upgrading dell 2400

keithboy37

i have bought a dell dim 2400 and i am looking to upgrade the graphics card so 3d games can be played on it. i have read that there is no graphics slot to upgrade.
what i need to know is are there any ways to upgrade so 3d games can be played on the machine. if there is how do i upgrade :-/

NERRAD_4

Could try a pci graphics card m8. Should b OK with that. There is a range on ebuyer most are ati.

Joe_Bloggs

There is not much hope to find a PCI graphics card that willl do the business. The only option is to change the motherboard for one with an AGP slot. If you were prepared to do this then you would not have bought a dell but made a PC from components that were purchased to do the job.

Some of the high end gaming graphics cards cost more than the entire dell system!
The grahics cards that were top of the pile last year are now becoming affordable for the non-enthusiast.
J_B.

calibrax

There is not much hope to find a PCI graphics card that willl do the business. The only option is to change the motherboard for one with an AGP slot.

You can't actually change the motherboard on a Dell system withough buying a new case and a new power supply - the Dell motherboard is a different size to the standard, and the power connector is also non-standard.

You can get a PCI graphics card that will certainly do the job - something like the Sapphire Radeon 9200SE 128Mb DDR... it won't be as good as a high-end AGP card, but it'll certainly run 3D games without any trouble, and it'll be a HUGE improvement on the built in graphics card.

Steve ;D ;D

keithboy37

thanks all for the suggestions. are the pci graphics cards hard to install. ???

NERRAD_4

No they just slot into an empty pci slot! however you may have to change the bios settings. I have never seen the 2400 so not sure.

calibrax

thanks all for the suggestions. are the pci graphics cards hard to install.  ???

Fairly straightforward.

First of all, create a Restore Point in XP (just in case you do something wrong!)

Then go to "Control Panel" and double click "System". Under the "Hardware" tab, go into "Device Manager", and click the "+" next to "Display adapters". You should see the name of your onboard graphics card. Right click on it and select "uninstall", and follow the prompts. Then shut down the PC. This turns off your existing graphics card, to stop it conflicting with the new one.

Open up the PC case, and plug the new card into an available slot. Close the PC.

Once this is done, reboot the PC, and as it starts up press the F2 key to get into the BIOS settings. Find the entry for "Onboard PCI Graphics" and change it to "disable" or "off". This will stop Windows from trying to reinstall the standard graphics card. Be careful not to change any other settings. Then select "save and exit", and the computer will continue to start up.

Windows XP will detect the new card and prompt you to install drivers. Follow the prompts, and you're done!

Hope this helps!

Steve ;D ;D

Joe_Bloggs

Some people have put a dell 4600 motherboard in a 2400 case here.
The 9200 is not a DX9 hardware part so expect jerky performance in DX9 games. Tom's Hardware does a comparative review including the 9200 here.
J_B.

calibrax

Some people have put a dell 4600 motherboard in a 2400 case here.
The 9200 is not a DX9 hardware part so expect jerky performance in DX9 games. Tom's Hardware does a comparative review including the 9200   here.
J_B.

Unfortunately, Dell don't sell motherboards separately, so it would be difficult to get a new 4600 one... also, it would also mean you'd have to change some jumper settings and possibly even get a different type of memory. So, it's not really an option, especially not for the average user who is daunted by a PCI card install!

The Radeon 9200 is not a DX9 card, but that doesn't mean jerky performance - it just means that the DX9 features won't be available. This will only affect the image quality, and lets be honest, on this machine it's not going to be running in 1600x1200 with anisotropic filtering, FSAA and textures on maximum - so this isn't really a problem.

Incidentally, my 2nd PC is an Athlon 2000XP with a GeForce3 Ti500 (not a DX9 card), and it runs Half Life 2 on medium resolution with no problems or jerkiness. It's not as pretty as it is on my main PC, but it's still impressive looking!

Steve ;D ;D

Joe_Bloggs

@Calibrax
We should be thankful to the Half Life 2 developers for taking five years and producing a game at runs on DX7, DX8, DX9 cards. They had little choice as the hardware, their work utilised, evolved faster than they could write the game.

What is the spec of your primary games PC. ?

J_B.

calibrax

@Calibrax
We should be thankful to the Half Life 2 developers for taking five years and producing a game at runs on DX7, DX8, DX9 cards. They had little choice as the hardware, their work utilised, evolved faster than they could write the game.  

What is the spec of your primary games  PC. ?

J_B.

Games are backward compatible - developers realise that if they make a game which requires the very latest hardware, then they simply won't sell as many copies. So they make a game that looks fabulous on top hardware and looks good on other hardware, by putting in a host of options to reduce texture quality, shadows, resolution etc.

My main PC is a P4 2GHz with a Radeon 9700 Pro, 512MB RDRAM and it happily runs every game I own in max resolution... and that includes HL2, Doom3, and a whole host of recent games. And that's a 2GHz PC - not exactly cutting edge. I'll be upgrading the processor on it in a couple of months (not for gaming, but to speed up video encoding).

I have yet to find a game that isn't playable on my 2nd PC... Medal Of Honour: Pacific Assault is the worst one I have found, and that requires me to run it at 800x600. All other games I can run at 1024x768 and they are perfectly playable.

Steve ;D ;D