[AdamG]

Get a Mac.

[Jaggamista]

Originally Posted by enginekid

whyy?

old dell cases are usually cramped as shit.

[Jaggamista]

Originally Posted by AdamG

Get a Mac.

QFT.

I can surf the internet and check my email so much better on a mac.



/sarcasm

[GOMER113]

Download and run CPU-Z.

CPUID

It will give you your motherboard information, as well as other useful tidbits. Post your findings and we can help you from there.

[omgitsrick]

Get an Intel quadcore, sli 9800gtx's, and 4 gigs of ram. Yeah.. *wets himself*

[enginekid]

How about this badboy:

Dell XPS 730 desktop gaming PC - Dell's latest and greatest technology and design for Extreme Gamers and Performance users



PROCESSOR Intel® Core™2 Q9450 (12MB,2.66GHz, 1333FSB)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium
SYSTEM COLOUR Aluminum with Clearcoat Chassis with X-panel
COOLING OPTION Dell CPU Liquid/TEC Cooling ATX Unit
MEMORY 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz OC'd up to 1600MHz-4 DIMMs
HARD DRIVE 160GB - WD Raptor 10000RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
SOUND CARD Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic (D) Sound Card
GRAPHICS CARD Dual ATI Radeon™ HD3870 512MB
OPTICAL DRIVE Single Drive: Blu-ray Disc Drive (BD/DVD/CD burner w/double layer BD write
MONITOR 24 inch E248WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel Monitor
SPEAKERS Dell A525 30 Watt 2.1 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer
KEYBOARD Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard
Mouse Dell Premium Optical USB Mouse

I selected all the above and the price Dell quotes is: $5,008

Pretty expensive. Maybe too much just for Sherdog posting

[Goodfoot]

A few things you can do. One is go to dell's website and plug in your service tag info into the website and you'll get a list of your components when the system shipped and you can opt to have dells website query your rig as is by clicking current configuration. Or use CPUZ or SiSoft Sandra to determine your hardware.
To upgrade your CPU and video card you need to know what motherboard you have. Since the system is 3yrs old i'm guessing the video card is AGP and not PCI-e.
You state your CPU is a Intel CPU/3.4GHz single core. I'm gonna guess that its probably a CPU Socket Type LGA 775 with a Prescott core. If you do indeed have a Socket Type LGA 775 you can use any CPU with the same socket type, even if its multi-core. Here's a list - Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!

So basically the question is what can you cram onto your motherboard.
To be honest your video card and processor could probably last quite a while longer since most games still won't tax your hardware that much as long as you don't have to have ALL the graphical bells and whistles maxed. Your best upgrade for your $$ would be your RAM. Going from 512mb to a 1GB is a world of difference and going from 1GB to 2Gb is heaven. Anything after 2GB is just bliss and showing off lol!

[Titan416]

Originally Posted by omgitsrick

Get an Intel quadcore, sli 9800gtx's, and 4 gigs of ram. Yeah.. *wets himself*

quad cores are not as good as the core 2 duo's for anything outside of 3d rendeing, video editing etc..

Most programs are not even coded to use two cores yet, let alone four. The Q9450 is basically two E8400's taped together and clocked slower. The Main difference being the E8400 is stock at 3.0 GHZ and the Q9450 is stock at 2.6. Since games and progams are only going to use two cores, then the two extra cores on the Q9450 go to waste. Since the E8400 has a higher clock speed, it then performs better then the Q9450 quad core.

Quad core's shine when you do extremely heavy multitasking. Like having multiple 3d rendering programs open, 300 processes running and doing Photoshop work all at once. Outside of that the performance gain is negligible and they generally perform worse then high end core 2 duo's for games.

[Titan416]

Originally Posted by enginekid

How about this badboy:

Dell XPS 730 desktop gaming PC - Dell's latest and greatest technology and design for Extreme Gamers and Performance users



PROCESSOR Intel® Core™2 Q9450 (12MB,2.66GHz, 1333FSB)
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium
SYSTEM COLOUR Aluminum with Clearcoat Chassis with X-panel
COOLING OPTION Dell CPU Liquid/TEC Cooling ATX Unit
MEMORY 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz OC'd up to 1600MHz-4 DIMMs
HARD DRIVE 160GB - WD Raptor 10000RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache
SOUND CARD Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic (D) Sound Card
GRAPHICS CARD Dual ATI Radeon™ HD3870 512MB
OPTICAL DRIVE Single Drive: Blu-ray Disc Drive (BD/DVD/CD burner w/double layer BD write
MONITOR 24 inch E248WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel Monitor
SPEAKERS Dell A525 30 Watt 2.1 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer
KEYBOARD Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard
Mouse Dell Premium Optical USB Mouse

I selected all the above and the price Dell quotes is: $5,008

Pretty expensive. Maybe too much just for Sherdog posting

My computer is better then that and it cost me $1500 to build myself. ( though i didn't buy a monitor)

BTW the Raptor drives are a waste of money and so is the DDR3 ram. If you are gaming you might also want to do with an E8400 over a Q9450 because games depend on two cores, not three and four. They also depend on high clock speed, something the E8400 beats the Q9450 at. Plus you can overclock the E8400 past 4ghz.

You would also want to drop the ATI cards and pick up one 9800GX2, that outperforms SLI HD3870's by a big margin.

[enginekid]

Originally Posted by Titan416

My computer is better then that and it cost me $1500 to build myself. ( though i didn't buy a monitor)

BTW the Raptor drives are a waste of money and so is the DDR3 ram. If you are gaming you might also want to do with an E8400 over a Q9450 because games depend on two cores, not three and four. They also depend on high clock speed, something the E8400 beats the Q9450 at. Plus you can overclock the E8400 past 4ghz.

You would also want to drop the ATI cards and pick up one 9800GX2, that outperforms SLI HD3870's by a big margin.

well. you know more than me about these things but how?

how do you know to make a $1500 pc thats as good as a $5000 one from Dell?!

and how is a person like me to know the difference between Q9450 and E8400?

and lastly, why would a 10K RPM HD be worse than 7.2K?