Need help on upgrade options

[vetteguy77]

Hey guys, I got a year old machine, but need more power!

I got a sony vaio PCV-RX550

Pentium4 1.5gig

256mb of sdram (expandable to 512)*

stock tnt2 64mb graphics card.....

I want more gameing power of this little comp...

I got about 600 to spend.

My questions are:

1) Which graphics card would be best for the money (less than or at 300 bucks)

2) it says expandable to only 512 MB of ram, why can't I put more in? or can I, what ram would be best for this machine?

3) What else can I do to get this comp playing games like planetside or star wars galaxie at reasonable speeds? (i'm in both betas)

I was told you guys are the best, please help me out,
Chris

 

[glock19owner]

600.00 would get you a new system with DDR and a GF4 Ti4200 or ATI 9500 Pro...better then spending the 600.00 on a outdated system that you won't get that much more out of...especially 600.00 worth of upgrade...That SDRAM is going to be your major bottleneck...

Get a new MB, Ram, VC and case...you can still use your old HD and CD-Rom(s) and floppy...might need a new PSU also...but that depends on the case you would get...

 

[sangapski]

like glock19owner said, you can probably get a new DDR based system with $600...
but if you just want to upgrade what you have now, then get another stick of RAM and a 9700pro...