Well I'd like some help in determining my computer's bottleneck. I can run World of Warcraft but it's set to minimum settings and I still get lag in major cities.

Specs:

Dell Dimension 2350 motherboard, whatever that is.. Intel 845G chipset
nVidia GeForce FX 5500 256MB overclocked, on the PCI bus. No, not PCI-E. No, my board has no AGP slot. Theres a spot for an AGP slot, but nothing is soldered there.

Also running the onboard graphics card for a second monitor, running firefox or a leveling guide,

640MB PC2100 DDR RAM, one 512MB stick and one 128MB stick (maybe this is the problem? mismatched RAM?)

Pentium 4 1.8GHz processor from 5 years ago when I bought the PC.

30GB main maxtor hard drive, 5400 RPM. 4.36GB free
40GB secondary drive, also 5400 RPM maxtor, 2.44GB free

I know my PC is a piece of crap. What is my main problem here?

__________________
†Jesus†

The entire PC is kind of a bottleneck to gaming.. Upgrading any ONE part would just make that part bottlenecked in compare.

Your BEST bet is to buy a new Dell system. Or, if you're feelin' spunky, build your own.

Yeah the PCI bus is crappy.. and so is the computer... do you think all parts are equally bad?

If I were to buy a new computer it'd be an ibuypower like 540 dollar weekly deal, since it seems even cheaper than trying to buy my components and put them together.

I'm fully capable of assembling a PC, I just bought this Dell cuz it was the cheapest Pentium 4 system available at the time.

Pretty much everything on your computer sucks man, time for a new one... You could build your own for 500-600 and it would be a pretty decent gaming rig...could easily handle wow.

Case: $65 shipped comes w/ 2 x 120mm fans
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119106

MOBO: $135 shipped easy OCer (very popular), compatible with intel C2D (OCing is really easy and very safe if you dont go crazy, but if you dont want to OC you may consider an AMD am2 mobo and an X2 cpu)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128012

CPU: $114 shipped! Retail E4300... easy for mild OCs, best bang for buck C2D
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128012

Graphics card: $115 shipped - $20 MIR = $95 shipped. Depends, basically just get the best you can afford. For low budget systems this one is a decent deal. You can upgrade this down the road if you want.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130062

RAM: $86 shipped. Cheap 2GB kit, will get the job done well.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820134046

Hard Drive: $80 shipped. 7200rpm, solid 320gb hard drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136074

DVD Drive and Burner: $39 shipped. Good DVD burner, uses SATA cables which is nice.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106070

Power supply: $73 dollars shipped - $65 MIR = $8. A decent psu, it will handle this system fine, the rebate is what makes this deal hot though.
http://shop3.outpost.com/product/4548667

Floppy: $12 shipped. They do come in handy at times.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16821103203

Total cost shipped to you is: $719 - 85 in MIR = $636. Now let's see an ibuypower come close to that in terms of cost/performance. If you had to cut costs, the best place would be on the case (but make sure to take fans into account!) and going with am2 + x2 may be save you a little. The best place to improve this rig is the videocard.

I haven't really looked at hardware in a long time.

Are the C2D's better than the AMD X2's? How do I determine a mobo has a good chipset for gaming? Am I looking for bus speed, l2 or l1 cache or what?

Does buying good RAM really matter vs. El Cheapo?

What's better, two cheap graphics cards in SLI mode or one more expensive graphics card?

What types of internal peripheral data transfer come with new PCs? SCSI? What's SATA? What is best?

I guess I need kind of a hardware rundown on the new stuff, since I've been out of the loop so long.

and FYI I'm not a man, I'm a female.

EDIT: Also you pasted the same link for the CPU and the motherboard. There's no link to a CPU. I don't think that motherboard is SLI capable... should I spend the money for one that is?

How does this system you just put together compare to this from ibuypower:

Gamer's Fire 1950
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ CPU
ATI CrossFire 580X MB
1GB DDR2-800 Memory
250GB 7200 RPM SATA-2 HDD
18x Double Layer DVD+/-RW
2x ATI X1950GT 256MB 16x PCI-Express Video [Cross-Fire]
7.1 Channel 3D Surround Sound
10/100/1000 Network LAN
$819 shipped

Or this:
Weekly Gamer Special
AMD Athlon-64 X2 4200+ CPU
Nvidia Chipset DDR2 PCI-Express MB
1GB DDR2-800 PC6400 Memory
250GB 7200 rpm SATA-2 HDD
18x Double Layer DVD+/-RW
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT 16x PCI-Express Video
7.1 Channel Surround Sound

$692 shipped

Is the home built system better for less?

A multicore CPU (like the Core2 Duo) will only help if the game supports multi-threading, or if (as in your case) you want to run other programs at the same time.
As for the mobo, just get one that supports the parts you want to put on it.

Not unless you plan to overclock a lot.

One more expensive card.

SATA is Serial ATA. It's the current standard for most storage devices. While SCSI is somewhat faster, it's not as widely supported as SATA.

These are, of course, just my opinions. Other people will disagree with me.

Core 2 Duos have the highest performance, but Im not sure how the midrange compares with AMD. www.tomshardwareguide.com over clocked a Core 2 duo e6400 to performance levels equal to $900 processors.

el cheapo ram will not give you better performance then $$$ ram if youre running them at the same speed. If you do overclock though, the cheapo ram will give you errors in short order (generally).

One $200 graphics card is better then two $100 graphics cards linked together.

The higher the chipsets model number, the better. Except where nVidias's chipset like an i680 is compared to a 955x Intel chipset. Both of these chipsets are on Intel motherboards.

SATA is the new standard. SATAII is compatible with SATA, but it will not be as fast. Arguing SATA vs IDE is stupid, they are not a bottle neck.


If you are just going to be playing WOW the second ibuypower setup will give you an excellent experiance with lots of eye candy. If I had to pick a component for you to upgrade for more WOW fun, I would say get a better video card, but regular PCI might get in the way of that. I dont know.

Multi core would be better for everyone, the OS needs to process stuff in the background all the time, and then you have anti-virus, etc.

Mainly the right CPU socket. Basically this is how the cpu connects to the motherboard. Also don't even bother with an AGP port.


Not necessarily. You don't need professional quality RAM, however el cheapo is a bad idea, considering bad RAM will be happy to arse rape your system with not a hint of why it's crashing constantly. Check up RAM timings as well.

While I haven't actually had experience with it myself, I'd suggest SCSI if you can afford it, it's reasonably widespread due to popularity in servers.

So what is better, that home built system that the person suggested up above, or the second ibuypower system?