be a small performance....and in a year you will want DDR2, so why buy two sets of RAM?

If the 8250 is a ATX board then it will go in almost any case....
but i dont know....and i am too tired to check.
google it

 

[mroctober]

If you dont absolutely need it at startup, dont have it on your start menu. See how that goes. If it helps a lot, we may have a few other tricks, if you tell us what you use your system for. (I'm guessing games, but specific tittles would help)

What do you mean about the Start menu?

Please giv me some advise on some of your other "tricks" :lol:


And after doing a through search for cases. I have come to the conclusion that Dell's pc's are pretty much not user freindly. I appears that I can not change the cases, unless I want to do some major customizing.

That sucks bad....

 

[endyen]

To check, or uncheck your start menu-
left click "start"
left click "run"
type in "msconfig"
left click "starup"
click on all the boxes with a checkmark in them.
Then go through them one at a time. If it doesn't have to do with antivirus, I would leave it unclicked.
Not having a program on your start menu does not mean it will not work. It simply means that you have to start it, when you want to use it.
Everything in your start menu that is ticked, will use resources.

Your gfx card is a fair OCer. I use rage 3D tweak.
You may want to look at windows OCing progs for your chip as well. Clock gen is what you want for that.
Some Dell bios have been "patched" by others. This might allow some tuning, if there is one for your mobo.