new board or pci card

[jonnyss]

in my infinate wisdom when my missus wanted a pc, i stupidly got a bottom of the range dell namely a dimension 1100, and so to now upgrade it is proving to be a little problematic regarding graphics, so what i need to know is what are my options for better graphics capabilities so as i can use adobe photoshop and illustrator to full potential and maybe windows 7 at some point

this it what i have now

otc666 mainboard with pentium 4 2.8ghz socket 478 1mb l2

i also have a pentium 4 ht 3ghz 1mb l2 ready to go in

onboard intel 82865g graphics

2x 512mb ram

2 ata hard drives

 

i know ill have the hassle of phoning microsoft if i change the board but if im gonna pay say £55 for a pci graphics card it could be better spent on a board with more scope for future upgrades

i dont really know what im looking for to be honest so any pointers and suggestions would be nice

[Jelly Bean]

Hello there.

 

Its not as simple as just changing a gaphics card or mainboard.

 

A more uptodate mainboard would proberly entail buying a new power supply,this may also mean you need to buy newer RAM,a compatible graphics card if you want a higher grade computer.A new mainboard may also include having to buy a new processor unit....

 

Your pentium 4 3 ghz with a gig of RAM would possibly run Vista....I have one of similar grade in my bedroom and it runs Vista Ultimate with no issues.

 

 

To run Windows 7 on an older computer you maybe looking at hardware compatibility issues,lack of available hardware drivers and so on.

 

You maybe just better of buying a new graphics card wich has to be compatible with the mainboard you have now and be happy with that or build a higher grade PC or buy a higher grade one with Windows 7 already installed.

[jonnyss]

well im stuck with a pci card as it has no pci-e or agp slots, but which one ? im looking at a GeForce 6200 512Mb PCI graphics video card DVI DDR2 on ebay and also a geforce fx5200 256mb but havent got a clue really

[Dalo Harkin]

As a rule from that ERA, the higher the number of the card, the better it is a 5XXX is a 5 series card a 6XXX is a 6 series etc..

Then you get LE,GX, GT, GTX example.......

If you can get the highest series card with the highest RAM that you can afford, dont make the mistake of getting a lower series card with more RAM as opposed to a newer series with lesser RAM.

[Synapse]

Just a few words of caution. Dell are notorious for building non standard systems, and swapping the board could trip you up. I can't remember exactly, the 1100's are an ATX design, and may have the non standard positions for the peripheral connections. Also, check the PSU 20 pin connector, some older Dells were fitted with PSU's that had a non standard wiring configuration. New boards may need a 24 pin PSU.

 

To be honest, I'd be tempted to start again with a standard board/CPU/new case config and cheap PCI-E video card.

[Dalo Harkin]

It all comes down to if you want to just replace the GPU (which would mean that the PC other than the graphics suits its purpose)

 

or as Synapse has said you could build a new system......