Guidance on Upgrading

[fman83]

Hi guys,

I don't know much about PCs but I do know that its time for me to get a new one. I'm thinking of just going to the local Staples and purchase a PC there. I want to be able to play modern games in it like Left 4 Dead 2 smoothly. I'm not looking for anything high-end, just one that can play games reliably without having fps issues.

Here is my old specs:

Pentium 4 3.06 (GHz)
1.99 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS

Anyways, it meets the minimum requirements of most games but they don't play games smoothly because of insufficient frames per second. I mainly played Left 4 Dead 1 on it and didn't mind since the fps was high enough that it wasn't hindering my gameplay. It's a different story on L4D2, I can hardly enjoy the game even with all the settings turned down.

I plan the game quite a bit so I'm thinking of buying a new PC. My budget is about $500-$600. I'm thinking of buying this compaq:

Processor AMD Athlon II X2 215 Dual-Core Processor
Memory (RAM) 3GB
Type of Memory DDR2
Memory Expandable to 8GB
Hard Drive Size 500GB
Hard Drive Type SATA
Optical Drive SuperMulti DVD Burner with LightScribe Technology
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Premium 64-bit
Network Card 10/100Base-T network interface
Video Graphics NVIDIA nForce MCP61 Chipset

My question is how is this PC for gaming? Will this be able to play games smoothly without turning all settings to 'low'? The graphics card seems to be weak. I can't find a chart to see how it compares with other video card.

 

[tecmo34]

If I'm reading your specs right, it has no video card, except for onboard video. If you want it to game, you'll need to buy a video card.

Have you though about building with your budget? Review my "Recommended Builds" sticky in my signature. I think my bargain AM3 build would work better than your pre-built system.

 

[megamanx00]

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