What can i upgrade !! Need Help...

Hello , i just bougt a pc from my cousin its a Gateway AMD 64Athlon X2 4200 +, Dual Core Processor spreed is 2.2Ghz, whichhas 2048Mb DDR ram , it has a 320 GBhard drive, i also just purchased Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT 512MB PCIE 8600GT Directx10 HDCPvideo card from ebay , now some one mentioned something about a PSU or a GPU what are those things ? Im trying to get this pc to run crysis or gears of war on medium specs some one help me out here.

psu is power supply, and gpu is a graphics processor...You dont have to upgrade anything....you might want another 2 gigs of ram, and get 64bit windows vista. and is the ram ddr2 or just ddr? maybe overclock your processor a bit, and you'll be kickin...You probably shoulve got a 8800GTS, though. Hopefully everything I said was correct, lol.infamous16

First off, the internet has a wealth of information all over it, which includes half a dozen PC terminology dictionary reference site to make bookmarks (or whatever IE calls them) for. Here is just one of those:

http://www.helpwithpcs.com/jargon/jargonmenu.htm

In order of importance for game playing, the video card is number one. You cannot skimp on that. (You've chosen a Mid-Level one that is reasonably good -- not great, but not bad at all.) Number two is a power supply that will provide clean, steady current to that video card. The higher performance the card, the larger amount of current it will draw, and the larger the power supply will have to be to support the video card (in a game box, the GPU draws more juice than any other component -- now, does that reference there give you any hint? Graphics Processing Unit). Power Supply Unit = what -- yes, that is the PSU.

Your video card will need a power supply able to provide a certain number of amps of 12 volt power, that you will need to look up, then you need to look at the brand of the PSU now included, plus the label on its side telling you its various amp output numbers. If it's not enough, get an Enermax, Fortron, OCZ, PC Power & Cooling, Seasonic, or Sparkle brand PSU that does offer the needed amps on the 12 Volt circuit.

After the video card and its not so well-known or charismatic support device, RAM is next. You have plenty. The CPU is the third-most influential part, and the fourth most important for good game performance, after VGA (GPU), RAM, and PSU. Your CPU is sufficient for the games of today and probably into next year.

First off, the internet has a wealth of information all over it, which includes half a dozen PC terminology dictionary reference site to make bookmarks (or whatever IE calls them) for. Here is just one of those:

http://www.helpwithpcs.com/jargon/jargonmenu.htm

In order of importance for game playing, the video card is number one. You cannot skimp on that. (You've chosen a Mid-Level one that is reasonably good -- not great, but not bad at all.) Number two is a power supply that will provide clean, steady current to that video card. The higher performance the card, the larger amount of current it will draw, and the larger the power supply will have to be to support the video card (in a game box, the GPU draws more juice than any other component -- now, does that reference there give you any hint? Graphics Processing Unit). Power Supply Unit = what -- yes, that is the PSU.

Your video card will need a power supply able to provide a certain number of amps of 12 volt power, that you will need to look up, then you need to look at the brand of the PSU now included, plus the label on its side telling you its various amp output numbers. If it's not enough, get an Enermax, Fortron, OCZ, PC Power & Cooling, Seasonic, or Sparkle brand PSU that does offer the needed amps on the 12 Volt circuit.

After the video card and its not so well-known or charismatic support device, RAM is next. You have plenty. The CPU is the third-most influential part, and the fourth most important for good game performance, after VGA (GPU), RAM, and PSU. Your CPU is sufficient for the games of today and probably into next year.

Kiwi_1

Thanks ill look into the PSU.

As I've previously advised, that processor (CPU) is sufficient for what you can buy today -- maybe not C2D super fast, but still good. Don't worry about overclocking that just yet.

However, you are buying "only" a Mid-Level video card, and I would suggest that if you test the games you are interested in, and then only if you do not feel that you are getting good enough animation rates ("FPS" = Frames per Second), you may consider Overclocking the GPU instead. If you can get the 8600 GT to run close to as fast as the 8600 GTS, that would be helpful to you (nVidia provides the means to overclock their GPUs in their Driver Software package).

As I've previously advised, that processor (CPU) is sufficient for what you can buy today -- maybe not C2D super fast, but still good. Don't worry about overclocking that just yet.

However, you are buying "only" a Mid-Level video card, and I would suggest that if you test the games you are interested in, and then only if you do not feel that you are getting good enough animation rates ("FPS" = Frames per Second), you may consider Overclocking the GPU instead. If you can get the 8600 GT to run close to as fast as the 8600 GTS, that would be helpful to you (nVidia provides the means to overclock their GPUs in their Driver Software package).

Kiwi_1

Thank you.

Ok it says DDR two channel memory on the case so i guess its DDR2 ? And that video card that i bougth is ok ?telefanatic

That would be dual channel DDR, not DDR2... which suggests a 939 socket CPU/Motherboard. Are you sure the motherboard on that computer supports PCI-E video cards (like the one you bought) and not just AGP? Does it say anywhere on the box PCI-Express (PCI-E) or AGP graphics/video support?