Is my computer worth upgrading?

It's been a long time since I posted anything on this forum. My apologies.
My computer has some sort of virus and I can't fix it. I was wondering if it is worth upgrading?
It has an AMD Athlon 64 with a Visiontek Radeon X850XT card.
Don't know much about the technical stuff. This was suppose to be fast (4-years ago); but really never was. I have had to turn details to low on some games to play. Don't know if the settings were right or not.
Should I upgrade this or buy new.

Heh, long time no see max killen; Happy Christmas and Happy New Year!

As for the question i don't recommend upgrading the four years old PC but several components should be still usable:

i) DVD drive

ii) Hard disk - as a second/third disk in your future new rig, and if it is IDE drive, remember to get a IDE to SATA converter, or get a motherboard that support EIDE drive

iii) Previous dedicated sound card if any. If not get a new motherboard with build-in sound card. Modern build-in sound solution should provides very satisfactory sound unless you are an audiophile.

iv) Other peripheral devices such Keyboard & mouse if still usable or if you have no intention to upgrade those.

v) Monitor - If you're using CRT monitor, optionally you could get a 22" LCD as they are pretty cheap currently. However remember that with 22" screen you also need a mid-range video cards to support 1680*1050 resolution, such as ATI 4850/4870 or nVidia 8800/8900 GTS.

The rest, e.g motherboard, RAM, processor, graphics card, Power supply unit, you should get a new ones. Monitor is optional although i do recommend a widescreen LCD.

PS - what kind of budget you have?

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you also.
You are right. It would cost more to upgrade than buy new.
I was looking at this:
A Gateway FX6710-01
What do you think?

Processor Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor1 Q9400 (2.66GHz, 1333MHz FSB, 2 x 3MB L2 cache)
Operating System Genuine Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium (64-bit) with Service Pack 12
Memory 6144MB 800MHz Dual-Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2-2048MB modules & 2-1024MB Modules)
Hard Drive 750GB 7200rpm Serial ATA II/300 hard drive with 16MB Cache5
Chassis Stunning Jet-Black Finish with Orange Metallic Accents
Application Software Microsoft® Works 9.0, Microsoft® Money Essentials & Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2007 (60-day complimentary trial period)4
Audio 8-Channel (7.1) High Definition Audio
Available Expansion Slots Available: 1 - PCI-E x16, 1 - PCI-E x1 & 1 - PCI
Backup Media Cyberlink® Power 2 Go
Dimensions (Box) 11.7" (H) x 20" (W) x 24" (D) or 297mm (H) x 508mm (W) x 610mm (D)
Dimensions (System) 18.3" (H) x 11.7" (W) x 7.5" (D) or 465mm (H) x 297mm (W) x 191mm (D)
External Ports (6) USB 2.0 ports (2 Front, 4 Rear), 2-IEEE 1394a Ports (1 Front, 1Rear), eSATA Port, VGA, (2) PS/2 Ports
Keyboard Premium Multimedia Keyboard
Media Card Reader Gateway® 15-in-1 media card reader with copy button6
Memory Capacity Expandable to 8GB
Modem 56k ITU v.92 ready Fax/Modem (RJ-11 port)
Motherboard Systemboard with Intel® G33 Chipset
Mouse USB Optical 2-button Wheel Mouse
Network 10/100 Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 port)
Optical Drive 18X DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti Drive featuring Labelflash™ Technology8
Power Supply 400W Power Supply
Security Software Norton 360 All-in-One Security™ 2008 (60-day trial)7
Speakers Amplified Stereo Speakers (USB Powered)
Video ATI Radeon™ HD 4850 with 512MB Discrete Video Memory (Ports: 2x DVI-I, S-Video includes DVI-HDMI & DVI-VGA Dongles)

All you need to do is replace motherboard, cpu, memory and graphics card aka gpu. Power supply unit too if its too small.

But you can get decent motherboard, cpu and graphics card very cheap nowdays. Most expensive thing would propably be new gpu.

Hi Max!

The PC sounds pretty good as it is.
- The CPU could be a bit slower if you need to save some money. Nobody needs 4 CPU cores nowadays. It will take at least a year, if not 2, until this changes. 2 cores are enough. Of course it can't hurt to have them though.
- The graphics card (Radeon 4850) is okay, but really slightly below average in the 100$-mainstream-segment. Investing 50-100$ more is a good idea, otherwise the graphics card could become a bottle neck in such a fast system. Choosing the right card is tricky. You should post all available options and then we'll see.

As for your old parts, just sell them on eBay or give them away. Exception: the hard disk. Destroy it and throw the remainings away. You don't want to have some stranger cast a magic spell on it to retrieve your personal data.

Your virus problem should usually go away if you format the hard disk.

I think Gorath is right, and I do not think you need so much RAM neither 4 GB would be enough in my opinion you could always get more later if you feel you need it, you could cut down on the ram and CPU for a better graphics card, at least if you are going to use the machine for gaming. You'd probably not need all that extra software and keyboards etc etc since you probably already have/do not need some of that stuff.

Well, I took the computer into the shop; just for an opinion. I was using Fallout 3 as a benchmark game to run. I told him I was having problems playing the game on my computer. He looked the set over and said everything should work, if I went back to the original Windows XP instead of the Vista that I installed. He suggested that I get a additional gig of memory and that he would tune my machine up and see if it would play any better. NOTE: I was playing Fallout 3 (with some settings set to low) with the current setup. He said dumping Vista should help drastically. He is thinking I had a ton of spyware running in the background plus Vista taking up most of my system power is making the computer sluggish. He does have a gaming computer for sale (Less than 1000 bucks); but said I should try repairing what I had. He could have made a 1000 bucks today and he knew it; instead he was being truthful (I hope) by suggesting I use what I have. We will see

What is your current PC specs (in details)?.

Video card is crucial in determining the performance and how long before your PC become to old to handle new games. If you thinking of only replacing PC every 4-5 years; then some consider to upgrade or invest in at least above mid-range PC. The Gateway FX6710-01 in fact is very impressive - but as Gorath mentioned you could downgrade the processor a bit (get Core 2 Duo) and beef up the ATI 4850 to 4870 or nVidia GT260 1 GB instead. They're not that expensive now. But if you follow this move remember to get a good quality PSU to support that graphics card or else there will be stability problem.

As a general rule, Motherboard, Memory and Processor is a "package". If you need to upgrade either of these components, you are best off upgrading them all. If you are lucky, that's really the only thing you need to upgrade and still end up with a working computer. If you are unlucky, you are going to have to swap more components than that.

Note that you can get a really fast computer only by upgrading your Motherboard, Processor, Graphiccard and Memory. You can keep the rest as long as it fits, upgrading it separatly if you want to.

The question is what kind of sockets your motherboard have. There are two things in particular to look at; Expansion ports and Harddrive/CD slots.

When I say expansion ports, I am talking about the bottom left ports where you place graphiccards and soundcards. If you are unlucky, your graphiccard is an AGP card. That means that you have an older motherboard with an AGP slot. If this is the case, you are probably best upgrading both your motherboard and your graphiccard to PCI-E. If your old motherboard or your old graphiccard already is PCI-E, you are in luck, you do not need to upgrade both of these at the same time, you can upgrade either the graphiccard or the motherboard and then upgrade the other component later. The most recent soundcards is available in PCI-E, but it's usually better to grab the PCI version. If you have a PCI soundcard you can keep it.

Note that AGP ports are easy to recognize. They are usually one port that looks unique compared to the white PCI parts below it. They are often purple or blue in color, even if other colors exist.

AGP slot. If you have one of these, you are best of replacing both motherboard and graphiccard:


Here's an image of a card with two PCI-E ports. If you have a motherboard/graphiccard like these, you have the current standard and may optionally only upgrade your motherboard and later your graphiccard, or the other way around:


The other thing to look at is your harddrive/CD ports. Here you have two things to look at; ATA or SATA. If you are unlucky most of your harddrivers are ATA. ATA is a large port, probably as long as your thumb. SATA is a very small port, usually using red cables, with a port as small as your thumbnail. Motherboards now generally only have one or two ATA ports, a long with a couple of SATA ports. It's still common to use the ATA port for DVD Burners/DVD Readers and similar devices, where as most new harddrives uses the SATA ports.

A green ATA port below, with eight SATA ports above it.

Well I just came back from the computer doctor. The computer died on the operating table. It had a broken motherboard.
I did the math and firgured that I would be money ahead of I bought a package deal. I got a Intel Quad Core 2.5 GHZ Q8300 with 3 Gig mem and a NVidia GeForce 9400 GT 1 GB Graphics Card. The Sylvania CRT that I was using took starting flickering a 2-inch width of lines near the bottom of the picture; so I got a 22-Inch wide screen. This has to be better than what I had. I am going to install a few games that I had problems with and see how they play. I couldn't run Mass Effect in my older PC. I should now.

I did a major overhaul in February when I blew out my old Athlon64 motherboard. Obviously prices change (and there are some good deals out there) but I got the following:

Intel Core2Duo E8400 @ 3.0Ghz
Gigabyte EP35C-DS3R motherboard
2GB Corsair DDR2-800 (2 x1GB in dual channel mode)
160GB 8MB Cache
eVGA e-GeForce 8800GT 512MB DDR3

The total cost was under $700. For that, I have been able to play every game I have (granted the most graphic intensive I have is NWN2) at their highest settings.

So, the point is that for a reasonably small amount of money (at least for tech toys), if you are willing to put it together yourself, you can get a pretty nice rig.

max killen said:

I got a Intel Quad Core 2.5 GHZ Q8300 with 3 Gig mem and a NVidia GeForce 9400 GT 1 GB Graphics Card.

I couldn't run Mass Effect in my older PC. I should now.

Click to expand...

That graphics card doesnt look that good for new games but you can always upgrade it later if needed. Hopefully you got a decent power supply. Processor is ok and mem too for XP if you actually got 2 x 2gb. If you got 1gb + 2gb it means you are not running the memory on dual channel and that means slower performance.

The new lcd might run on higher native resolution that also needs more juice to run than the old one. And if you dont run the lcd on native the resolution will be scaled meaning worse picture quality.

My 2 years old computer (more or less the same except better gpu) had problems running mass effect. I got only 5-20 fps. But then I tried omega drivers and they gave me 60fps. So if you still have low fps I suggest trying those.

Max, the graphics card is for office use only. You should return it and get something bigger. At least spend 100-130$ on a 9600GT or 9800GT(X) (choose whatever is more silent). You are wasting a lot of performance by relying on a slow graphics card. The rest of the PC will be bored waiting for it.

In older nvidia graphics cards the first number tells the generation but its the second number tells how good the card is! 9400 is same line as 8400 and 7400. All pretty poor performers. Better line is 9800 / 8800 / 7800 or 9600 / 8600 / 7600 . Note that even old card like 8800 (and possibly 7800 too) is faster than 9400.

The 1GB of ram is the usual way to fool the customers thinking its a good card - they like to advertise cards with lots of ram because ppl think that makes cards fast but it doesnt. The only thing lots of mem does is help run high resolution games but that card is not fast enough to run them in the first place so the memory is kind of wasted.