Need help knowing what to upgrade

[Guitarman]

Hey folks. I'm having some issues with my comp setup and looking to upgrade.

Long story short, both FFXI and WoW destroy my current setup. FFXI is choppy at best and WoW runs at around 10FPS. Both with settings turned down very low.

This is my computer:

HP Pavilion a824n Desktop PC- Product Specifications

It's a HP a824n. Fairly old computer. Since buying it, i've put in 2 1GB ram sticks, and upgraded the graphics card to a GeForce FX 5200 i bummed off a friend that upgraded his computer.

Basically what am I needing to replace next to get this computer to be able to run both games well at decent visual settings? I've been told the motherboard and graphics card need to be upgraded. If so, any recommendations? I'd like to keep the upgrades to under $200 collectively. If there's any more system info you guys need please say so. I'm still learning when it comes to upgrading.

[Shadowhusky]

From the looks of it, you went from on-board video to PCI video? That's not a very big step really. Did you turn off the on-board video in your bios after you put in your new video card? Besides that, there's nothing you can really do to that computer to make it better. You're better off saving money and building a whole new system with a dual core CPU. You can use an AMD CPU if you really want to save money as well.

[Avanarius]

No agp? Weird.... Well, you're pretty much out of luck. Not much you can do to that system to make it run any better. Even if it had an AGP slot, it still wouldn't be worth doing unless you could get a donation card or buy something for cheap off ebay.

I'd save your money for a new computer.

[Isiolia]

You need a better graphics solution, however, as that computer doesn't have an AGP or PCI-express graphics slot, you have no real upgrade route.

Upgrading the motherboard, unless you go look on Craigslist/eBay/whatever for something older, will basically mean upgrading CPU, and RAM, and probably PSU, etc, etc.

In short, save your money and buy a new machine. I would suggest at least a $600 or so budget, preferably a little more.

[Shuemue]

Yeah, don't spend another penny on that machine, it's basically obsolete in terms of gaming these days.

However, that spec should comfortably play FFXI and WoW at medium settings. I'd suggest a reformat if you're getting shitty performance.

[Guitarman]

Alright thanks guys. Not what i wanted to hear since im unemployed, but good to know. Thanks


Shadow: Mind a quick run through on how i do that? Like I said i'm still learning, beyond building a machine i'm still somewhat clueless.

[Shadowhusky]

Shadow: Mind a quick run through on how i do that? Like I said i'm still learning, beyond building a machine i'm still somewhat clueless.

What you need to do is go into the bios during start up. If you don't know how, you just hit the delete button while it's booting up. Normally during the memory check or so, depending on your board. When you're into the bios, go to the intergrated menu, then find out where the VGA option is located at. What you want to do is disable it in the options, save the bios, then restart your computer.

[Guitarman]

diable vga, gotcha. thank again!