PCI-E 2.0 cards work in a 1.0 slot?

[Alishe]

Cousin is looking to upgrade his old emachine from 05 and we were looking at putting a 3870 in it as he's on a strict budget, so will a 2.0 be compatible?

[Epical]

Yes. Just make sure the PSU is up to par.

[Alishe]

Thanks, but he just text me and now he only wants to double his crappy DDR 800 ram, which cost more for 2gigs than 4gigs of DDR2 1066ram and get a larger HDD. Apparently his budget just got stricter.

[SephYuyX]

He's really just dumping $ into an already dead machine. It's pointless to upgrade a PC any more these days beyond small things when you can buy a new better one for almost the same price.

RAM upgrades are fine, but once you start doing that AND a GPU AND a HD, you really might as well just go the extra mile and start from scratch.

Tell him to save up a bit more, and just buy/build a good $700 machine.

[Alishe]

I told him that, and even built him a really nice machine for 495$ w/o monitor. He is only going to do the ram and HDD now says he can't spare anymore money.

[Kohan]

Then -- if it isn't already too late -- tell him to not buy these upgrades, set the money aside, and purchase a better machine when he can. He isn't going to see a good improvement, if any at all. The average user, which he seems to be, probably will not notice any changes. Let him know that, too.

If he still refuses, wash your hands of him, and let him waste his money and time, not yours.

[Alishe]

Yeah I already told him that too lol.. I tried explaining to him that it was a waste of money, except the HDD because that can be used in a new machine but he is pretty stuck on getting this DDR1 ram so meh not my 70$ for 2gigs lol...