This is kinda a dual thread. First, do any of you know of a good friendly pc forum? I just acquired a pc and need some help upgrading parts for gaming. I'd like to keep posting here cause I trust the members in macrumors, and I know a lot of you do a lot of work with pc's anyway. But sometimes I get flamed for talking pc on these boards, unfortunately. Thats why I put this in the community section or "anything goes". Anyway, heres the situation:
I have an older compaq presario. Stock everything. It has an athlon 1.33ghz processor, 256mb of ram, and a nvidia, geforce 2 (i think) I'll update these specs when I get home to be sure they are correct. I really just want to game on this pc, and I want to upgrade as cheap as possible. I don't need a better harddrive, cd drive, case, etc. I can deal with the ram and I also know a bit about video cards, but what I'm having trouble with is how to upgrade the processor/motherboard. I know nothing about this. Can i Just slap a better athlon in there? do i need an updated motherboard? will they fit this case? Also the mobo has 2 slots and will accept max of 512mb in each, so 1gig is my max of ram, but that should be fine for most games.
Also, for most games how much does the processor matter compared to the vid card? Like if i slap a nice vid card in it will I not notice the slower processor as much? any advice is appreciated. also, if anyone knows of a place i can sort of "trade in" old parts, that would be great.
I have an older compaq presario. Stock everything. It has an athlon 1.33ghz processor, 256mb of ram, and a nvidia, geforce 2 (i think) I'll update these specs when I get home to be sure they are correct. I really just want to game on this pc, and I want to upgrade as cheap as possible. I don't need a better harddrive, cd drive, case, etc. I can deal with the ram and I also know a bit about video cards, but what I'm having trouble with is how to upgrade the processor/motherboard. I know nothing about this. Can i Just slap a better athlon in there? do i need an updated motherboard? will they fit this case? Also the mobo has 2 slots and will accept max of 512mb in each, so 1gig is my max of ram, but that should be fine for most games.
Also, for most games how much does the processor matter compared to the vid card? Like if i slap a nice vid card in it will I not notice the slower processor as much? any advice is appreciated. also, if anyone knows of a place i can sort of "trade in" old parts, that would be great.
