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View Full Version : Advice please

doninsocal
03-Sep-2004, 00:59
I have and older 800mhz celeron with 128mb ram. My son try's to play Medal of Honor Allied Assualt but can only play for 20 minutes before the screen loses color.

How much of a difference would a PCI video card make, if any? I ask this because there is no AGP slot in this machine.

Or at this point would buying him a new PC in the $400.00 range be a better move.

Thanks,

DS
Scali
03-Sep-2004, 01:07
An 800 MHz Celeron isn't exactly powerful. And 128 mb is not a lot either...
Also, PCI cards are terribly expensive compared to their AGP/PCI-e counterparts, and there is a lot less choice.

I would say, go for a new PC if you can afford it, it will be a much better investment than a new PCI videocard in an old machine like that (and upgrading memory or CPU is probably also more expensive than just getting a new CPU + board + memory, because old memory and CPU types are rare, and therefore expensive).
kyleb
03-Sep-2004, 03:34
Or at this point would buying him a new PC in the $400.00 range be a better move.

Thanks,

DS

$50 on an athonxp, $50 on a nforce2 motherboard, $100 on 512mb of pc3200 and $200 on a 9800pro; that would do wonders for moh:aa and leave plenty of room for a nice cpu upgrade down the road.
101998
03-Sep-2004, 04:40
$50 on an athonxp, $50 on a nforce2 motherboard, $100 on 512mb of pc3200 and $200 on a 9800pro; that would do wonders for moh:aa and leave plenty of room for a nice cpu upgrade down the road.

Agree 100%.
Sandwich
03-Sep-2004, 12:19
Agreed. there's only one remedy: complete mobo+mem+cpu+vidcard replacement.

I'm willing to bet the harddrives in that system will be slow too. Maybe ATA33 or even less. You may end up being better of with a completely new system and keep only the monitor, printer, mouse etc.

Possible cheaper solution: secondhand P3 mobo with AGP2.0; 256MB SDRAM Dimm module and a Ti4200 or FX5600.
That's pretty slow nowadays though, but the only way to avoid a complete overhaul. It probably will increase gaming performance of the system by +200%.
The other solutions will increase performance by a magnitude so big it is totally offscale. Especially games.