Hello:

I have read the threads on upgrads for Compaq 5000 upgrads. They don't really seem to be of help for my question- I bought my Compaq 5000 in May 2002. I would like to be able to play the games that are coming out now.
I had two new memory sticks put in this summer to help the two year old games run more smooth.
I now bought and downloaded a game that I cannot play. I have a Geforce MX 200 and 1.75 gig clock. The new game runs best on 3 gig clock and a GeForce FX 6xxx graphics card.

Now - I must upgrad my motherboard, as well as graphics card, true?


Thankx,

ErinL

Wow, that's a very high level for system requirements. But it sounds like you're saying that a 3.0GHz CPU and a 128MB graphics card (e.g. GeForce FX 6xxx series) is the RECOMMENDED specs. Those will always be high. I would expect the minimum system requirements to be lower than that.

However, on the basis that the GeForce MX440 is a 64MB graphics card, I'm guessing that the GeForce MX200 is only a 32MB card. Is that right? If so, then it won't do very well with the latest games.

Regarding the motherboard, it is a socket 478* board and that means that you can only replace your 1.7GHz processor with another socket 478 processor. As far as I know, that socket type doesn't go up to 3.0GHz. But you could get quite close - maybe 2.6GHz or 2.8GHz. If you want to go for a socket 775* processor, which will be faster, you'll need to change the board. If you want to keep the same board, you might need to find a BIOS upgrade to download in order for the 4 year old motherboard to support newer processors than the ones that were being made in 2002.

* I'm assuming that you're using an Intel Pentium 4 processor. If it's AMD processor, then they use a variety of different socket types, not 478 or 775.

Hope that helps.