Upgrade or buy new PC?

[j4ckaL]

I have an emachines T2875 which has this:

AMD Athlon XP 2800+
80GB Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce MX gfx card
512MB DDR SDRAM

My question is would I be better off to upgrade this comp or to get a new one if I plan to use it for gaming. I want to have a powerful rig to start with and plenty of ability to upgrade it down the road.

 

[FadingTheory]

That willl last you a little.... get a new card and your good to go.

 

[Wayniac]

You're fine for now... new graphics card like FadingTheory said.

You COULD upgrade a tad for about $300 or so. New mobo, CPU, and graphics card and transfer everything else over. Maybe another stick of RAM also for dual channel.

EDIT: Stick a sound card in there too.

 

[Hacp]

Maybe just another stick of 512 and a new graphics card. a 6600Gt and a stick of 512 will cost you around 210 bucks. Cheap upgrade and will last you a while.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Maybe just another stick of 512 and a new graphics card. a 6600Gt and a stick of 512 will cost you around 210 bucks. Cheap upgrade and will last you a while.

This sounds good

In no way is that going to be a very powerful gaming machinne, but it will be decent. And your probolly a beginning gamer since you dont have a great gaming machinne.

Just make sure to use a good mouse / mousepad combo

 

[grego]

I hope the emachines will power a new card :/.

 

[dhw200]

if u want to be sure, take a picture of the sticker on the PSU and post it here

 

[j4ckaL]

This sounds good

In no way is that going to be a very powerful gaming machinne, but it will be decent. And your probolly a beginning gamer since you dont have a great gaming machinne.

Just make sure to use a good mouse / mousepad combo

Well, I want to be able to play games like Doom 3, Half-Life 2, or any other game with at least 60fps. If the upgrades you suggest would do that then I might go there.

My other problem though is that I want to be able to slap whatever upgrades I want into this machine down the road. I don't know if my mobo is very compatible or whatever.

Can't post a pic of the sticker on the front but I posted everything that it said except for this:

-CD-RW 48x Max Write
-DVD-ROM 16x Max Read
-Media Reader 8-in-1
-5 USB ports 4 in back, 1 in front
-10/100 Mbps Ethernet
-56k v.92 Ready Fax/Modem

I'm not really a beggining gamer but I'm just now getting serious about PC gaming and before I was mostly into consoles. :/
I want to get a good gaming PC becaue I don't like jaggies crawling up and down buildings or trees popping up in front of me like I get on a ps2.

 

[Hacp]

The 6600Gt will get you good fps on doom3 if you don't strain it with extreme resolution and AAing. Also, the 2800+ xp isn't a slouch at gaming either. Benchmarks show that it performs better than a 3.0 Pentium at gaming. However, you probably won't be able to put the 6600GT onto a new computer if you build one. THat is because AGP is phasing out. But no worries, since when you build a new computer, it will probably require a more top of the line graphics card than the 6600gt.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041119/geforce-6600gt-agp-08.html

Btw, if you want to AA, then get a new computer with the 6800GT. It is one of the few cards out there can can get acceptable frame rates while AAing with Doom 3.

 

[j4ckaL]

AA means anti-aliasing right? I'm new to the computer world.

I def want to have AA on because as I said in another post I don't like those jaggies. I have the sims 2 and I can't even seem to turn AAing on at all. plus the game doesn't run 100% smoothly.

So I'd have to get a new comp to get the kind of graphics I'm after huh?

Then so be it.