crappy cpu needs upgrade for games

well first of all, you will need to get something like a 2.8-3.0ghz p4
another 256mb or ram so that games like source can run good and a card like GF6600 for DX 9 gaming. DX10 is pointless on your system but first tell us your budget

This is crappy!
Ok, lets be constructive.
How much can you spend?
What motherboard do you have? I assume you have socket 478 and a AGP slot. (if you have socket 775 and PCIe, you upgrade life got a lot easier)
Even so, it looks like your weak areas are your RAM and Graphics card.
Upgrade to at least 1 GB of high quality RAM and a x1950 Pro (XT is better). Cards like the GF6600/6800 is good, but others like the 7800GS and x1950Pro are much better. (Some personally like the x850)
Check your PSU, cards better than the 6800 require extra juice.
Overclock your CPU as high as you can.
Then you can play almost any current game at mid settings at least.

At that point your PC is as decked out as it can get.
To upgrade again, you basically need new everything. You can get lots of help on that here. So, don't for example, get killer RAM and video card if you will get new everything anyway.

Then again, a Celeron will bottleneck any good GPU.

Overall, save up and build a new machine.

Yeah 1st off your cpu SHOULD work. not saying it will for sure because I don't know that much about cellys. You will definetely want more ram, but your biggest upgrade will be your video card. get yourself a 7600 GT or something like that and the difference in your games will immediately be night and day. If you are trying to keep your budget at a minimum until the day comes when you HAVE to get a whole new system, then I wouldn't throw a lot of money into this one. On my tinkering system, I had 512 megs of ram and an ati 9600 pro. I just put in an extra 512 megs and bought an X800XT AIW video card. the whole upgrade cost me around $200 and that system will be good until the end of next year when I can afford to go all new. And a bonus was that it still all runs on my old antec 330W power supply.

As for your DX9 problem, just PM me. I can help you out.

Wrong.

Its ALWAYS graphics card first, because the graphics card is the most important part of ur PC by far.

Yes, I would normally agree with this. However, he only has 256MB of RAM - I mean, he can probably barely run Win XP! If he had at least 512MB of RAM, then definitely the vid card makes the biggest difference. But basically, I still think he needs a new rig altogether.

i can go about $50-250 for my upgrade

if in the US, i'd say newegg.com and if in canada, i'd say ncix.com

Get some more RAM (1GB) and spend the rest on a graphics card. CPU isn't great but it's the least of your problems.

Assuming your not using RDRAM, this is what I would get.

RAM: I would get these assuming your running DDR. This is one gig of G.Skill ram with timings of 2.5-3-3-8. This will use $70 of your $250 budget.

Video card: I'm thinking something like this. Its surprising to me, but you can actually afford to get the big bad (for AGP anyways...) x1950pro. This will set you back $162.

Together, these come to $232 counting shipping, but not any tax you might need to pay. This should allow you to meet most of the requirements for the games, but there are some problems. First, your still crippled with that celery chip. A 2.4GHz celery isn't going to game very well. You should do alright with CnC3, but other newer games will probably pose problems. Second, you need to get information on your motherboard and powersupply. I'm assuming you can use a 8x/4x card. But if your motherboard is old enough, it might support only 2x. If thats the case, then we need to pick a different card. Your also going to need a psu that can power that beast. I believe your supposed to have a 450W PSU with around 30A on the 12V line. (30 seems a little high to be, you might just need around 26A)

If you do need a better PSU, I'd get this PSU (Fortron 450W for $64) and this video card. (eVGA 7600GS for $101 after rebate and shipping.) If you go this route, you only have to worry about whether your motherboard can handle the 8x/4x video card.

Even with overclocking, that celery will have issues powering everything. I like my second idea, the one with the PSU. That should get him going, and he should be able to buy a better CPU after he saves up the money. From what I understand, 3.0GHz P4s are going dirt cheap right now. Once he has a 3.0GHz northwood, 1GB of ram, with a 7600GS, he should be able to game on low/medium. Certainly better then what he has now.

well this is what i would do
CPU : P4 2.8ghz $62.00+ $4.99 shipping
RAM: 1GB (2x512mb)$64.99 + $4.99 shipping
VGA: GF 7600GS $89.99 + $5.64 shipping

this comes out to be like $235 which shipping from what i see, and its the best i could come up with the CPU is actually quite good, and it should work, my best friend has one and its been working great
as for your AGPX Bus i think its 4x/8x because you can run a TNT on AGP 8x bus anyways
hope this works

i know that the TNT is 2x but it will work on a 8x slot i had a friend who was suring a p4 2.8ghz on an ASUS P4800 board or something it had an agp8x slot and the TNT worked fine

yes i totally agree, if he could tell us the Mother board it would be great, but i an betting its has at least 4x and then we will see from there

Celeron should be fine to game at moderate fps in newer games.
My cousin has a celeron 2.4Ghz of the 478pin 533fsb series, motherboard doesn't support 800fsb but does support agp 8x, and its currently using a fx5500 that can play sims2 and UT2004 at 800x600 medium settings.

1. Upgrade your ram : My cousins came with 256mb ram aswell. The desktop lagged....nuff said. Get another 512mb or 1gig, these will cut load times on everything. I'm guessing you will need DDR - edit - a bit expensive now that its outdated, 1gig for about $60.

2. Upgrade your gfx : Cousin went from geforce2 to fx5500 which made sims2 playable. You would be best with a 7600gs(best bet for the cpu limit and cheap too). edit - well looked on newegg, 7600gs/x1650pro for about $90-95 after rebate.

3. Upgrade your psu : There seems to be a general rule around here that if its not an expensive psu its not good(well something like that)... I would suggest for you to rather save on this area and find anything over 400w at about the $40 price range. (a friend of mine is running 5hdds, an x800 and a p4 3.0ghz on a generic 500w) edit - look at newegg in the $20 to $50 price range, read all the reviews, if one has lots of reviews and nobody has said it just died suddenly then its should be a fine psu.

I suggest you use CPU-z. This should tell you what CPU, motherboard, chipset, ram and timings you are using. On the mainboard tab, we need to know the model name of the motherboard, and what graphic interface you have. That will tell us what video card you can handle.

As for finding out what PSU you have, I'm afraid the only way to know is to look. Pull the side off of your case, and give us any info you can. We'd need at least the model name/number of the unit. Any power information would be great. Look for something like this on the side of your PSU. If you can, provide both the number of Amps per 12V rail, number of 12V rails, and if its on your PSU, the total amps for all 12V rails combined. (in the example PSU, it says underneath the chart "+12V1, +12V2, +12V3, max load 52A" ) This will let us know how much GPU your current PSU can handle.

Intel Celeron
Codename - Northwood Brand ID - 10
Package - Socket 478 mPGA
Technology - 0.13 um Voltage - 1.536 v

Specifications - Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.40GHz
Family - F Model - 2 Stepping - 9
Ext Family - f Ext.Model 2 Revision- D1

Corespeed 2421.8 mhz
multipler - x 24.0
bus speed - 100.9 mhz
rated FSB - 403.6-403.8

Mainboard-
Manufacturer - ASUSTEK Computer Inc.
Model - P4SGX-MX Rev. 2.xx
chipset - SiS 650
SouthBridge - SiS 962

AGP - Version 2.0
max support 2.0

Memory- DDR 256 Mbytes

4745454b can you explain more like what i need and etc....

hey, ty guys for all this infomation now 2 more question

-my friend has a customized computer, his computer has been lagging abit anyone knows why?