300 bucks? I would love to see the specs on that. LOL.  

Hi!

Yes, it will make all the usual jobs done, and likely also run most nowadays' games. Making one less comp to go to the junkyard, despite it still works, is also respectable.

The main problem with those old comp's are spare parts. If anything "breaks", you could have quite a hard time to find that spare, or it will cost you more to replace it, than to buy a less old second-hand comp. I wish you luck here.

BR,  Iztok

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116072

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128357

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125244

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811148030

That comes out to ~$300 with shipping, and there's a rebate on a couple items, PLUS i threw that together in 5 minutes, literally. You could find better deals than that, especially on the memory, i'm sure.

DVD drive costs about 21$ if you don't want to take it out of the old PC, and same thing with hard-drive, though i suggest an SATA drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136075

that one would be fine.

You can replace it for a few hundred dollars on the cheap end, so no, not much need to upgrade it IMHO.  I've turned machines like this into file servers. 

And you can buy prebuilt machines with bundled LCD monitors for <$400 at BestBuy, etc.  But I'd always recommend building your own if you are so inclined.  Better long term compatibility for your needs, doncha know.

So whats according to you the number of years cuttoff for a computer to still be upgradeable? I have an older computer, p4 3ghz with HT, 1.5gb ram, 80gb HD, which isnt that slow today, and i use for school work mostly.  Im not going to just toss it to the trash and get a new one.  I would like to get a new card for it nonetheless, since i think the video card is the weakest aspect in that pc, being a geforce 6200 what it has now.  I read some articles that Powercolor has announced that theyre going to release 2 versions of their HD 4650 and 4670 cards in AGP! If the price is right, Im getting one of those for this old rig!

zndkwin, there's a good chance that graphics card is overpowered for that CPU.  In other words, you won't get as much bang for the buck as you hope.  But if they're less $100 maybe the boost would be worth it. 

I'd steer clear of any Sapphire radeon cards, the one I won at the GUIC this year was totally useless once WB was loaded. I gave it to a friend for 20 bucks.

My current machine is not much better than the proposed improved one.

I'm looking to 'pass it on to the missus' ....and go a little 'i7', myself.....[even if it means flying to the US and pinching Brad's]...

It works ok....if I ever gave it/had the time to properly reformat and reinstall all the crap...or preferably less of it...

I'm just curious... How well versed are you when it comes to managing the hardware and drivers in your computer? I find it hard to believe that an issue like that would be limited to a single manufacturer of radeon cards.

I'd LOVE to get my hands on that issue and figure it out... I enjoy that stuff. (Though it would be WAY too much hassle considering the fact that I live in sweden.)

Mine is even worst that this one

(Athlon 3200+, 1BG RAM, ATI 9600/128...)

But as long as I can play Sins (and X3, and GC2, etc...), it's fine

I've been continually upgrading my computer for years now.  Every 12 months or so, I replace/upgrade whatever components are the bottleneck.  Last big upgrade was a motherboard replacement so I could transition from AGP to PCI-E cards.

The biggest problem I see with the OP's computer is the lack of PCI-E support.  I honestly don't know how well the old AGP port will hold up under the strain of modern games.

IME Sapphire has been among the best.  It's possible you got a dud card; it's possible there was a driver issue.  It's even possible it was the program's fault.  What card and what OS?

You'd probably need to upgrade the power supply as well.

I updated a computer similar to the one mentioned in the OP.  I don't think it's worth the upgrade since I wasn't able to run Demigod that well.

I think you will end up with a decent pc for normal task and some content creation but final rendering or gaming will be disappointing(you already knew this of course)

I didnt have money for a new pc so I was forced into the upgrade route.I started getting into 3d apps and video editing and my pc really showed me the diff between good old PS7 and ANY 3d app.

My emachines w3107 has always been reliable but hey,its an emachine. Sempron 3100+ to AMD64 3400+ was as far as the motherboard would allow...lucked into a bios flash that allowed overclocking.(she runs hot)...70$

memory to the 2 gig max...50$

Dont game enough to know what I am missing with newer games but I THOUGHT my new monitor wouldnt run on the onboard graphics...I was wrong but got a newer card, nvidia 8600 gt 140$ (that turned out to be extremely helpful with hidef video because media player classic HOME CINEMA will offload rendering to the gpu on newer video cards)

so was it worth 260$?...no not if I had done it all in one go but it had to be done piecemeal because of finances.

But...it does run MUCH better...the graphics card was the biggest rip...I bought it right before the prices went plunging down...naturally.

3:30 render to numbered images...7 hours @ 1680x1050...too slow amigo.

I have a Dimension 3100 that I bought in 2005.  It had 512 Mb of RAM, a 40 Gig HDD and onboard sound and video.  The best thing about it is the Pentium IV 3.2 Ghz processor.  I upgraded the RAM to 2 Gig, New 500 Gig HDD and a 256 Mb nVidia card. Oh, and a 20 inch LCD.  Even though the pc is "old", its still a great pc and I see many more years of use out of it for what it is mainly used for.

Now, my laptop, that monster is a different story altogether...It's awesome.