Okay, I have an older Dell Optiplex GX-110. It has the original motherboard in it, and it only supports PCI devices. I am using a nVidia GeForce FX 5200, and I'd like to upgrade to something better, but the card(s) I'm looking at are AGP or PCIe. Is there a specific kind of motherboard I'd need in order for it to work in my computer? If it'd be too costly, I'll just have to stick with my current setup. But I feel really outdated -- this sucks. :( I have about $200-$250 I can spend. Any advice/help? Thanks in advance, Matt U.

Unfortunately for you, it has a *really* oddball motherboard as I'm sure you're aware.

Given the specs of the machine, I'd advise you to start fresh. You could probably pick up a second-hand PC that's easily two or three times as good for 250 bucks, just buy from someone you can trust.

If you recycle some parts, you can probably even build a machine for @250 if you're not looking at the bleeding-edge of technology. Better yet would be to save a little more money and replace everything outright. If you could gather another 2 or 3 hundred you can actually build a really nice machine for that kind of scratch.


Even if you could get a better video card in that machine (I know that one company makes 6200s in PCI form) the rest of the system is likely the bottleneck.

Time for a new rig, my friend.

Okay, I'm looking at the User Guide for my PC on Dell's website right now. It has all of the technical specs. SDRAM, DIMM, 200W DC power supply wattage, and things like that are all listed (of course).

So with that information, I could just find one, right? It takes a Pentium III (733MHz is what it came with). So if I were to match everything else, as well as a MB that supports a PIII processor, it should work right? I didn't know if size would be an issue simply because I've never done much work with MB's.

Thanks for the info, and I hope you can help me figure it out. =)

Okay, we can try to fix the other issue I had. It'd be a lot less expensive. LoL. It's very simple, I'd say. I just can't figure it out, and neither can my dad. It just now crossed my mind.

My dad has an older Compaq with a 1.1GHz processor, 512MB RAM (mine has the 512MB RAM from it right now), and AGP slots. Well, I tried switching my hard drive from my tower to the Compaq, but it didn't work. The system booted up to the Compaq logo screen, and immediately after went to a blank screen with the white DOS "caret" blinking in the upper-left hand corner. It wouldn't attempt to load my OS (Windows 2000).

When my dad was still using the Compaq, before he got his newer IBM machine, his hard drive had Win2K as well. Is it a possibility that my hard drive is having an issue with the MB or something in the Compaq? I moved my video card into it because it doesn't have built-in video (I don't think). And my HDD already has the drivers for my card.

What are a few possibilities (and their fixes) for this issue?

We never had problems with the machine before. My HDD was the only one in the tower, and the HDD jumper IS set to Master. If I could get it up-and-running with my HDD, I'd be sssooooo happy. LoL. It's not "top-of-the-line" or anything, but that's not what I'm aiming for. Just a decent leap from where I am now. And if it works, I'll probably (FINALLY!! =P) switch over to Windows XP. I just don't trust it right now on 733MHz PIII, 512MB RAM, 60GB HDD. I use Maya 6.0, Visual Studio 2005, Photoshop CS2, etc. So I don't think XP would be a great idea at the moment. ;)

I know Maya, VS, Photoshop, etc., are expensive. But it wasn't MY money that paid for them. Maya is an older version because I've owned it for about a year-and-a-half -- my mom and dad found a great deal on it I guess. =P I promise ... I'm not a pirate. HeHe.

Thanks much,
Matt U.

Does anyone have any ideas? Or do I need to take my last question elsewhere? I understand this is not a technical support forum, but I figured someone would have a quick and fairly simple answer.

Thanks,
Matt U.