Okay, let’s pretend for a moment that I have the funds to do this. I want to play World of Warcraft on my mac (g4, agp graphics). I need to upgrade my processor, video card and memory, as far as I can tell.
Video card and memory don’t seem too hard. I’ve replaced these things in a pc (and removed a faulty one from this mac…), so as long as I have my drivers up to date I don’t forsee any problems.
Processors, on the other hand, scare me. If I want to upgrade from a 500 meg to say, 1.4 gig, do I need to replace anything else? (power supply, motherboard, etc)
Also, let’s pretend I have even more money. We have an older Pentium 3 HP that is currently sitting idle on our extra couch. As far as I know (I’m too lazy to hook it up right now) all it needs is a faster processor as it has had memory and video card upgrades fairly recently. Again, do I have to replace anything else?
Processor upgrades are dependent on and limited by your motherboard. Depending on the model of your mobo, you’ll be able to upgrade the processor only so much - there are any number of factors behind this. Your mobo’s manual (or an online source) will let you know the extent to which you can do this. In general, it’s somewhat limited - you’re not going to be able to put a P4 processor on a motherboard that was ment for a P3 processor, or G5 CPU’s on the G3 motherboard. And so on.
If you can figure out the mobo in the p3 that you have, I’m sure someone here can help you.
If you have that kind of cash just go get a G-5.
I just got a G-5 iMac 17" flat screen, 1.8 GHz processor I added 512 Mg of RAM, but you can go to 2GB. It has an 80 GB hard drive. All for less than $2000 at the Apple store. I walked in… 30 minutes later walked out with the above. The only difference from the G-5 tower and this is expandability. You can go to 4 GB of RAM with the tower. Price is the about the same, but no flat screen.
I thought it might be a lost cause. After I posted, we fired up the old pc beasty and found out it’s a celeron (I don’t know how fast… how do I check that in win 98? I feel I’ve lost my windows mojo) with… get this, a blazing 63 mb of ram. Whoo!
So, it’s a new computer or nothing. I can’t justify spending any money on new computer stuff, no matter how much I want to play while Ardred is playing. Oh well.
Thanks for the input, anyway. I’ll go back to wanting a laptop and not getting one.
$2000? That sounds pretty pricey, especially since the iMacs only come with a low grade GeforceFX 5200 Ultra video card. I could easily build a 2ghz Athlon 64 machine, with twice the RAM, a much faster Geforce 6600GT video card, and twice as much hard drive space + a 17" LCD monitor, all for several hundred dollars less than the iMac. Though it probably won’t look as pretty, it would be better for gaming.