Budget Upgrade for $100 on old Celerom PC?

[Geek-9pm]

Can you Upgrade for $100?
Here is a request.
How can a youngster take an older machine and make it into a good gaming experience. Right now my nephew has an older Intel motherboard with a Celeron 2.1 ghz processor and 512 MB of memory.
His current AGP  4x card is a Geo Force  5200 series with only 128 MB of memory. You'd like to get a newer card that has about 512 MB and he would like to up his system memory to about 2 GB. Unfortunately, the budget limit is $100. We have sought the buying used items on a bay, and maybe we'll do that to stretch the budget. Trying to get the best deal for the money is hard to do. I just don't have enough experience with what goes with what. Should we try for one of the new ATI x1600 series and buy as much RAM as we can afford?

How much to spend on more RAM?
How much to spend on good used Graphics card?
(AGP 4X)
Any suggestions?

[mypersonaltechadvisor]

I am afraid it will be hard with a Celeron, but what kinds of games does he want to play? Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2? World of Warcraft? Sims 3?

If he wants to learn about computers, I have a free idea. Go to some local computer stores (not the large retail chains, but a small, local shop that builds and repairs PCs). Ask if he can see their "boneyard" where they put old computers. I was recently looking for a couple components and went to a local shop. Never had been there before. The guy at the shop couldn't have been happier to have someone offer to take some old systems off his hand. He had a back storage room, no heat, no electricity, where he had 15-20 PCs that no longer worked for whatever reason. He said I could take whatever I ended up taking two computers, with hard drives, motherboards, video cards, DVD drives, basically everything but RAM. I'm sure they won't work as-is, but your nephew could possibly salvage a better CPU, video card, and maybe some other useful components.

If you're going to spend money to upgrade the Celeron, RAM will probably be easiest. Just about any video card will probably be faster than the CPU, so he won't realize the full benefit of the new graphics card. If you do buy RAM, get it soon. I've seen some memory prices double in the past month, and this time of year it typically gets worse.

Good luck!   

[TadasJA]

i baught my ATI radeon 9600 pro (I paid 35 LT for it [15 $ or so]) and I can play TES 4 : OBLIVION on Ultra High with quite nice fps (20 or so) and  if you check my specs i've uploaded into my profile, my machine shouldn't even turn on... XD

[Kurtiskain]

I'm sorry to say, 100 Dollars (I'm assuming US Dollars) isn't going to get you alot of bang for buck. AGP is  virtually a dead technology, the cards aren't made anymore, PCI-Express is now the way graphics cards are made. The best AGP card i have seen recently was an ATi HD 4650, but this cost nearly $200 NZ dollars.

As for the Processor...it all depends on what the motherboard can handle. I'm guessing the board is a Socket 478 with an older celeron series (poor him) sometimes you can get an older 2.4GHz - 3.0GHzPrescott core 478 CPU for $15 here in NZ off trade me, (NZ equivalent of eBay) but most people realise they are now rare and worth a lot more, and sell for over $150.

In my experience, he would be better off saving up somewhere around $600, and then upgrading the entire machine;

Motherboard
CPU
RAM
(he could possibly keep the hard drive)
Power Supply (He may not have to, it depends on what he already has)
Video Card.

The case can be kept, but the rest will change, and you WILL notice a huge difference in games and even day to day use.

You can see on the side there a history of my old rigs...and my one I have now still amazes me

mypersonaltechadvisor's statement is very true though. I work in one of those small chain stores in NZ, and sometimes we just put all of the older/unwanted stuff in a box at the front desk, it goes like wildfire. Go and see some, I am willing to bet they would be more than happy to sell you some parts for his machine super cheap or even give them away.

Goodluck!

[Geek-9pm]

Yes, the processor he has is a limiting factor in the performance you can get out of his existing hardware. Maybe I can persuade him to spend a few dollars on a new CPU for the 478 socket. Also, I think he should up the memory to at least a gigabyte or even more.
The game seem is most likely to play would be some of the older games. Such as the games from the a series of the Tomb Raider, The  Sam's and games like that. I don't believe he has any of the newer games.
Thanks for the suggestions.

[Kurtiskain]

Yes, the processor he has is a limiting factor in the performance you can get out of his existing hardware. Maybe I can persuade him to spend a few dollars on a new CPU for the 478 socket. Also, I think he should up the memory to at least a gigabyte or even more.
The game seem is most likely to play would be some of the older games. Such as the games from the a series of the Tomb Raider, The  Sam's and games like that. I don't believe he has any of the newer games.
Thanks for the suggestions.

(I should have mentioned this before) A good starting  point is to find out the model numbers of everything, and gathering a list of specifications, eg What processors will the motherboard handle? What is the maximum speed and capacity of RAM the motherboard will handle? does my board take IDE, SATA or both? ect.

No point in buying a 3.0GHz prescott 478 if the motherboard only supports Northwooc and williamette cores.

[BC_Programmer]

I was playing games on a 350 Mhz k6-2 just fine, thank you.

An Upgrade for 100$ is certainly doable; new video card, new processor; and off ebay they will be pretty cheap. The fact  that video cards are now made using PCI-E is completely irrelevant. They used to make cards with AGP, those cards didn't simply vanish. Heck, I have 5 or 6 AGP cards, a handful of PCI video cards, and a handful (4, maybe 5) ISA video cards; and I'm certain people like me are selling their AGP cards on ebay and other sites. They certainly won't be "top of the line" but the question was upgrade; and the PC in question certainly out performed my K6-2, which I used comfortably.

One thing you could do is just give them a old Commodore 64. then they will have to write their own games