Don't throw out the dell
Your Dell 3000 product details................
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/dimen_3000?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
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With a mid-range video upgrade like a PCI 128mb video card GF 5200 or less even, and bring up the ram to 512mb u can have a decent machine for less than $80 if you shop around for rebates ($60 for the video and $20 for the ram). It will run high end features of a game just not all of them at the same time. It will require a little balancing like mid-range graphics textures and high end effects on mid to off depending on the game.
you probably have on PCI slots because it is a micro tower from a name brand. If there is not a slot that looks different just above the PCI slots then you do not have AGP. You can get a PCI card for $60. They are actually more than AGP eventhough they are slower.
A PCI videocard can work just fine. I put a PCI video card in a Compaq with no AGP. If was a GF 5200 with 128 megs of video ram.
You will need atleast 512mb of ram for windows XP in the background too for a computer like this.
Doing this transformed this machine into a decent all around computer that can handle basic stuff swiftly and squeeze out a game with enhanced video features.
The problems arise with these Micro type computers is that they were designed for internet and word processing. So putting too much in will overload the power supply. If you do not have alot of drives in it, and just put the videocard in you should be ok. Maybe even a soundcard with EAX gaming surround sound. But anything that is not used should be taken out. You probably have a 250 watt power supply.
Component Wattage Required:
Motherboard 15-30
Low-End CPU 20-50
Mid To High-End CPU 40-100
RAM 7 per 128MB
PCI Add-In Card 5
Low To Mid-Range Graphics 20-60
High-End Graphics 60-100
IDE Hard Drive 10-30
Optical Drives 10-25
250 watts is doable. Just take out unneeded stuff and don't overdue the upgades. Too much ram, multiple drives, using every PCI slot, and highend video with cause it to shutdown. You might even want to disconnect/turn off some USB devices if they are hooked up and not used. If you have highspeed internet and do not use the modem for faxing take it out. Add the important stuff like video and sound for games then add/turn on the stuff rarely used one by one and see how the machine holds up. A Pentium 4 uses more power, so that means a older videocard will have to be used with it for example.
My Compaq has:
25O watts power
2.5 Celeron CPU
PCI only
GF 5200 PCI 128mb
512 windows ram
Soundblaster 24bit Audio with EAX f3.0 for 5.1 surround sound gaming
One hard drive
One DVD drive
2 case fans front and back added - because micro towers usually run way to hot with just a power supply fan and a CPU fan. Had to use washers for the front fan because the vent holes were too big. :approve:
The advantage of AGP over PCI in performance only matters when you start running a bunch of stuff in the background of the game with Windows like doing internet gaming or mulitasking with a game running. This is info from the Tech at Nvidia that makes Geforce videocards. So a PCI 5200 and a AGP 5200 are essentially the same with a game until u want to kill someone on the internet. Going on the internet will require turning down the graphics some, but not enough to make the game look that bad. With the internet it is good to turn it down anyway for less latency.
Also turn down Windows XP graphics. It is a hog. Make it look like the old windows and you will speed things up. Go to system properties then Advanced then were it says performance goto settings, and turn most of it off. This stuff is mostly fluff anyway.
You can transform this machine. You have to do a little reading and additon/subtraction, but it is not a total waste.
My high end machine has a 425 watt power supply for an Athlon 2900 CPU with a GF 5500 w/256 mb card. I built it myself and I will never buy a retail computer again. It is the best running machine I ever had and it was less than half what it would cost to buy it... $300 for the tower.
Advice... use the same manufacture for the ram if it is more than one stick being used in the machine. Ram is not tested combined with other manufacture's ram.
Let me know how it works out.
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