upgrade new Gateway GM5072 4200...

Hi,

Thanks in advance for any help.

Yesterday I purchased a Gateway AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core processor 4200+ system.

http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/R/ [...] 8sp2.shtml

It was a little under a $1,000 at Best Buy without a monitor and I thought it was my best chance for a 4200 dual-core system. I knew I had to upgrade the onboard video card. I was planning on using my ATI 9600XT AGP card for the time being.

This will be a gaming PC. I am finally moving up from an AMD 2100 XP system that has a bad motherboard or processor. This is a system that I pieced together from Newegg. I am looking to keep that system intact to be fixed for a second PC later.

Well I found out at home that it didn't have the AGP slot needed for my video card. So I was now determined to go ahead and purchase a PCI Express x16 card.

Now I find out that it only has a 300 watt power supply. So with the $300 card I was planning to purchase, I need to add another $80 to $100 for a power supply.

So my question to everyone is should I stick with this system and upgrade or start from scratch. I have no problems with building up a system and have done it several times in the past. I guess I was just hoping that a ready built system would be up and running in no time.

Again I appreciate any help and comments. Thanks, Mike.

Thanks for the reply on selecting a power supply if I go that route.

Any opinions between choosing to upgrade this Gateway unit with a power supply and video card versus just taking this unit back and building a unit from scratch from Newegg.

I thought I was getting it for a good price at $1,000 and thought I could begin gaming with my old ATI card.

If I go ahead and purchase the video card and psu, will this be a good gaming system good system for the money? I was looking at the X1800XT.

Or will I be happier in the long run if I took it back to Best Buy and pieced a new unit together? As far as performance for price?

Thanks again.

hmm yea, returning the gateway is looking good:

Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW $57 shipped @ chiefvalue
Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 $80 shipped @ chiefvalue
AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 4200 Retail Box $350 shipped @ etoys
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR 400 cl2.5 $163 shipped
ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 Socket 939 ULi M1695 $75 shipped
Western Digital Caviar WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s - OEM $96 shipped ***w/ $10 MIR***
LITE-ON Black 16X DVD+R / 8X DVD+R DL 16X DVD-R... OEM $36 shipped

$857 total

Then you can use your current card for now - then upgrade to PCIE whenever, and still have $ to spare.