Hi all,
My soon to be 13 year old sons computer isn't as fast as he'd like. It's an older Dell Dimension 9100 tower . My question is should i just buy some ram and a new graphics card or bite the bullet and buy a whole new system???
Details:
Windows XP home Edition SP3
Pentium D 2.80Ghz
1GB Ram PC4200 (512 x 2 with two more open slots)
ATI Radeon X1300 PCIE 256MB dedicated graphics card
All he uses this system for is school work (word processing and internet searches) and light gaming. (Minecraft, Baseball mogul and dopey little internet games.) He likes to play sports related games on his consoles. Minecraft struggles on this system but they require 2MB of RAM and recommend 4MB...That is easily remeded with $70 worth of RAM... I'm just not sure about the graphics card. That can be replaced also but when do I cross the line of being foolish???
Minimum Requirements:
- CPU : Intel P4/NetBurst Architecture or its AMD Equivalent (AMD K7)
- RAM : 2GB
- GPU : Intel GMA 950 or AMD Equivalent with OpenGL 1.2 Support
- HDD : At least 90MB for Game Core and Sound Files
- Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 or up is required to be able to run the game.
Recommended Requirements:
- CPU : Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 (K8) 2.6 GHz
- RAM : 4GB
- GPU : GeForce 6xxx or ATI Radeon 9xxx and up with OpenGL 2 Support (Excluding Integrated Chipsets)
- HDD : 150MB
Software Requirements:
- Minecraft Release 1.2.5 or newer. Older versions will need to be updated to current versions
- Java (Java SE 6 Update 32 or Java SE 7 Update 4 or newer is preferred)
- Please note that some users experience issues playing Minecraft while using a mismatched version of Java for their operating system (32 or 64 bit), while using certain versions of Java 7, or while multiple versions of Java are installed
Buying a new system will be much more expensive of course and I don't mind doing it but I just don't think he needs the extra speed. He doesn't like blood so I don't know if I see him getting into the power hungry shooter games. My guess is that he'll stick mostly to console gaming, but who knows what the future brings? I know I'll end up buying a new system eventually but if I can hold it off a year it might be worth it...might.
So is spending the money on an older Pentium D windows XP system foolish?
Thanks in advance,
Doug
ps I would restore the old system to original to get rid of any junk that might be bogging it down.