Adding to my new Dell

cosgrove80

I just bought this off the Dell Outlet store:

Base: Dimension 9200 Core 2 Duo Prsr E6420 (2.13ghz)
CD/ RW: DVD RW Read/Write 16x
Hard Disk Drive:320GB SATA Hard Drive
MISC: Mouse Dell Wheel USB 2 Button Scroll Black
Memory: 2048MB DDR2 533 [4*512]
Video: 256MB nVidia GeForce 7900GS graphics card
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium

I might have a few quid to spare to upgrade it. Is there anything you'd suggest worth doing to it.

Would two sticks of 1gig RAM be faster than the 4 512s?
I was thinking of replacing the graphics card with a X1650XT but seeing as it's mainly for graphics work rath than gaming I may hold off for a bit.

Any other suggestions are welcome. I'll be running it with a 24" monitor

Anti

The 7900gs is alot faster then the 1650 just to let you know. And there are no real benifits of running 2x1gb over 4x512mb. Apart from future upgrades to 4x1gb.

You might want to consider a external hard drive for back-ups too.

8T8

You could consider replacing the OS HD with a single raptor.

If your a bit into music then a Creative X-Fi might be worth a purchase provided you use analogue connections to your speakers.

Finally if the money is burning a hole in your pocket an X1950 Pro would be a slightly better choice than the 7900GS as ATI's drivers are much better behaved than NVIDIA's under Vista though NV's are slowly improving.

But other than that nothing really needs to be changed.

Anti

8T8 wrote:

You could consider replacing the OS HD with a single raptor.

If your a bit into music then a Creative X-Fi might be worth a purchase provided you use analogue connections to your speakers.

Finally if the money is burning a hole in your pocket an X1950 Pro would be a slightly better choice than the 7900GS as ATI's drivers are much better behaved than NVIDIA's under Vista though NV's are slowly improving.

But other than that nothing really needs to be changed.

i just got the new nvidia drivers released on the 25th, they are a nightmare in vista. Games constantly crash, and performance seems down too. I rolled back, and all is fine now.

8T8

The 162.15's workin fine here on Vista 64-bit C&C 3 was a little better on my 7800GTX, still cant use AA at 1680x1050 though otherwise it gets too slow.

Holding out for ATI getting it's driver act together with the 2900 series with AA enabled or NVIDIA get's better at Vista drivers

Anti

Hmm. Ill try reinstalling them again. also i cant get ati tool working in vista either. Such a handy app. But on a side note, at stock settings i get 3000 more points in 3dmark 03, which is weird. All i did was ad a newer psu. and drivers !

cosgrove80

Thanks for the replies.

I have an external drive for backups. I might stick another drive in.
When I said 1650 in my first post I meant the X1950 Pro. I'll probably leave everything for the moment as a got the 24" Dell monitor so cash is lower than I though.

I was thinking of getting rid of Vista and putting XP back on. Will all the crap Dell put cause any problems if I format and install XP. I mean driver-wize, will it go smoothly? Haven't dealt with Dell in quite a while as my current machine is an old self build.

TerrorFirmer

cosgrove80 wrote:

When I said 1650 in my first post I meant the X1950 Pro. I'll probably leave everything for the moment as a got the 24" Dell monitor so cash is lower than I though.

Performance differences would be small, replacing a 7900gs with an x1950pro would be a waste entirely. save up for an 8800gts to make it worthwhile...