I'm upgrading my brothers Computer he has a DELL economy model 2350 which was a decent buy for $1000/cdn a year ago but now with the newer games like generals it just can't keep up with a decent frame rate even on the lowest settings. His system is basically a P4 (A) 2.0 (400 FSB), MOBO -Intel Brookdale-G i845GL which has the built in sound, LAN & graphics card.(his on board graphics card runs at 64 MB due to him having 256 MB of RAM but it's not enough or it's using to much of his RAM to run games smoothly ) He has 256 DDR SDRAM (PC2100) which is all his motherboard will support (by that I mean PC 2100 not 256 MB of RAM only.(he has 3 DIMMS so he could in theory run 3 Gig of RAM at PC 2100 but I think 512 or 768 would be enough for anything he should need) His MOBO has NO AGP SLOT so I was wondering if the best way to bring him up to speed on gaming for Generals and current software (not next wave like Doom 3 and HL 2 )would be to just buy him another 256 to 512 MB of DDR PC 2100 RAM and a ATI XTASY 9100 128 MB PCI video card from Radeon or if I'm better off to just scrap his system and by a new case, P/S, MOBO, & AGP video card and salvage his processor and drives etc.. from the DELL to give him a more current system. I figure I can get the RAM and Radeon Card to upgrade his system enough for generals for around $250/cdn or rebuild by salvaging parts of his DELL for around $450-550. I'd be interested in hearing what you may think in regards to what my best options are / would be. Thanks in advance for you opions Also i could exchange the ATI 9100 for a 9200 but i've heard the 9100 is built on the 8500 board and is better for current generation games is this true? I am also considering a Nvidea FX 5200 for around the same price but it doesn't seem to shine for this generation of games as much as the ATI mentioned above do. And of course my main question is there a difference in the PCI version of a card compared to a AGP for discussions sake compare the ATI XTASY 9100 PCI vs the AGP is there any difference??? I've looked and looked for any articles to explain the differences if any and haven't found any.

The difference in AGP and PCI will be the speeds at which it can process information. According to sources I found around the net, a video card will show about a 15-20% difference when using AGP over PCI. Now, as to your situation. Buying more RAM along with a new PCI card will probably work. Personally, I'd rather save up and dump a lot of money into a total overhaul than buy bits and pieces, but that's just me I guess. Anyways, you may also want to check his VRAM settings and see if he has it setup to take a lot of his HDD. If he has it set so Windows is managing it you may want to look into changing it. I changed my setup to a fixed amount and have seen a decent increase in performance. Of course, you could also run software(norton systemworks) to clean up the HDD and defrag it, as that'll help a bit as well. Checking the video card settings couldn't hurt, as sometimes there's things enabled that just aren't needed (if you're not going for spectacular looking graphics, there's a LOT not needed on most cards) and it will increase performance.

I would get a new mobo, compatible with the proc he has now, a new mid level video card and attempt to put it into his existing case. This would be the least expensive way to go.

Like you ,when I wanted to install a video card I was disappointed to find out I had no AGP slot ! My M.B. a Biostar M6TWG had i810 intergrated graphic's w/4 MB mem. My system a P3 750MHZ 256MB SDRAM O/S WinMe. I ended up purchasing an ATI RADEON 32M.B.SDR. ATI now has a PCI card w/64MB DDR. Iam very happy with the performance of this card ,the improvement over the i810 was ten fold. My system also has Award BIOS v6, and there was no option to disable the onboard graphics .I made sure it was set to PCI frist, then I disabled the intergrated graphics in device manager. Do not try remove ,because each time you bootup the system will detect the intergrated graphics and prompt you to install it ! Good Luck,Nick

sqpantz has it down I would also get a mb and a vid card. Put it into the case he has if possible. But i would also get a power supply and another stick of ram. I would definetly get a powersupply. I would buy something at least as fast as a geforce 4 ti for the video.

i would salvage the cpu, ram, cpu fan, hdd, and drives and replace the rest, you can get an entire overhaul for less than 200, then adding the card would be another 100 depending on how you went (g4 ti4200 is only 100 bucks and it is the biggest bang for your money), so you could spend 400 and get a great system. of course if you bought the most expensive, newest tech then it would a bit more, but if you look around for the best stuff at the best price you will be suprised what you can do with a little money, hope this helps

I have PIII 750 oc'd to 813Mhz on a Shuttle mobo with 384MB sdram, on Win2K. From onboard video to a TNT32 I noticed an immediate performance improvement of at least 40%..went from playing Ghost Recon at <5 FPS to 30+ .. keep in mind at lowest/fastest graphics setting..for medium detail etc i get around 15fps or so.. Than I wanted to play Battlefield 1942 but with a TNT32 the game wouldn't even startup. So I opted for GeForce4 MX440 64Mb..because I couldn't find a real performance test, etc. and for $70 clams it was worth the risk.. I can play Generals with my GeForce4 .. everything set to high except for a couple of options, shadow rendering and something else .. and the fps are not miserably annoying .. I also play Castle Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory..after tweaking some video settings I average >15 fps during HIGH LOADs..say a snowy map, with lots of action going on, explosions, and characters on a 40 host server; otherwise around 84fps. Now..my friend had nearly the same setup except for 2 things. His PC is running PIII-1Ghz and has a GeForce2-64Mb AGP. On StarWars Galaxies he plays maxed graphics also without any problems..after upgrading to XP2600 with 512DDR at 333FSB with same GeForce2 he can play Starwars Jedi Academy..FULL graphics to the max at 2048x864 surround (meaning the view rotates to emphasis the kill). MORAL if you made it this far...AGP is a big difference, especially in the long run..since the GF2 has been out for a long time.