Nerds: Help with upgrading my old media center PC

[K_W]

I'm not new to PC's by any means... yet I am out of the loop a bit. I can however build you any vintage gaming rig you could ever want from i286 up to Pentium 4 Prescott.

I am trying to polish up my entertainment center PC, an upgraded 2008 Dell Inspiron 530. We just use it to watch missed TV shows, YouTube, browse the internet from the couch, and some light gaming... but with the death of Vista it was time to refresh it. I put in an inexpensive SSD and put Windows 7 on it and it is running good, but not good enough.

As it sits now these are the specs.

Windows 7 Home 64 Bit Retail DVD (clean install today)
Foxconn G33M02 Mother board
Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 2.2ghz
C: 128 GB SSD (MB is SATA II)
D: Original 80GB 7200 SATA II
E: Original SATA DVD R/RW
Nvidia 8600GT 512mb
2 GB PC6400 RAM
Gigabit PCI NIC
Firefox 52
Avast AV
Steam
L4D2

I am running it into a 40" 1080p LED TV about 10 feet away and have a 45 meg internet connection


As of now I am able to play L4D2 singleplayer at 1920x1080 @ 30fps on Medium and watch YouTube at "1080p"... but "720p 60" is choppy at first and "1080p 60" freezes after a few frames while the sound continues.

My goal is to be able to play L4D2 Multiplayer at 1920x1080 @ 30fps on Medium and watch YouTube at "1080p 60" smoothly.

I am going to max out the RAM at 4GB this week... but not sure where to go next... Core 2 Duo E8600? Newer video card? Step down to Win 7 32 Bit?

What can I do next to reach my goal? Where is my biggest bottleneck?

Thanks guys!

 

[RugerRog]

Your system is pretty dated, 9 years old. I'd say you got your $$ worth. Before you sink too much into it, I would recommend starting over with a new MB, CPU, memory, and video card. I would also recommend staying with 64-bit O/S. You could go AMD to save some money. Go to Frys or Newegg.com for parts.

Either way you go I think 8gb RAM, and a new video card look for with 2gb. I would say your stuttering/freezing is probably because of the card, look for one with a minimum of 2gb.

 

[chezuki]

Fwiw, you're looking for geeks, not nerds.

 

[K_W]

Your system is pretty dated, 9 years old. I'd say you got your $$ worth. Before you sink too much into it, I would recommend starting over with a new MB, CPU, memory, and video card. I would also recommend staying with 64-bit O/S. You could go AMD to save some money. Go to Frys or Newegg.com for parts.

Either way you go I think 8gb RAM, and a new video card look for with 2gb. I would say your stuttering/freezing is probably because of the card, look for one with a minimum of 2gb.

I have a primary computer for general use already and I am going to build a new gaming PC this summer... so, dated or not this one only has to handle streaming video to the TV and it almost does perfectly as is. Just looking for a bit more.

What card would you suggest... So far in comparisons the 8600 GT outclasses nearly everything up to around Nvidia GT 620.

 

[Tanfodude]

First person shooting @ 30fps is atrocious, especially L4D. There are cheap GTX 680 nowadays. Just upgrade everything man, low end MB and more RAM goes a long way.

 

[Timjoebillybob]

Fwiw, you're looking for geeks, not nerds.

He's looking for help with a computer, not biting the heads off of live chickens...

 

[RugerRog]

I was looking at this site PassMark Software - Video Card (GPU) Benchmark Charts and the 8600 gt being an older card is toward the bottom of todays benchmarks. A Radeon RX 460 for $100, or GTX 1050 for around 120 both have 2gb of ddr5 and they should far outperform the 8600. Dont know if those are in your budget?

More memory is always a good thing to help in performance, and if you have 2 open RAM slots I would go 2x2gb then you would have 6gb. I would start with a video card and RAM first before upgrading the CPU.

On the video cards since it looks like you are connecting your videocard to your TV, what types of inputs does your TV have? Newer cards might not have the type of inputs you have. My 2 cents. Hope that helps.

 

[jkaetz]

Personally I use a Dell Optiplex 9020 SFF. It's relatively small, can be had with 4th generation core processor, and can take a half height video card. They can be had anywhere between $150 - $500 on ebay depending on condition and configuration but will be plenty powerful to run anything you want. I'm currently running windows 8.1 and using Kodi for media related things. Though you could replace a CPU, add RAM, or change video cards on your current system, you'll get more bang for you buck with a complete system.

 

[rabidsquirrel]

Your motherboard and ram is going to bottleneck you with any modern gpu. A slightly snappier cpu might be the only other consideration with an extra 2gigs of ram. Otherwise, like the other geeks have mentioned, it may be time to rebuild.