got a basic dell for college ...want to do some gaming with it

[Midnight]

its a basic 2.8 GHz dell dimension 4600 with a 512mb DDR RAM upgrade. i am trying to play GTR: FIA GT Racing Simulation and I have to degrade the game quality to "Low" to get it to run somewhat smooth.

GTR: FIA GT Racing Simulation

Recommended Requirements:
Microsoft WIndows XP
2 GHz CPU
512 MB RAM
128MB DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card
DirectX 9.0C

Is there anything I can do to play at Full Quality with this computer or would I be beating a dead horse?

 

[toxicity_27]

What graphics card are you running? Also, one suggestion I can offer is to upgrade to 1GB of RAM

 

[Rmaia]

I had a dell and it ran games like crap. I bought a decent ATI card and it runs pretty smooth now. Def should add another stick of ram. another 512 stick (make sure it is the same brand.) Somethign else may be wrong because my old computer had much worse specs than that and I played WoW and BF2 on it.

it was like 2.4ghz pent
512 sdram
ati-9600xt
some glued together cheap as crap mobo

 

[macdude425]

its a basic 2.8 GHz dell dimension 4600

Well, you are going to need a new video card, and as far as I can tell, the 4600 has an AGP slot, so you could pick up something like a 6600GT.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130232

You could get something cheaper, but I know that eVGA is known for quality, so I chose them as an example.

 

[Trotter]

^^^ Good advice.

Looks like you have a x8 AGP slot.

Be sure not to get a power hog of a card, as your PSU is only 250W.

 

[reggie_da_man]

Get this.

 

[Midnight]

What graphics card are you running? Also, one suggestion I can offer is to upgrade to 1GB of RAM

According to Crucial System Anlysis I have onboard/integrated graphics.

Also according to Crucial I have 2 remaining memory slots left that have to both be filled at the same time, which by your recommendations would be (2) 256MB DDR RAM sticks? It says I have PC2700, any reason to use PC3200?

Rmaia - why the same brand? I am sure Dell would overcharge.

macdude425 - ok thanks

Trotter - I don't know anything about power consumption for graphics cards

 

[Midnight]

Get this.

Note: Requires a minimum of a 350 Watt power supply and an available molex power dongle.

 

[Rmaia]

if you add another stick of ram, you need to make sure the brand of the ram(not dell) is the same as well as the timings or your comp basically wont even recognize it. My friend tried to upgrade to 2g ram but bought a diff brand and his comp would pick one stick or the other.

 

[macdude425]

Rmaia - why the same brand? I am sure Dell would overcharge.

Dell can be picky about their RAM.