Quote:
Originally Posted by FCollinsBuckeye
Dry:
Do you think it will be that hard? The deal is, wifey says 'no' to a new PC, but has consented to 'upgrading' the existing one. The way I see it, a new motherboard/processor is essentially a new PC with the old HD. All I need is more RAM (I don't think my current motherboard will take enough RAM for my needs) and more video RAM (I believe I have on-board video)...
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I'll bet cash-money what you have is worse than on-board video, it's
shared video (shared from general system RAM). You can throw $500 at the processor and system RAM and I honestly don't think you're ever going to see the performance increase for gaming that you think you should based on what you'll wind up investing. I'll gather also that if you have
any existing expansion ports for aftermarket video you're going to be stuck with PCI or AGP, and not the common/modern PCI-X.
All the components you'll want/need are not going to work in the existing board, and an aftermarket board is not a drop-in and replace option on a Compaq.
I'm sorry to break the bad news, but that's part of the deal when you buy a one-size-fits-all computer like a Presario.
Honestly, you'll see many orders of magnitude performance increases by buying a brand new case, motherboard, CPU, GPU, and RAM, and moving out the existing HD into a new system.
Upgrading your Presario would be like ricing out a Dodge Neon. Don't bother.