Im buying a new Dell because I'll be going off to college this fall and well the price is right, Im not so sure about the power of the video card Im getting. The PC I currently use is also a dell and is about 3 years old, it has an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 and I cant run Half Life 2 very well unless I dumb down all the settings. I want to avoid this type of problem in the future with my new PC. Here are my specs, tell me what you think. Module Description Show Details Dell Dimension E510 Series Pentium® D Processor 940 with Dual Core Technology (3.2GHz, 800FSB) Operating System Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 Memory 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz (4x1GB) Keyboard Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard Monitor 19 inch Ultrasharp™ 1907FP Digital Flat Panel Video Card 256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory Hard Drive DataSafe 250GB (Includes main hard drive plus a hidden reserve hard drive) Floppy Drive and Media Reader 3.5 in Floppy Drive Mouse Mouse included in Dell Wireless Package Network Card Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet Modem 56K PCI Data Fax Modem Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0 CD ROM/DVD ROM Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/dbl layer write capability Sound Integrated Sound Blaster®Audigy™ HD Software Edition Speakers Dell AS501 10W Flat Panel Attached Spkrs for UltraSharp™ Flat Panels Office Software (not included in Windows XP) No Productivity Suite - Corel WordPerfect® word processor only Anti-Virus/Security Suite (Pre-installed) McAfee SecurityCenter with VirusScan, Firewall, Spyware Removal, 36-months Limited Warranty, Services and Support Options SAVE ($30 after rebate) 4Yr Ltd Warr, At-Home Svc, Hardware Warr Support Dial - Up Internet Access 6 Months of America Online Membership Included Future Operating Systems Windows Vista™ Capable Operating System Re-Installation CD PC Restore recovery system by Symantec Dell Digital Entertainment Starter Entertainment Pack -Basic digital Music, Photo, and Casual Gaming Oh yeah, I guess I should say this aswell, This is with everything maxed out, meaning I can't select anything higher than whats listed, I can only go lower.
bump :/ I just need an opinion on weather or not this PC will perform well with current gen games aswell as next gen games.
um..well as long as you use broadband instead of that dail-up modem than your fine,but unfornuataly,your graphics card in there is really bad,it's not the worst,it will play current new games,you would'nt be able to fully maximize them though and in the future it wouldn't play next-gen games very well at all..personally,if i were you i'd wait for geforce 8 series,since it will have vista support...and all new pc games will be vista compatible...so...if your a hard out pc gamer,then your gonna have to buy a new card early next year,so it's your choice.
An ATI Radeon X600 is a low to midrange video card, not really a very large leap from where you are now. I don't think you will be happy with that card for playing games. Look at this chart from Toms comparing different cards http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/02/vga_charts_viii/page11.html As you can see the X600 is near the bottom with 22fps for the XT version in Quake 4 at full settings. If you look at the Fear chart it is in the single digits.
