Suitable gfx card for older system

[coopsjc21]

Hi,
I am looking at upgrading a friends older PC (about 6-7 years old) (spec below).

She did mention a whole new system but she only uses it for internet/itunes/office apps so I suggested a fresh WinXP install and upgrade rather than a new build.

She wants a blu-ray drive added and I will be bumping the memory from 512mb to 2gb and possibly adding a larger hard drive. However someone else on here mentioned a new gfx card would be in req. in order to play blu-ray movies smoothly. Everything is IDE in the system but I'm told I can get SATA to IDE adapters for the blu-ray.

P4 3ghz
Phoenix Technologies SiS 661FX motherboard (according to CPU-Z)
512MB pc2700 ddr
GeForce FX5200 128MB
80GB HDD
WinXP sp3

 

[cmndr_andi]

It looks like that motherboard uses an AGP graphics cards. With this in mind your graphics options are a bit limited.

One card to look out for is the AGP version of the HD 4650. This card is more than powerful enough to decode a blu ray 1080p video and can still be bought new (so you get full warranty which is very important).

As for upgrading RAM, 2GB of DDR1 is going to be very expensive. You may want to consider doing a full upgrade as a an athlon II CPU, AM3 motherboard (with onboard graphics that can decode blu rays) and 2GB DDR3 (costs around £45, but not stocked on OCUK) will not cost much more than a 2GB DDR1 + a HD 4650 AGP upgrade to the current system. The other benefit of this upgrade are that the CPU will be MUCH faster (as will the RAM) and also you can plug a Blu Ray drive in directly as that motherboard has 5 SATA connections.

 

[coopsjc21]

I have seen 2gb of DDR1 (PC3200) on a well known internet auction site for around £45.

I can pick up an AGP HD4650 1GB on the same site for around £68.

Also forgot to mention, the PSU is a 300-watt model... will this need upgrading with the addition of the extra memory, gfx card, larger hdd and a blu-ray drive?

I think an upgrade is looking at about £230 for the bits mentioned above.

 

[cmndr_andi]

I have seen 2gb of DDR1 (PC3200) on a well known internet auction site for around £45.

I would strongly suggest against buying memory off auction sites unless they explicitly state they offer lifetime warranty with the manufacturer. There are many stores if you look around that do offer proper lifetime warranty on 2GB kits of DDR1 RAM, unfortunately OCUK is not one of them, so I can't give you a link.

I can pick up an AGP HD4650 1GB on the same site for around £68.

Yes, that was the kind of price I was seeing for the AGP 4650s, again just make sure that the retailer you are buying from offers a decent warranty with the card.

Also forgot to mention, the PSU is a 300-watt model... will this need upgrading with the addition of the extra memory, gfx card, larger hdd and a blu-ray drive?

A good 300 watt PSU should be fine with this upgrade, however you will need to provide more details on the PSU so we can determine whether it is going to hold up. The HDD and Blu Ray drive together will only add around 10W max power draw, the graphics card is going to be the main power muncher. However, looking at the FX 5200 - it seems like it draws 65w at maximum load, while I believe the 4650 uses less than 50W. So basically, you should be fine.

However, I would suggest considering the full upgrade option, I threw this together to give you an idea of cost.

This price includes delivery and VAT.

Please ignore the Thermalright cooler itself, I just put it in as a placeholder since 2GB of DDR3 RAM costs around £45 and will need to bought from elsewhere as OCUK do not stock 2GB kits.

 

[coopsjc21]

If a new system then she wants Win7 so i'd go with 4gb of ram.

 

[Orcvader]

+1 to cmndr's list, that seems perfect for blu ray films. The onboard 785G will decode everything just fine.