Advice: Buy or Upgrade

I currently have a Dell Dimension 8400 with Pentium 4 3.4GHz and I believe an ATI x300 graphics card. It was a great little worker until I was bombarded with viruses last month. I gave up fighting to remove them and formatted the drive and reinstalled windows. When windows was back, I couldnt use any of my disk drives. Sound card will not work and i cannot locate the drivers for any of these things. My friend says its time for a new computer, but im unsure.

All i did on the computer was use the internet and play games like Empire Earth 2 and Rise Of Nations. RTS games. I'm not into First person shooter games, i have PS3 for those. Anyway, would I be better off to upgrade my current computer's graphics card if i can fix the hardware issues, or should I go ahead and upgrade to something that's dual core? I'm not looking to spend over $300-$400 and all computers under that either have hardly any features, or a weak power supply. Any advice?

AKM880 is right on the money... I've reformatted a couple old Dell's before (Pentium II and III) and their website still had all the drivers I needed. I used the service code on the sticker on the back of the tower, and it pulled up the page that contained the drivers I needed. (which was great, cause I had no idea what model computers these were)

Click Here...

If you are still happy with your Pentium 4, there's no reason you should spend hundreds of dollars to buy a new computer.

Do you know what model your sound card is? The device manager won't tell you because it has no drivers.

Good luck with it, but without drivers sadly most programs can't recognize it. Is it just the builtin onboard sound?

Im afraid i dont know what you mean? Bullitin onboard sound? I cant access the sound controls, and games tell me i have no sound card installed. however there is a beep that comes from the tower whenever I have an error turning on the computer.

I got the sound card to work. all systems go. Do you think you could help me select a graphics card or should i start a new thread in that section?

It's an Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.4GHz with 1GB of RAM. the graphics card is currently a Radeon x300 i believe, and my power supply is 350W. Anything else i need just let me know what and how to find it.

With the 1Gb of RAM you currently have you might be better off just getting a 4350: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814125251

It'll be a nice upgrade from that X300, is it that or the X1300? Anyways the 4550 would be a good card too.

deffinately the x300. Came in my computer back in 03 if im right. So that card would still allow me to play my games and those in the near future correct?

It'll still be a massive improvement regardless lol

Ok, thanks to all of you who helped me. Ill definitely be making some improvements in the very near future.

Speaking of Dells great deals, i was just on there looking at the studio slim. im worried tho that if i get one of those, the 250W power supply will be too weak to handle some new graphics cards. And about the budget, i graduate next month, hopefully the budget will increase quite a bit. I customized one that i would like to have, and it came to $649 which I could probably handle if i finance it, but then the added graphics card would probably teeter on being just a tad too expensive.

Word of advice, if you want to upgrade don't ever buy a slimline PC. I leanrd it the hard way. You can't upgrade the PSU, you'll have to use it externally. Gaming is brutal for low profile desktops, except the 9800GT LP. The cooling is pretty bad, my 8400GS used to run @ 60+ degrees, until I added a fan on the side of my case it dropped till 46. And yes I have a slimline Dell.

The previous post concerning the X300 Vs. 4830 seems biased. I'm almost certain the processor and memory were different on the tests. A GPU score would be more valid, or a test that used identical components.

The 250 watt power supply is able to handle a 4650, which is able to run many modern titles at average settings (depending on the resolution). I believe there is 18 amps on the 12 volt rail, which should be sufficient.

Yep, comfirmed it is a ATX computer so therefore a graphics or PSU upgrade would be real easy.

Dell sometimes puts a proprietary PSU in their systems, I have no idea if this is true with the OP's system.

Dell has a tendency to underestimate their power supply ratings and graphics card manufacturers have a tendency to overestimate their power requirements so there usually isn't a reason to worry unless you have a really low rated one like in the slim.