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General discussion

e-machines t3256 for upgrade

Sep 26, 2006 12:26AM PDT

Hello there i'm new here, My name is Daniel and i have a question for you:

I currently own an e-machines t3256, with this specifications:

Windows XP Home sp2; 2.2GHz AMD Athlon XP 3200+; Nvidia Nforce-2 chipset; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; 64MB (shared memory) integrated GeForce4 MX; WDC WD1600BB-22GUA0 160GB 7,200rpm

So i would like to play this games: Quake 4 and Doom 3 on it, but just the demo of Doom 3 makes an awful performance on it, so i would like to know what would be the recommendations to upgrade my system to make this games very enjoyable on it.

I know for a fact i have an agp port, and as i saw a graphic of it, it can take up to 8x agp video cards, and the memory maybe i will have to change it to 1 gb of ram?, but still i haven't made a decition, i could use a lot of advice on it, btw i can invest like 300-400 $ to upgrade, any suggestions?

Thx.

Discussion is locked

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vid and ram
Sep 26, 2006 1:45AM PDT

Buy a 1 gig ddr333 package and an nvidia card for around 200 dollars. A geforece 6800 or better should be a great deal and play those games fine.

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Quick advise
Sep 26, 2006 2:38AM PDT

Since you use shared ram for video and system, you GOT TO GET at least 1gb of ram installed under XP. Then try to replace the video with a video card to return said ram back to system only and find at least 128mb or more video based video card. That will greatly improve you're gaming but if you use the top game level setting, it will drag again, so find a happy medium until you finally replace system with the latest and greatest.

tada -----Willy Happy

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Well thx.
Sep 28, 2006 1:49AM PDT

Thx to the 3 ppl so far who have answered. And here i thought i was stuck with this system, i'll see my options from here and let you know how his update will come up!
Thank very much again.

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in my opinion
Sep 26, 2006 4:51PM PDT

you have the makeings of pretty decent system here i will offer you the best advice your gonna get

1. loose the stock motherboard they are junk i repair computers for a living and i see so many emachines with bad motherboards it's sad an acceptable replacement pc chips m848a $31.99 at newegg

2. loose the power supply they are junk as well an acceptable replacement a thermaltake tr2 w0070 $35.99 at newegg

3. pickup a saphire 100575l radeon 9600xt $63.99 at newegg

4.loose your ram and get some low latency kingston hyperx memory 512x2 ddr333 $119.99 at newegg

total spent about $250.00 and i seen some rebates on a couple of these items that would bring your total even lower just use the rest of what you have and you will end up with a pretty good system

hope this helps!