Looking to make an affordable PC upgrade

I will preface this stating I am not a PC junkie, I know some things, but not alot.

I am looking to spend less than $200 to give my PC a preformace upgrade, so I can continue to play PC titles over the next year or two.

I'm not looking for insane resolutions or FPS, just servicable at around 1024x768. Don't need all sort of crazy effects either. With that said, the more the better. Oh, I like playing FPS (HL2, FEAR, etc), but not online.

Here is what I have:
A 2 year old Dell Demension (4600), 512 MB of Ram (factory) and a Radeon 9000 Pro.
*Edit* It's a 2.6 P4 if that matters.

I believe I can get DDR PC3200 DDR400 Ram, but I'm not certain what's in my system (cause it could be DDR PC2700 and I'm not sure it's good to mix and match).

I was thinking about getting one of these cards and 512MB of RAM:
eVGA 256-P2-N381 Geforce 6800XT 256MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card -$159
or
eVGA 256-A8-N340-TX Geforce 6600 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card -$113

Though, I don't really know if my PC can use a PCI Express card.

Any advise would be great.

I would go with a 6600GT, which you can get for about $110, and get as much RAM as you can with the rest. Dont get a 6800XT, its not a good card for $160. A two year old PC would be AGP, not PCI-E.

Go on Dell.com and search for your system's model number, find the docs, and look at what RAM you need. Crucial and Kingston also have memory finders that let you lookup the model number.

Thanks.
Crucial's website is where I got the info that I could get DDR PC3200 DDR400 Ram. Would I notice a big difference having a total of 1.5 Gigs of RAM over 1 Gig?

No. Actually on second thought you should just stick with 1 gig.

If you're firm on the budget, then another 512MB of RAM and a midrange videocard is about the best you could go for.
I'd say $400 for 2GB of RAM and a slightly better card would be more reasonable for PC games over the next two years.
BF2 and WoW already make 1GB seem a little bit lean.

Is 2GB of RAM and a better video card going make a difference on my machine? Just wondering how high I can go before being bottlenecked by my processor and RAM pipeline limitations.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Videodrone

Is 2GB of RAM and a better video card going make a difference on my machine? Just wondering how high I can go before being bottlenecked by my processor and RAM pipeline limitations.

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Eh you're pretty close. Honestly a 2 year old PC isnt going to hold up in 2 years no matter what you do. I think spending $400 on a better video card and 2 gigs of RAM to bolt on to a 2 year old PC is kind of a waste especially considering your gaming habits.

Id spend the $200 now and start to plan for a bigger upgrade in a year and a half. A system like the one I described will probably be okay at your parameters for that long but after that developers are going to be coding for 7800s and shit.

Your CPU is more than adequate for any game coming out in the near future.
If anything, the system bus would be the bottleneck, but that shouldn't be a concern on your system any time soon.

You probably don't have a PCI-e, since your computer is 2 years old. But, like Diff-x said, check out the specs for your computer at www.dell.com

Quote:

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Originally Posted by diffusionx

Eh you're pretty close. Honestly a 2 year old PC isnt going to hold up in 2 years no matter what you do. I think spending $400 on a better video card and 2 gigs of RAM to bolt on to a 2 year old PC is kind of a waste. Id spend the $200 now and start to plan for a bigger upgrade in a year and a half. A system like the one I described will probably be okay at your parameters for that long but after that developers are going to be coding for 7800s and shit.

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Kinda figured. The only things I plan on play on this system before I build a new system in 2 years or less is the HL2 expansions and STALKER. So I'm just looking for a hold over, until I get some things paid up.
I may start playing WoW, but from when I played the trial, it ran fine with my current hardware.

Thanks again.