I recently purchased a Compaq Presario desktop with AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor, and am wanting to upgrade the video card. Ive had my eye on the ATI HD4850 and getting 2 X 2gb sticks of RAM and a new cooling fan, and eventually a Blu-Ray drive. I am shooting for around $300 limit for everything, excluding the Blu-Ray drive. It has a NVidia 6150 SE with Turbo Cache already, but I dont like the card at all. It cant even play Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 without lagging. So any suggestions on a Graphics Card, RAM, and Cooling Fan at the best available for my $300 budget would be appreciated. Also I need a Graphics Card that will output to VGA so I can hook it up to my moniter. Im not how the output with video cards and all of that works. Thanks in advance for any help.
the ati hd4850 is great, bang for its buck card. but if your adding stuff like this, you need to consider getting a new power supply too, because you want to make sure your rig has enough energy to supply everything. maybe it already does, but make sure. im guessing a new psu that is enough for your system might be around 60-90 USD? i think around there. ram should be easy, just check your pc specs and see what type of ram you have, and buy it somewhere like from newegg, or local stores like frys electronics. check on newegg for reviews on the ram and such and which brand to get. for the cooling fan, are you asking about cooling like for the video card or for the case?
The 6150SE is a terrible graphics adapter, but credit where it's due, I couldn't max out RCT3 until I got my HD3870, it's a more demanding game than you might think. The HD4850 is a fabulous card, but you may experience power issues on an HP PSU. I'd recommend getting a Corsair VX 450W to be on the safe side. Links: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102747 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139003 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184 $330 or so before rebates, $280 odd after them.
I was planning on the fan to help cool down the graphics card as I have heard that this one can run a little on the hot side. Now once I get the new graphics card, how do I go about hooking it up because I have installed one before, but that was a long time ago. Also, because it has DVI and S-Video connections only on the card does that mean I will no longer be able to use the vga to connect it to my monitor? I mean my monitor has an S-Video hook up, but I would prefer to stay with VGA.
