To Upgrade or Not To Upgrade, That is the Question...(Discussion/Questions Regarding Performance in TFC)

[AHrubik 5]

Yes, but mine has a 160GB hard drive isntead of an 80GB one. I also added 2GB of RAM, but I already said that. I also posted a link to the specifications, but this is actually a better list of them.

 

It's a good thing I found it because you DON'T have an AGP slot. You DO have a PCI-Express revision 1.1 slot. This is actually in your favour as PCIe (specifically PCIe rev.3.0) is the current slot being used even in the most recent motherboards. The issue is going to be finding a card from a manufacturer who has taken the PCIe spec to heart and made sure their card is fully backward compatible.

This card is fairly new. Within your budget and Amazon has an awesome return policy if it doesn't work.

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-Superclocked-Dual-Link-Graphics-01G-P4-2753-KR/dp/B00IDG3LUO

Motherboard specs:

http://panam.gateway.com/s/MOTHERBD/Intel2/102007/102007sp33.shtml

Intel Chipset specs:

http://ark.intel.com/products/27733/Intel-915G-Graphics-and-Memory-Controller

 

[Terex 108]

Hah, what a surprise! PCIe after all >.<

 

Still, that videocard linked in the post above will not perform optimally with a P4 CPU. Caution is still advisable. Also make sure your power supply unit is up to the task.

[RandomASCII 5]

Well obviously you can buy one of the fastest AGP cards ever made for some $100 and that should be OK for you to play minecraft even up to medium settings (and modded on minimum settings). However, is it worth it in the long run? Do you only ever intend to play minecraft? Do you not intend to watch high definition movies? Do you not intend to use graphics (e.g. photoshop) or movie/music editing software? Mind you, even internet browsing and watching youtube videos will suffer. In other words, is the PC only intended for minecraft and possibly some word processing?  If yes, then sure buy an overpriced outdated videocard. However, if you have any desire to do anything else with the PC, then hold on and save up more money for a better rig. It's not that hard to do

Well, some of this is irrelevant since my motherboard has PCI slots, PCIe slots in particular(I knew it was PCI but forgot what type this is). Obviously my computer isn't dedicated entirely to Minecraft, because that would be a waste in its own. I also use my computer for programming. My IDE ran with absolutely no issue and relatively good build times before I even added the extra 2GB of RAM. I also use GIMP and my only issue is that certain filters take quite awhile longer to apply than I would like. Where I start to have rather severe issues is when I have to playback a video higher than 720p and when I play anything besides vanilla Minecraft. The only games I really have attempted to play on this computer are relatively old. I run into graphics card compatability issues when I attempted to run a copy of the second Sims game. From what I can tell, a graphics driver pretty much stopped working while playing it and somewhat drastically screwed up the color in my screen. A restart fixed that and I never ran the game again from that point. I also had graphical issues when trying to play Half Life 2. Though, those are honestly the only games I've ever tried to run on this computer. I never really bothered with any other games because I knew they would run poorly. I figured Minecraft would run decently since it seems to be much more CPU dependent than most games. It did, that sparked my interest in TFC, and here we are. I also don't see how upgrading from an OpenGL 1.4 card with an even more pitiful 64MB of vRAM to 1GB or even 512MB of vRAM and OpenGL 3 is such a bad idea when I'm seeing cards between $60 and $120. My original point was that I can much more easily afford $120 than I can the almost $1000 that I'm going to spend on my next computer.

 

Sorry that this was such a lengthy response, but I just wanted to make sure every base was covered.

[Terex 108]

Cheers for the response. Now if you google "P4" ( or "pentium 4") and "fastest graphics card" , you will be directed to forums (even Tom's hardware) where people advise without hesitation not to spend money to upgrade your old computer. Your processor is the bottleneck no matter what graphics card you buy. Sure, you might get some extra performance but it would be marginal. That your PC has a PCIe slot means very little since it is revision 1.0a, the first of its kind, the slowest and not entirely compliant. Maybe you buy a graphics card and it doesnt stably work with it. It's a gamble.

[AHrubik 5]

Well, some of this is irrelevant since my motherboard has PCI slots, PCIe slots in p...

 

Something else to consider is that anything you change is going to result in an increase in performance. While you might be tempted to concentrate on a Video Card it might make more sense to look at something like this.

The Gateway website says the current form factor of the PC is MicroATX so ideally any MicroATX board should fit in the case. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1901939  -  It's a motherboard/APU combo and is only $74. The AMD APU has a Radeon 8370D in it.

Add to that a stick of DDR3 1600 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226216  -  @ $42 and you'll have a very functional computer far beyond what you have.

You may end up needing a new power supply. $65 ($20 MiR drops price to $45)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139048&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL103014&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL103014-_-EMC-103014-Index-_-PowerSupplies-_-17139048-L0B

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136769 - and a new hard drive @ $51

 

For about $250 you could renovate that Gateway into a decent machine.