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ARGH!!!
For those who haven't listened to my recent voice posts, a quick recap:
I bought a video card today. Everyone tells me it's easy to replace one, but I'm nervous. So I didn't start changing the cards tonight. And now, I'm thinking that's a good thing.
I just found out that my current video card is PCI. The one I bought is AGP, of course.
The bastard (and that word is MUCH too mild) that I bought my system from really used the absolute cheapest, shittiest components he possibly could. Which explains why the system has already had the hard drive fail and required a major rebuild.
I'm pretty sure that the motherboard is PCI only, but I don't know for sure. Under system properties it says that there's a PCI bus, and I see nothing at all about AGP, so I'm now 98.5% certain that this is a PCI motherboard.
Translation: I am screwed.
I can return the video card, hopefully for a cash refund, rather than store credit. But now I have to seriously wonder if it's not worth trying to upgrade this system. Perhaps I should have the decent elements of the system pulled out and used in a new system?
But the problem is that probably almost EVERYTHING in the system is the cheapest possible. I know that the main hard drive is good, because it's a replacement that I had to buy myself. I bought my own copy of Windows XP, so I shouldn't need to pay for that again. The processor is an AMD Athalon XP 1700+. I have 512 MB of RAM, although it's probably not good RAM - I don't know.
The sound card is crap. It's a Soundblaster, but it never worked right - ever. Static and garbage. A pocket AM radio sounds better.
The new hard drive is 114GB. The older (functioning) one is 55GB.
The monitor is 19 inches, and it's fine.
I could call PCs for Everyone and see what they could do. I suspect they'd tell me to replace everything except the hard drives; I might be able to get a very basic system for about $400. Assuming I can recover the $100 from the video card, I'd be looking at an additional $300. We're in a better position to afford that now than in a long time.
What should I do?
I bought a video card today. Everyone tells me it's easy to replace one, but I'm nervous. So I didn't start changing the cards tonight. And now, I'm thinking that's a good thing.
I just found out that my current video card is PCI. The one I bought is AGP, of course.
The bastard (and that word is MUCH too mild) that I bought my system from really used the absolute cheapest, shittiest components he possibly could. Which explains why the system has already had the hard drive fail and required a major rebuild.
I'm pretty sure that the motherboard is PCI only, but I don't know for sure. Under system properties it says that there's a PCI bus, and I see nothing at all about AGP, so I'm now 98.5% certain that this is a PCI motherboard.
Translation: I am screwed.
I can return the video card, hopefully for a cash refund, rather than store credit. But now I have to seriously wonder if it's not worth trying to upgrade this system. Perhaps I should have the decent elements of the system pulled out and used in a new system?
But the problem is that probably almost EVERYTHING in the system is the cheapest possible. I know that the main hard drive is good, because it's a replacement that I had to buy myself. I bought my own copy of Windows XP, so I shouldn't need to pay for that again. The processor is an AMD Athalon XP 1700+. I have 512 MB of RAM, although it's probably not good RAM - I don't know.
The sound card is crap. It's a Soundblaster, but it never worked right - ever. Static and garbage. A pocket AM radio sounds better.
The new hard drive is 114GB. The older (functioning) one is 55GB.
The monitor is 19 inches, and it's fine.
I could call PCs for Everyone and see what they could do. I suspect they'd tell me to replace everything except the hard drives; I might be able to get a very basic system for about $400. Assuming I can recover the $100 from the video card, I'd be looking at an additional $300. We're in a better position to afford that now than in a long time.
What should I do?