Looking to improve my PC's graphics performance

Quatre Mains

Hello
I have a Dell Dimension 4700 PC with bog standard internal graphics. Needless to saywhen I installed Fear a while back and tried playing it things didnt go too well :eek: , so I'm lookign to make some chnges to up the damn things poor performance. Full spec of the PC is here;
http://msn-cnet.com.com/Dell_Dimension_4700_for_Business/4507-3118_7-30981395.html?tag=spec
...basically it has a 300W PSU, 3.2Ghz P4, 512 MB DDR2 SDRAM, with a spare PCI-E slot.
Now I'm not a major games nut or anything but I would like enough in the tank to play newer games, so I'm thinking of buying a new graphics card and increasing the RAM. My q is this - what cards should I be looking at here and am I also looking at the added expense of a new PSU? Also, should I be bothering with more RAM or should I just plough the cash left over into a better graphics card?

Thanks

K.O.Kiki

Since your PSU isn't that powerful, I'd only add something like an nVidia Geforce 7600GS (additional benefit is it's silent).
That & another 512mb of RAM, and you should have a decent setup for gaming.
Altogether, that would be an investment of around €200.

You could possible shave another €50 off that by going for a 7300GT; it's less powerful than the 7600GS, but with a bit of tweaking (overclocking) can perform almost as well.

lazygit

i agree with previous.. a lot of modren graphics card require you to connect it to the PSU, a 300w PSU has a fair chance of going boom at any stage if you drain too much power from it, also get another 512mb of ram, even an extra 1gb you will notice a huge difference in preformance.

Quatre Mains

Thanks for the info lads. Until I did a bit of browsing theu earlier threads this morning I didn't even know the PSU capacity was an issue so that will give you an indication of my knowledge level . I also wasn't 100% sure whether the RAM would have a significant bearing on performance either so thanks for clearing that up too. Right, I'm off onto ebay to try hunting those things down, will let u know how I get on.

Cheers

K.O.Kiki

Good luck . Though personally, I'd always buy RAM new from either Shop4Memory or Crucial -- that way, you're guaranteed an RMA if it's faulty (and it should only be €50 for a 512mb stick anyway)

8T8

According to Google the 4700 series is one the lines that doesn't use Dells proprietary PSU so you can swap it out with a stock PSU and not worry.

For €51 grab yourself this 430w PSU and you'll be sorted for most graphics cards.

If you want some pixel pushing power get a 7600GT going for €192 and you'll have a very nice step up from your current hardware.

Not bad for €243 in total, I'd say you might be able to get by with the 7600GT anyway with your stock PSU if the system is fairly bare bones like everything is integrated on the motherboard with only one HD and DVD drive.

PogMoThoin

got 2x 256mb ddr2 pc4200 ram ere for ya if ya lookin to buy. came out of my old dell when i upgraded. pm me if you interested.