I have a Dell Precision 670 workstation, which I am trying to beef up to be a gaming PC.
It currently has :
Xeon 3ghz processor.
2GB Ram
Support for PCI-Ex16 Graphics card, up to 150Watts.
650Watt power supply.
I am looking to get an 8800GTS 640mb card, so i'm a bit more future proofed, for playing crysis, and bioshock.
I allso want to get another 3hgz Xeon processor, as they are going for a resonable price now.
My question is this. With my upgrades, will the power supply be big enough?
Also, will I have to make any cooling considerations with the 8800GTS. Currently, the Dell has different cooling compartments for the processors, so heat is quite minimal inside the case.
If anyone has one of these workstations as a gaming PC, please lemme know how it performs. I wanna know if its worth me spending extra on this Dell, or just building again from scratch.
See, on the specs, it talks about openGL cards, like the ATi FireGL V7350.
Those are specialized cards that have optimized drivers that enable them to be better at stuff like 3D rendering. They are usually the desktop gaming cards with revised drivers. They can still game, but in most cases they don't perform as well. Is it just me or does that system look a lot like the XPS 600? Anyone remember what cards the 600 came with? Those should give a good indication of what your Precision could handle.
Quadro and FireGL are also about 2x-3x the price of desktop cards, so unless you have cash to burn, I'd avoid them Plus they usually perform lower than the desktop cards (of the same level of horsepower) in games, because the are optimised (at the driver, BIOS, and I think hardware level too) to do 3D rendering and stuff as stated above.
The Precision 670 has a 650w PSU with adaquate power to handle a highend Quadro GPU.
The rest of the workstation is suspect. I suspect your Xeon is the equivilent of a P4. The unit will work for gaming, but an off the shelf $500 to $1000 Dell would kick your workstation's butt even IF you added a second Xeon.
I would not invest any more into this computer than what you have to. Install the Graphics Card by all means. You can take the Graphics Card with you to a future computer. But avoid upgraditis on the rest of the computer.
It is quite old really. I think my company bought it a good few years ago.
Its hardly been used though. Probably only been switched on a handfull of times!
When i'm using it, it seems to run fast as hell!
I don't understand what is wrong with the 3ghx one I've got though.
I'm not that up on processor technology, but I could build a new PC with a 2.8GHz Duel Processor.
OR Spend £150 on another Xeon, and have a 6gz duel processor!
It's not quite that simple. That Xeon Nocona is the workstation version of the Intel Prescott CPU. To get an idea of how it compares with other CPUs look at the: THG CPU Charts Prescott 630 3Ghz & Pressler 930 3Ghz The Prescott 630 should perform very close to your current Xeon Nocona and the Pressler 930 dual core CPU should give you a rough idea what you could expect with a 2nd Xeon Nocona installed. You can use the THG CPU Charts to choose other programs/games and look at the comparisons between those two CPU combos (and the other options as well). My own opinion is that its not a very good value to upgrade with a 2nd CPU. £150 is just about 50% of the cost to get a new PC that will better match the 8800GTS capability.
Eisen6faust 
Plus they usually perform lower than the desktop cards (of the same level of horsepower) in games, because the are optimised (at the driver, BIOS, and I think hardware level too) to do 3D rendering and stuff as stated above.