Upgrading Dell Dimension 4600

[beanymattd]

Hi there this is my first time posting on here so please bear with me.
Basically i'm looking to upgrade my Dell dimension 4600i.
The current specs are:

2GB RAM

Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.06GHz (2 CPUs)

Nividia GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X Graphics card 64MB Approx Memory.

I believe it has a 250W Power supply.

I mainly use this for World of Warcraft, i'm looking to upgrade to improve my World of Warcraft game performance.

As far as i'm aware my graphics card is awful and needs an upgrade.
Please guide me with advice on what i should upgrade to.
I'm looking for a graphics card that i can use without upgrading my power supply preferably.

Thanks

[Aaron_8015]

If you are unwilling to upgrade your power supply im afraid your options are very limited. Do you have a budget? Power supplys are not very expensive and will open up your video card options a little more.

[beanymattd]

Im willing to upgrade my power supply. If i upgrade my power supply and get a new video card how much of a difference will i notice in game play?

[Aaron_8015]

Depends on what you are running now. If you are using onboard you should see a fair increase in framerate as well as free up the system memory it is using (depending on card purchased). The only thing is that your pentium 4 might hold your frames back as WoW is more CPU dependent than video card.

[beanymattd]

i see well my video card at the moment is only 64mb i think it says on dxdiag so thats pretty crap so i should notice a difference?

[Aaron_8015]

Performance of the video card isnt based around how much memory it has. As it has 64mb It is either a very old card or on-board so yes you will see a large improvement. If you have a budget I could look for a PSU and video card.

[EXreaction]

It's an ancient nV MX440.

Honestly, I don't think it's worth sticking any money into that old thing. For another $160ish you could get a new AM2 mobo+cpu+ram and throw it in there, then get a new graphics card and power supply (which you'd need anyways).

The only thing is you would need to re-install the OS, and it might be a pain to put XP on there with it being OEM, but you could use Windows 7 RC1 (at least for about a year until it expires).

That Pentium 4 you have isn't 2 cpu's either, it is a single cpu with Hyperthreading.

But if you are dead set on keeping what you've got, you are probably best looking on eBay for some used AGP cards (like a 6800 GT). Looking through them I saw some going for really cheap.

[osprey4]

Here's a good thread from the Dell forums on installing a video card into a 4600.