Hey guys I was looking into buying the compaq d530 that has a Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz processor with 512mb memory/ram and upgrading it to 4gbs and maybe the harddrive to 250gb and I wanted to know if this would make this computer run smoother than ever and I also am going to put a fresh install of windows 7 would this be good for maybe some gaming or a lot of gaming and video editing etc. Or would it be just for casual users and is the pentium 4 3.2 ghz processor fast? 10pts
Update:Haha I had a feeling so instead would this be better to upgrade my a6500z with the Asus am3 motherboard and get a Quad Core 3.4 ghz amd phenom x4 and maybe put like 8gb memory and leave the 250gb hardrive till I get money for a 1tb one would that be Better for the previous needs I suggested earlier with the d530?
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
The Pentium 4's are ancient, and not suited for gaming at all. Look into getting a computer with at least a phenom ii x4 processor on the amd side, or i3, i5 processors on the intel side. The video card that comes with this computer is also an ancient integrated piece of garbage. No matter what you do to it is awful for gaming, and anything of that nature. It's an ancient dinosaur and I highly advise against wasting money on it.
edit: upgrading the motherboard and processor is a much better plan, however it needs to be paired with a decent video card if you want to do any gaming. A gtx 460 is a great video card and can be found for $150. Just make sure you have a power supply of around 450w and up.
Well if your hoping for the nice Aero themes your out of luck they aren't supported by onboard gfx as for the previous answer Most games at the moment don't support multiple cores so cpu wise its OK
Depending of the variant of the D530 you are getting depends on what GFX card you can fit if its the SFF then you will need a Half height card there aren't any good ones also the d530 is AGP so you are limited on the GFX cards you can use.
You are better off going for a HP DC7100 not SSF as it has PCI Express and will probably cost you around the same.
"...compaq d530 that has a Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz processor"
Which is going to bottleneck EVERYTHING, no matter how much RAM/money you waste on the computer. It's 2011, not 2001...
frequently i might say 128MB of ram isn't adequate and you may desire to enhance to 512 MB,notably once you're working XP which eats countless the memory,the situation is,you ought to purchase this days a clean workstation with what you are going to spend on upgrading,plus you will nonetheless will land up with a working laptop or workstation which will grow to be out of date and your 20 GB those days isn't adequate for storing your music,video clips,photographs,video games and all of the courses around today.Sams Warehouse shops have reliable useful and sensible computers,and the fee you spot is the fee you pay,none of this rebate crap all and sundry else advertises