That's right... after years of puttering around on my P3-866 Win98 machine, I have taken the plunge, plunked down some money and will be getting a new Dell in a week or so. I guess it's never too late to join the next Micro$oft revolution? I got a nice beefy, Dimension 8300, P4-2.8Ghz w/800Mhz FSB, WinXP Pro, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD, 4xDVD-R, 16X DVD-ROM, 128MB DDR GeForce FX 5200 Graphics Card with TV OUT and DVI. Enough power and productivity to keep me happy for a couple of years. So... having never used XP, what do I need to look out for and what kinds of tips can you give me?
Crucial.com for memory to upgrade that puppy. Good machine, I hope you looked for a comparitive refurb on their site. DD
Sounds great rH. Congrats. Me, I'm going to squeeze every last bit of use I can out of my trusty P3-450. I don't use it for gaming, so I think it should give me at least five more years of life.
I really don't want to jinx it, but I have a Celeron 333 or something like that. But to this day, I think there was some kind of mix up or something, cause it's really fast, rarely crashes, and is smooth as hell. I just love this computer, and whenever I use new computers anywhere, I notice they always have bugs and stuff, and I'm afraid getting a new computer will mean dealing with all that crap.
Always do Windows updates I had the security patch for the Blaster virus weeks before it became a problem.
try replacing that vid card with a ATI card. I like the 9600xt. Bang for the buck card. it gives alot for $200, plus a free copoun for hl2 no strings attached(except you have to buy the card!)
I'm gonna have to agree with farhan007. Your new video card sucks. I'd upgrade it at your earliest convenience. (Or, possibly call Dell back and change your order to get a better card.) If you want to do ANY gaming at all, a low-end nVidia card will not suffice. My nVidia GeForce 4600 TI card, which is probably 2 years old right now, is STILL faster than the one you got. Is the DVD-R drive a -RW drive? Is it a dual +/- burner or just - ? I ask that because you can get dual 4x burners now for like $80 and below. I know Office Depot had a MIR special on one (last week, I believe) that lowered the price to $40. Something to think about. Also, what's up with the monitor? You get one? LCD? CRT? What size? If CRT, did you opt for Trinitron? (I haven't myself made the jump to LCD, because my 19 inch Dell Trinitron CRT, made by Sony, absolutely ROCKS.)
I'm using my current monitor set up. 17" Flat display NEC Multi-Sync and my 15" Flat Panel... I may go duel monitors on this setup.
I called Dell and my order already shipped! Dang, that was fast. I ordered it Sunday morning about 1 am and I called Dell this morning and it's already shipped. It should arrive in the next few days! Talk about fast... I'm gonna run with what I got. The only game I really play is Counter Strike and if I can play that with the integrated video card that is on my old PC, it's gotta work with a newer card regardless of brand, etc... (I hope)
My computer is a 200 mhz laptop. It has 96 MB of RAM in windows 2000, so it runs well. Flash and Acrobat are a problem though.
Counter Strike is an old game, so you should have no problems running it smoothly. However, if you wanna check out Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 in the future, you will most definitely need a faster card (as will I...). Nice dual-monitor setup. I'd definitely stick with it.
One thing for XP. You may prefer to go into the start bar properties and change the setup back to classic. The way XP presents the start menu may be a little confusing and irritating to you if you are comfortable with older windows versions. CK
I suggest going to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance Settings and unchecking every box you don't need, which for me is everything except "Smooth edges of screen fonts." You would think that these simple settings wouldn't affect performance that much on an Athlon XP 2400+ with 512MB RAM, but I really did notice better performance when I disabled some stuff that I didn't need. These things were apparently just using up a chunk of my system resources and causing my system to be a little more sluggish. Welcome to the sheep fold, rockHEAD.
i got my dell yesterday! wow... i cannot believe how quiet this thing is... it doesn't even sound like it's on... P4-2.8Ghz, it's so nice... I hooked it up last night after that debacle of a loss to Detroit... I have yet to connect it to the internet as I have some tweaking and network issues to deal with first... this is some machine!
