Upgrading old PC for son

[exhail]

hi guys i have an IBM ThinkCentre M/T 9210-KMV S/N L3K3096 it has a pentium 4 at 3ghz and 1gb of ram, i dont have the money to buy a whole new system so please dont suggest that i do, the computer runs fable lost chapters and so on, my son wants to know if it can run call of duty 4 thats all hes wanted for a while now, the computer does not have an agp slot which is very unusual what way could i upgrade the PC so it can run call of duty 4? my son doesnt mind playing at very low graphics

thanks

 

[batuchka]

If 1024 x 768 normal settings is not too low just hit a cheapo 880G with HD 4250 integrated video/X3 + 2GB combo and u set for anything really - add a HD 6850 if his gaming needs ramp up (with a PSU upgrade hehe)

 

[p4nz3rm4d]

wats ur budget?

 

[exhail]

im getting a decent PC for him next year when sandy bridge and the bulldozers come out as he is taking I.T next year, the thing is his friends have quite a few LANs and he said hes missing out, i mean his friend has a pentium 4 and a radeon 9600 and it can play call of duty 4. thats why i just wanted to upgrade this old thing so he could play the game, i wanted to spend like $50, i think it has a PCI slot so maybe he could get an old graphics card? i could maybe get an extra gig of ram?

 

[exhail]

minimum requirements for call of duty 4

OS: XP or Vista
Processor: 2.6ghz Pentium IV or equivalent (3.2ghz recommended for Vista)
RAM: 1024mb (1536mb recommended for Vista)
Video Card: DirectX 9-compliant Shader 3.0 card with 128 MB of DDR Video Memory (256 MB recommended) AGP 8x or PCI-Express x16
Sound Card: 16-bit DirectX 9-compliant sound card

DirectX9 for XP and 10 for Vista, 8 gigs HD space + 600mb for swap file.

Supported chipsets:

Nvidia Geforce 6/7/8 series

ATi X800 or higher

According to CoDUtility.com via CharlieOscarDelta.com

 

[exhail]

will this PCI card run call of duty 4? 128 MB ATI Radeon 9200 PCI Video Graphics Card, is this PCI card better than the 9200?

256MB NVidia Geforce FX5500 PCI Video Graphic Card DVI

 

[batuchka]

If u just want some gaming with no render/encode: there is no reason to assume 2011 titles are suddenly demanding the CPU intensity offered by SB/BD @@


The Game Rundown: Finding CPU/GPU Bottlenecks, Part 2
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/game-performance-bottleneck,2738-16.html

Conclusion: A Trend Toward 3+ Cores

The average optimal number of CPU cores suggested by the test results is 2.75, showing a clear trend towards at least three CPU cores.The question of whether the CPU or GPU is most important is easily answered. If you don't have a multi-core CPU, then upgrade it. If you have a dual-core CPU at around 3 GHz, then invest your money into a graphics card, as most games are GPU-limited. This is not something that will change with new DirectX 11 games.

 

[exhail]

i know but his PC has to last him around 6-7 years and he will be using cpu intensive programs, not just gaming, he will use solid works, auto cad, photoshop etc so i want to get him something decent at the time, so i just want to know will that PCI card run call of duty 4?