Solved! Need advice on upgrading Dell Laptop

skitheeast36

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Oct 21, 2011
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I currently have a Dell Dimension E510 and cannot play any games at all. I want to start to get back into gaming and am planning on purchasing a desktop in the next month or two.

I also recently purchased a Dell Inspiron 15r i5 Laptop , 4gb Ram 640G HD,Intel HD Graphics 3000, up to 1.6GB Video Memory. I know this isnt a gaming laptop by any means, but I would rather put some $ into this than get a whole knew desktop. That way the desktop can be used for homework and web browsing while the desktop can be the one for gaming/portable for college.


I would like to play games like Diablo ,Left4Dead and others, but can't with my current desktop. Would it be better to invest in a whole knew desktop or upgrade my laptop. Id much rather put in 1-200 in my laptop than get a whole new desktop. If so, what would I upgrade?

Any help is appreciated, thanks so much! Im pretty new to laptops/desktops, but would like to learn more!
 
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Yes it would. But you're also getting into the zone where you'd need to consider a power supply upgrade as well.
That 5 or 6 yeard old 305W power supply probably won't support the best graphics card you could afford.

It's probably time to start up a new topic in the Systems forum and ask for upgrading advice there.

jsc

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Laptops, in general, have very limited upgrade options outside of RAM and hard disks.

For any kind of decent gaming, you either need a big bucks laptop or a desktop system.
 
Your laptop will run those games.
Half Life 2, Far Cry, World of Warcraft - older games like that, will run on low settings.

It won't be possible to upgrade the laptop graphics for better performance.


Why can't your Dell Dimension E510 not run games?

 

skitheeast36

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And Im guessing putting 4 more GB of RAM wont really improve gaming either?
 

skitheeast36

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Would upgrading my video card be a solution to running some games, such as Left 4 Dead 2?

According to systemrequirements:

CPU
Recommended: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
You Have: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.80GHz
PASS


CPU Speed
Recommended: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
You Have: 2.8 GHz Performance Rated at: 31.136 GHz
PASS


RAM
Recommended: 1 GB for XP or 2GB for Vista/7
You Have: 1022.1 MB
PASS


OS
Recommended: Windows® 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP
You Have: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (build 2600)
PASS


Video Card
Recommended: DirectX 9 compatible video card with Shader model 3.0. NVIDIA GeForce 7600, ATI Radeon X1600 or better

You Have: RADEON X600 (0x5B62)

Upgrade Suggested: Unfortunately, your Video Card does not meet this requirement.

Features: Recommended attributes of your Video Card

Required You Have
Video RAM 128 MB 365.0 MB
Hardware T&L Yes Yes
Pixel Shader version 3.0 2.0
Vertex Shader version 3.0 2.0



Sound Card
Recommended: Yes
You Have: SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC
PASS


Free Disk Space
Recommended: At least 7.5 GB of free space
You Have: 26.9 GB
 

skitheeast36

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Sweet, I don't want to overdue it but I have ~100 to put into graphics card/RAM... 2gb of ram is what, 20$? Would getting an even better graphics card than the one mentioned above let me play on higher settings?
 
Yes it would. But you're also getting into the zone where you'd need to consider a power supply upgrade as well.
That 5 or 6 yeard old 305W power supply probably won't support the best graphics card you could afford.

It's probably time to start up a new topic in the Systems forum and ask for upgrading advice there.
 
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