To Buy Or Not To Buy

Equinox_kr

United States7395 Posts

August 23 2007 18:28 GMT

My brother\'s taking my laptop to college this Saturday so I was thinking whether or not to buy extra RAM or a nice graphics card for the desktop he\'s going to leave behind. I asked him about this and he just said to make a computer (which supposedly runs for about $500-600 and is really awesome). The specs for the desktop are currently:

2.4ghz P4 processor
40 gig HD and a 400 gb external hd
128mb and 256 mb of ram in it
Basic graphics card, not sure
Basic sound card, not sure

Would it be worth it to upgrade? I mean, maybe the graphics card may go out of date over time, but wouldn\'t buying the RAM still be useful if I decide to actually make a computer since I can use that instead?

(Yeah, pretty worthless blog post but I didn\'t want to make a thread about this -_-)

Pressure

7326 Posts

August 23 2007 18:35 GMT

wait why upgrade it
dont you have your own computer or do you use your laptop for everything

Auspicious

United States175 Posts

August 23 2007 18:36 GMT

Upgrading RAM could be useful but you might limit yourself to what kind of motherboard you'd need for a new computer, it depends on what you want to use this old desktop for. If it's for Starcraft there's no need to do anything to it. If it's for newer games I'd probably just buy a new computer because your processor is not capable of most new games at this point, nor is your RAM, basic graphics card won't cut it for new games either.

If you do build a new computer, you can probably just go with mobo integrated sound (no need for sound card) and take the disc drives from your old computer and stick them in the new one, reuse the monitor, etc.

Sr18

Netherlands1141 Posts

August 23 2007 19:47 GMT

A lot will depend on what motherboard you have. Given the P4 processor, the motherboard will probably not be able to use newer types of RAM, which would make the RAM you buy now to upgrade obsolete when you want to use it in a new rig. Also, getting 1+ GB of RAM more would be rather pointless anyway with such a dated system.

And I don't think your graphics card may go out of date over time. Chances are the card is already almost useless for modern games.

I would advice against upgrading. It will not help play old games better and you probably still won't be able to play modern games with decent performance. If you want to spend money on gaming, you are much better off buying a new rig altogether. And like Auspicious said above me, re-use old pieces of hardware that are still good (keyboard, mouse, monitor, HD if possible, etc.). The basic upgrade set should have a new motherboard, processor, RAM, graphics card and power supply.

zer0das

United States8519 Posts

August 23 2007 21:19 GMT

Mm... I probably would, but I'm biased. I suggest googling cpuz and downloading it to figure out exactly what you have first though.

omgbnetsux

United States3749 Posts

August 23 2007 22:55 GMT

I wouldn't bother upgrading that machine.

Equinox_kr

United States7395 Posts

August 24 2007 00:40 GMT

Well, I honestly don't want to invest a lot of money for now; would it be a viable short term solution just to buy RAM so that programs run faster and then use it for a newer computer that I'm destined to make this year in Comp Tech?

Sr18

Netherlands1141 Posts

August 24 2007 11:30 GMT

It highly depends on the operating system and the programs you run. If all you do is browse TL, play Starcraft or web games, 384 RAM should be enough under windows 98. If you run windows XP, getting some more RAM will definatly help. Graphically demanding games will not benifit much from additional RAM, as your graphics card is probably not capable enough anyway.

You need the motherboard information when upgrading RAM by the way, as you need to know what RAM can fit in. If you can only run SDRAM (non-DDR), you might have a difficult time finding it in stores.

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