A four year old system is getting old indeed.  If you want a new system, you'll find a lot of choices, unfortunately, whatever you buy is pretty much obsolete before it ever leaves the factory.  The industry changes and grows so rapidly.  Since you're not in a rush, I'd suggest waiting a couple of months so that Vista is in the installation channel and you won't have to do an upgrade install.  Video card prices continue to fall, so you'll come out a little better in that venue as well.

 

You'll want to look at either an XPS system, or a business class 9XXX series in order to get the most expandability and video card options available.  The e5XX class is limited by power supply and motherboard arrangement to single slot video cards, and a power supply upgrade may be necessary depending on the video card that you want.  Be aware also that everything is USB on these machines, there are no parallel or serial ports, although you can add them via PCI card.

 

Good luck, Wayne....

 

Dimension e510
Dual Core 940 3.2 Ghz Processor
1 GB 533 Mhz Ram
250 GB SATA 3.0 Hard Drive
Plextor PS-760a DVD +/- RW
Sony DRU-810 DVD +/- RW
x700 Radeon Pro 256Mb DDR3
2007 WFP Monitor

Inspiron 6000
Centrino P4-740
512 Mb RAM
60 GB HD
8X NEC 6650 DVD +/- RW Drive

 

 

Good advise!    Your 8250 with it's expensive RDram and slower Pent.4 533MHz FSB really has no upgrade path.  It was once a fine PC but it is best now to retire it to a E-Mail and Web Surfing machine.

 

The XPS410/9200 with a Core2Duo and a 7900GS with the Monitor deleted seems like the PC that would best meet your needs.  With two Gigs of memory it could be configured for less than $1500 and the standard HD is 250GB.

 

I too use the full paid version of Registory Mechanic and think it's great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thermaltake Tsumani Dream Case, Black with Side Window.
ASUS P5N SLI Socket 775 NVIDIA nForce 570 MB.
Pentium D 945 @ 4.08 GHz with Zalman CNPS 9500 AT Cooler.
2 Gigs (2x1GB) Corsair XMS PC 5400 675 Memory.
2 X eVGA 7900GTs @ 700/1800 Volt Modded, with Zalman VF900-CUs.
OCZ PowerStream 600 Watt. ADJ. SLI. PSU.

Of course we have the other side of the coin, The 8250 is a fine computer don't count it out yet. I have a 8200 and I upgraded it this past few weeks, and believe me it runs great went on E bay and got a new cpu (2.8 400fsb 512) and bought on ebay  two sticks of 256 pc800  new for $75.00.Brought my memory up to 1 gig I also put in a video card Get force 6200 le 256 agp, for $62.00,(Newegg) The cpu I got at the auction( New) I won it for $152.50. Total cost $289.50. I run flightsimulaor X and it does a great job for me. Later on this year after the dust settles about mid summer I then might think about buying a new one.Oh I forgot the shipping on the cpu $10.00.. Memory $8.00 card $8.00 Ball park it for $315.50 I can keep this one for a spare if the new one goes down.. which it might ,the way they throw things together nowdays..

 

                                                       Bob Moyer

byrnalan

 

If you are going to spend $200-300 on upgrades, yes.  You can buy a XPS410 with a Core-2 processor, for $600+- Free S&H and no monitor from the Dell Outlet.  Not certain if the system comes with a Vista upgrade coupon.

 

Bev.

 

 

 

 

Please don't send me questions about your system by DCF Messenger.
Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.