Old Dell gx270n - component upgrade (RAM & AGP graphics)

[JungleJme]

Hey everyone, my l'il bro has an old dell, and my mum bought him Empire Total War for his birthday. Hes gutted he can't run it, and no surprise!. Anyway, he can't afford a new PC so i thought i'd try and help him out by attempting to upgrade memory and graphics.

The current system is a Dell Optiplex GX270N, P4, 2.8Ghz, 1 GB RAM, Win XP (sp2), 128mb radeon DDR 9600xt

My plan is to switch in 2x Kingston 1GB PC2700 CL2.5. (http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Memory/DDR/DDR333+%28PC2700%29/Kingston+1GB+PC2700+CL2.5+?productId=21463)

There are 4 DIMM slots so i may as well retain 2 of the 256mb sticks that are already in there. (Samsung 256mb DDR)

Giving me 2.5gb of RAM

Next i wanted to upgrade the Graphics Card but as its old AGP tech i'm finding it slightly difficult but to research, my plan was to install a Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 512MB AGP.

(http://www1.sapphiretech.com/us/products/products_overview.php?gpid=227)

Can anyone see a problem with doing this? The mobo supports DDR RAM but the card runs DDR3. Is this an issue?

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks in advance

Jme

 

[captaincharisma]

from looking at the minimum requirements for the game it requires just 1GB of ram for windows XP but the GPU need to have 256MB of ram on it and AGP cards can have upo to 1GB of ram on them so if the budget is tight you may just be able to get away with a new GPU. it doesn't matter what type of ram is on the GPU as long as its an AGP card it will work with the system.

 

[JungleJme]

from looking at the minimum requirements for the game it requires just 1GB of ram for windows XP but the GPU need to have 256MB of ram on it and AGP cards can have upo to 1GB of ram on them so if the budget is tight you may just be able to get away with a new GPU. it doesn't matter what type of ram is on the GPU as long as its an AGP card it will work with the system.

Thanks mate. I thought about skinflinting on the RAM but as i'm at it anyway i thought an upgrade would be a good idea. Thanks for the confirmation on the GPU compatibility, i was fairly sure, but apparently "i was fairly sure" doesn't get you your money back!

Thanks man.