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Ok, this will be a decidedly less sexy PC upgrade topic than the ones we've had recently.  I'm just looking to eek out a year or three more out of this current Dell.  Yes, it's a Dell. My cycle is pretty much Dell, small upgrade to Dell, build own PC, PC fails at some point, buy a new Dell.  So, we're at the point where I upgrade a few parts and  Frankenstein lives on until something I really want to play simply will not run on it and then I try my hand at building my own again.  I don't look to play a lot of PC shooters, but I am fond of the sandbox RPG, which can inflict a certain amount of pain.   Most modern games tend to not like this machine anymore (TF2 does spiffy, however) and I have to play at lower resolutions.  For some games, however, even that's not enough.

Here's what I've currently got.

Dell XPS 400 (Dell DXP051)
Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz
Chipset: Intel i945P
1GB (2x512) DDR2-SDRAM PC2-4300 (266 MHz)
GeForce 6800 [NV41.1] PCI-Express  Total Memory: 256 MB Texture Memory: 620 MB

I'm not really concerned about upgrading my hard drive or sound card but I'll list them if needed.

Not looking to spend a whole lot, just looking for low hanging, easy upgradeable fruit.

8800 GT and RAM.

Fin.

Do you have space for another couple of sticks of RAM?  If so, that's what I'd go after.  Upgrades where you don't have to throw out any old parts are teh win if you're trying to keep costs down.

Second choice would be a video card upgrade.  (Are 6800s SLI-able?  If so that might be worth trying.)

Hell, 1 gig of RAM doesn't suck. Slap in a 8800GT and call it a day. My rig isn't far off from what you described and I haven't hit a game that doesn't run like a dream with all my settings on medium/high.

Upgrading to 2 gigs of ram is worth it just to speed up his OS related shit.

RAM is also stupid cheap right now. You should be able to get a 1GB stick for $60 or less.

Yeah RAM and an 8800, in that order if you mainly want to play non-FPS games, reversed if you do.  The difference in some MMOs between one gig of RAM and two is pretty severe.  If you only want to get a year you could buy a cheaper 8600 too.

You have an PCI-E Video slot. You win at life. Ya...Good advice before this post. The new Ninvida card rocks hard for the price and buy a 2 gig kit of ram for your motherboard and your good until you need vista. Still looks to be a few years before its a compelling upgrade but who can tell? I am thinking that I should wait out until 64 bit for the upgrade but I am predicting the future here and I suck at predicting the future.

Rasix, as people are implying, your machine isn't all that sad. Bit more ram and a GPU upgrade and you're golden for a while. Get the 8800 GT (not the GTX or ultra). The latter are overpriced and the performance boost is minimal. Of course, the GT is on back order at many places.

DIMM 3 & 4 seem to be pretty vacant.  Would I stick 2 512 sticks in there, 2 gig sticks in there (does 3 gigs work in XP?), or just a single gig stick?  I'm assuming I need to get DDR2 (does matching the PC2-4300 matter?).

300 bucks for the 8800.  Hrrrmmm.. I could buy a Wii and SMB:G for that. Kidding, schild... or am I.

Also, it looks like the PSU in this machine is 375W.  Will that affect what I can put in here if maximum it's going to be 2 sticks of ram and possibly a vid card upgrade?

Thanks for the advice, everyone.  My system isn't horrible, I've just had problems with some newer games (but seriously, fuck Crysis) and in games like Oblivion, M:TW2, HoMM5, etc there is quite a bit of room for improvement. It's never ran Source games remotely well until TF2 (others seem to have a case of the crashies). The RAM thing may be the most important as some are implying, disk caching seems to be one of the things I notice the most. 

PSU. You upgrade now.

Seriously, any newer card you put in there will (I'm guessing) want to pull down far too much power. How many amps do you have on the 12v rail?

I had a PSU problem for awhile...upgrading to a nice Antec solved pretty much everything. The PSU is overlooked FAR too often; a mistake I myself will eneavor to never make again.

I would go RAM after that. I have a BFG 7800 GS. Yeah, I'm still on AGP, but the point is that your card is actually not that bad, so RAM would be the most helpful.

And you want to talk about sad systems?

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
1GB RAM (512mb x2 matched Corsair XMS sticks)
BFG 7800 GS AGP (nvidia)

I can pretty much still play whatever I want. TF2 runs well enough, though I could probably stand to crank the settings down more for more consistent FPS performance (large battles can be problematic). I would like to build a new machine in mid-late 2008, so I'm not even sure any more RAM would be worth the hassle, as I'm trying to not put another dime into my current machine, which is from late-2002.

If it were me, I'd go for a couple of sticks of 1 GB under the rationale that you're eventually going to have to drop that RAM when you upgrade to DDR3 (or whatever comes after DDR2).  If you've got 4 slots total and enough scratch, 4 sticks of 1 GB.  This is assuming you don't find a better deal that gives you more ram for cheaper.  (Usually 2 GB RAM Price > 2 x 1 GB RAM Price.)

The 8800 might seem pricey, but the video card is your quickest way to higher performance in games, especially if your CPU is in no danger of bottlenecking (with 3.00 Ghz you should be safe).  These days, video cards have so many strange classifications that it's easy to rip myself off if I'm not careful (compare an 8800 GTS to a 8800 GTX).  That's why I'll always cross-reference the charts at Tom's Hardware (http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html) before I dare put down some cash on a video card.

18A max it says on the label.

3 GBs would work in XP but 2 GB is really all you need. Don't stick only one stick in there -- that'll mess up your dual channel memory. The two new sticks don't have to be the same speed as the original ones as long as they aren't slower.

Power supply might be an issue. The 8800 GT is relatively low power usage compared to some of its comptemporaries but it will draw about 20 watts more than your 6800 GT at load (I believe, I could be wrong depending on how low it idles) which may or may not be more than the power supply can handle. There are other less powerful video cards like say the 8600 GTS that are comparable in power usage to your 6800 GT but then of course you might not get as much boost in FPS.

Here's the 8800 GT FAQ including the recommended minimum power supply info (400W, 26A on 12V line):

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_8800gt_faq.html

so it would be dicey to try it with your current power supply. It may still work, though, since by my calculations (which again could be wrong) it's only going to be drawing about 1.5A more than your current card.

I'd say 2 512 sticks.  Like Trippy said, you want that dual channel goodness.  It's also usually cheaper to get more smaller sticks than it is to get fewer bigger sticks.

Any brands to recommend for RAM? Any brands to avoid like the plague?  I think I'm going to get another 2 512MB sticks pronto. Really cheap.

For cheap I like Patriot. Otherwise Corsair, Crucial, and Kingston are probably the best known brands. I always look at what's available from Corsair first when shopping for RAM.

Corsair, never let me down, ever.  I've never seen RAM that wasn't super shady generic shit be much cheaper either.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146566

$26 after main in rebate. Seems decent enough.

Some Corsair. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145538
Kit: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145539

Yes that should work fine.

Edit: Corsair is lower voltage, which is good (less power usage, lower temps). It's slower than the Crucial, though, so if you built a new machine and wanted to move the memory over there may be issues. DDR2 800 is the current standard for Core 2 motherboards, though that's going to change as the FSB continues to increase.

So, is the 8800 GT a very large improvement over the 8600?  I think I'd be uncomfortable putting the 8800GT in the position to stress a Dell PSU.   Just trying to weigh cost v. performance for the  8600 and 8800 + PSU.  Also is how much longer the 8600 will stay relevant over the 8800.   

Also, when (if? heh) I go to Vista, it'll be on a new machine hopefully a few years out.

PS. RAM ordered

The difference is substantial. Anandtech comparison  (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3140&p=8) between the two, and general review of the 8800 GT, with a power consumption chart towards the end. As you will note, the difference in power useage is actually fairly small between the 8600 and the 8800GT

Yikes, seems somewhat silly to even consider the 8600 after reading that.  Ok, I have a destination, now I have to figure out how I'm going to get there.

This could be a Christmas present, I suppose.

Hannukah comes early this year. Come to Phoenix and then you can tell your wife I gave it to you as a gift.

I can't wait for Hanukkah.  It's my favourite holiday!  (http://www.terranuts.com/forums/images/smilies/dreidel.gif)

I'm partial to St Paddy's.

Paddy Pro Tip: Do not drink fucking green beer, newbs. Drink Guinness.

I'd just like to vote for Corsair memory. I've had two RMA's for motherboards that fried two sticks. Ship it in - get it back in a week and a half.

Any recommendations for vid card manufacturers?  Or should I just be thankful if I can find one in stock? 

If the power consumption is too much for my current PSU, could bad things happen or would it cause no real damage and I just have to go out and buy a better one?

Nvidia chips. Really any of the main manufactures. EVGA, BFG etc. AMD swallowed the only compition at the gamer level and has not been competing since.

A given.  I'll be getting a 8800GT.

I've happy with my eVGA but they make you register your card within 30 days if you want the lifetime warranty. BFG and now XFX also have lifetime warranties but without the 30 days nonsense.

And I'll add in my normal caution about evga shipping used/refurb cards for warranty rma. And I had a hell of a time with my 8800 rma through them and finally had to use newegg to get satisfaction. But...it is a lifetime warranty...

90 day step up too.

Help me extend the life of my computer too. As of a couple days ago one of my fans decided it was going to make some weird noises and today a smell started emanating from my computer. So I turned it off and on again with the case open to try and resolve which fan needs replacing. I can't figure it out. I've slowed my power supply fan, quickly stopped my CPU fan and fiddled with the motherboard fan. None stop the sound. When I start up the computer it sounds like it's coming from the CPU fan, but I can't tell for sure. Any suggestions? I'd hate to go out and buy something I don't need.

What kind of smell? I don't think smells are good things. You definitely do not want a smell.

It's hard to explain. The closest I can relate it to is burning croûtons.

you have 1 or more blown capacitors, either on your motherboard or in your PSU.  you can usually eyeball them and see if any of them are split or bubbled out at the top.

here you go this goes into what to look for: http://www.auroracomputer.ca/bad_capacitors.htm (http://www.auroracomputer.ca/bad_capacitors.htm)

For the noises use a long screwdriver and place it on each fan non moving surface with your ear pressed against the handle.

Sounds are surprisingly hard to pin down inside a case.  I could have swore one of my hard drives was making a weird noise but it turned out to be a case fan...

I can't find a blow capacitor even after using my lamp as a light source and having the images from the website beside me. Some capacitors look tilted but there was no bubbly stuff to be seen. I don't know if it's ok to touch, so I decided not to clear the dust away just in case.

If you have dust, you may want to vaccum. The smell might have simply been a dust bunny that torched from proximity to the CPU cooling fins.

After some extensive research I found out the mobo fans on these line of boards are really bad and tend to, over time, just start making noise. No real explanation for why. I just took a screw driver and bent the casing so it would stop grinding the fan. The smell was probably from dust burning up because I was moving the computer around so much. Vacuumed and all is well now. Thanks for the advice! :grin:

Looks like I'm getting the 8800GT for Christmas.  Any recommendations for a cheap/reliable power supply?  I'm thinking 500w should be sufficient and NewEgg seems to always have a few on sale/rebate (yes, I mail them in).

I've heard though that some folks have used the PSU I have to run a 8800GT successfully.  Is there any possibility of damaging the card by running it on a PSU that can't handle it?

I would toss Corsair's 550W (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139004) offering into the ring after doing a tiny bit of research myself, but I'm looking forward to other people's thoughts.

That's the powersupply I have. It's actually a Seasonic and it's fucking awesome. And quiet as hell. X360 is about 4 times louder.

I'd prefer ehh, the cheap.  I'm not looking for premium here.  This card will likely never be SLI'd in this case by whatever PSU I choose now.  I'm not concerned about noise either.  I can live with noise, my primary console is a 360.

What does SLI have to do with it?

Don't you have an older processor from thsi generation? Doesn't it suck more power?

Totally a "get what you pay for" situation too. A shitty power supply can SHORTEN the length of a computer.

How is power consumption going to matter when the $120 PSU at the same wattage as the $50 PSU?  I don't care about noise, SLI capability (some PSUs even at this low wattage say shit about SLI, I don't care), or how nifty it looks.   Paging Dr. Trippy.

And that Corsair isn't bad.  Some of these I'm looking at seem a little extreme.

Edit: Crap, the Antec I was looking at earlier isn't $50 bucks off anymore. 

If you care about your electric bills efficiency matters and the more expensive power supplies are often more efficient than their cheaper brethren. There's a new "80 Plus" certification standard for power supplies that you can look for if you care about such things though there are older models that don't have the certification but would qualify for it so you have to read the fine print.

I don't buy low end power supplies so I can't really recommend anything in the $50 range. Something like this might be a reasonable compromise at $70:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151040

though it's not much cheaper than that Corsair with that rebate.

It's very unlikely you'll damage the video card or the rest of your computer if your power supply can't provide enough power. Typically either the application will crash or your machine will reboot if the power demands are too great. What I do is run one of the looping 3Dmark demos or the FF XI benchmark overnight and if it's still running when I wake up I'm pretty confident my power supply is putting out sufficient power.

A good power supply can be 90% efficient or higher.  A poor one may be below 75%.

I.e. 100 W of wall current at 75% efficiency creates 75 W of DC power for the computer.   That other 25 W is dissipated as waste heat.  We all know that heat + electronics = bad.  A 500 W PSU that's only 68% efficient will waste an extra 100 W over a 500W PSU that's 88% efficient.  If you leave your computer on all the time that could easily be 5 - 10 bucks a month on your electric bill.  Over a year an efficient PSU may have paid for itself.

Different PSU's will have their maximum efficiency at different loads so that is something to consider as well.

Also, If the PSU sucks and, for example, is driving your 3.3V line at anywhere from 3.0 - 3.6 V depending on what time of day/how hot it is or, even just fluctuating rapidly between 3.29 - 3.31 V you can put a lot more stress on your system wearing down the life of everything else.

Excellent, thanks.  Detailed information ftw.

Yah, looks like anything decent runs $65 plus.  Some of the cheaper stuff tend to have a lot of lower customer reviews or have subpar amps on the 12v rails.  Heh, I know she got the card on sale.   :grin:

Power supplies are like shoes, you can't pay too much. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=BDTZcj8Xink)