New card or new system?

[parkinni]

For the past 4+ years, my 12 year old son has been using the following desktop PC for gaming, internet and school work:

- Dell XPS450 (upgraded from P3-450 to PowerLeap Celeron 1.4 GHz)
- 384MB PC100 RAM
- GeForce 3 64MB video card (AGP)

Up until a few months ago, this system coped with everything that he wanted to play. However, with the release of lots of DirectX 9 games that he's interested in (Medieval 2 Total War, for example), it won't cut it and he specifically wants to play these games with his older brother on the home network (brother's PC is Athlon XP2700+, 512MB DDR RAM, Radeon X800GTO 256MB, etc.)

Is there a way to squeeze more gaming power out of my younger boy's rig, or should I sell it and replace it with something more capable?

If the best option is to replace, then what would be the minimum CPU speed/DDR RAM I should be looking for, and cheapest DirectX 9 video card? (I'm thinking that PCI-E would be preferred here?)

Thanks for your help,
Nigel

 

[31computers]

Get something similar to his older brother's setup. He will be thrilled, and peace will reign!

 

[parkinni]

Yeah, the Dell certainly doesn't owe me anything!

Budget-wise, I'm looking to spend as little as possible, or start scratching other items off the Christmas Wish List to compensate for it. I don't need a new monitor and saw that Dell had the Dimension B110 tower on clearance for $249. I'd have to increase the RAM and add a video card (if that's a possibility in this machine?), but otherwise would be good to go.

Or, maybe get a refurbished eMachines desktop from Tiger Direct? - I have friends at work who've done this and been extremely satisfied. In fact, my eldest son's PC is a Black Friday eMachines unit from a couple of years ago and we have been totally happy with that.

Alternatively, I could get a barebones machine and use the 80GB HD, CD-RW and DVD-ROM from my old Dell and go that route. I have no qualms about putting one together myself. Is there a barebones seller that you would recommend?

In your CPU advice, would a 2GHz Sempron cut the mustard? And what would be the overall hierarchy amongst AMD and Intel chips?

As far as a good sub-$100 PCI-e video card goes, I'm in the dark. I saw that THG's December round-up recommended the GeForce 7600 GS. Any others that I should look out for?

Sorry for the numerous questions, but it's been a while since I bought a new PC and I've kind of lost touch somewhat.