[starbug]

I was thinkin of upgrading my ATI Radeon 7500, to another card. was thinking of the Geforce 6800 GT, every one recommends it to me, but i was wondering if there was any point, is it more easy to get my self a new machine, Was thinking of one of the Alienware Area 51 models (would require a fair bit of saving though!).  This is what i have;

Athlon 2600XP
512DDr ram
100GB Harddisk
ATI Radeon 7500 128mb
DVD writer
DVD rom
onboard 5.1 soundcard
WinXP home sp2
directX 9

The reason i am asking cos games likes of doom 3, Dawn of War even FS2SCP run slow. i want a machine that will play Quake 4 smoothly. So new card of new machine?? any thoughts

[Ransom]

You only really need to upgrade the 3D card. That CPU should run Quake 4 fine. More memory would be good but it's probably not essential, except for the highest detail levels.

[starbug]

Certianly would be the cheaper option. still need to save,

[pyro-manic]

Seems like a pretty good machine to me - the graphics is what's letting it down. Any of the higher-end graphics cards available at the moment would give you a very large performance boost. Look for a GF 6600 or 6800, or a Radeon X800, or even find a Radeon 9800XT for great performance at a low price. More memory would probably help, but I'd say spend the money on the graphics.