something like a 5450 or 6450 would be perfectly fine with that pc with its 300 watt psu. btw the power supplies HP/Compaq use have no continuous rating from what I have ever seen.
something like a 5450 or 6450 would be perfectly fine with that pc with its 300 watt psu. btw the power supplies HP/Compaq use have no continuous rating from what I have ever seen.well this system has a 300w max psu so video card will require a new psu.
I believe its 260w continuous.
I would say do these upgrades/updates, in this order:
(1) Clean install of the O/S
(2) Cheap GPU (as others have stated - 5450-class)
(3) SSD or SSD + cheap copy of Win7 (student or discount copy through work maybe?)
First item is free, second is maybe $50, and the third is between $100-150 or so. The existing CPU and RAM are probably fine for what they are doing.
Don't underestimate the ability of a half-decent GPU. When I built my sister's computer, for much of the same functionality + kids stuff, she commented that she could get and install any game and it ran awesome. As we all know, most people just buy software and then can get dissapointed when Sims3, for example, doesn't work on their $300 Walmart machine.
Parents are the type who install random stuff without caring (and then wonder why their desktop takes forever to show up)
Newegg has HD 5450's for only $35. Vista is still fine. There's no possible scenario where Vista is too slow for parent use. Maximum PC magazine listed "Windows 7 is faster than Vista" as a myth a while back, thought they did admit that there was slightly faster booting in Windows 7 because of 1) parallel driver loading, and 2) delayed driver loading. But the difference is slight, especially on a parent-type computer with minimal drivers to load in the first place.
A student or work copy is Windows 7 is cheaper, but it's also illegal to give away this privilege to other people. I realize that folks do it all the time but I don't think it's smart to advocate for this kind of stuff on AnandTech (and it's likely against the rules here to promote such activity).
you don't need to upgrade that computer for your parents. i went from an opteron 165 at 2.4ghz to a 2600k at 4.5ghz and there is almost no difference in general usage. your current computer is plenty good. a new format will fix the slowness.
I still do not buy that at all. again even my parents could tell Zacate was slower than their 4200 X2. it is as obvious as can be on many sites.This is the way I feel. My Zacate E-350 rig feels about the same web browsing as my Q9300 rig with 8GB of RAM. The Zacate rig does have a 7200.12 1TB HD in it though, which is likely even faster than my 640GB WD6400AAKS in my Q9300.
I still do not buy that at all. again even my parents could tell Zacate was slower than their 4200 X2. it is as obvious as can be on many sites.
that's nice and all but its still noticeably slower to me and anybody here else that came and tried out the pc while I had it. my friend's 5 year old laptop with a 1.6 Core Duo smoked the Zacate and was noticeably quicker. it also did not bog down as much as Zacate did on sites with lots of Flash and such. if it was my only pc there is no way I would be happy with it even for daily mundane tasks and web surfing.
you do not want me to list some of the sites I went to...Give me an example of a site with lots of Flash that you're referring to. I'll time page loads with the Zacate and a 1.6 Core Duo (which I happen to be typing on right now). Zacate is lower power than the Core Duo so I'm sure it's slightly slower. I bet it's minimal though...