Old PC... Can it be Upgraded?

There is this HP Pavilion 725n at my house (bought in 2003) which still looks like new. I haven't upgraded any parts of it.

I installed Windows Vista Home Premium on it and it works smoothly with 448MB of RAM.

HP Pavilion 725n Specs:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/documen...=311249&dlc=en#

I'm guessing that the RAM can be upgraded to 1GB (Not Sure).

What parts can I upgrade? (RAM, Graphics,...etc) Which is a good replacement for them? Thanks for your help!

(NOTE : I already have a new PC. However, I don't want to throw my old PC away. )

#507000

Well, it says right there on the site that you can upgrade max to 1 GB of ram DDR, so just look for that somewhere. As for your graphics card, you need to find out of its an AGP, PCI, or PCI-express card, then buy one of that type. My bet would be on the first two.

#507002

You currently have Integrated graphics (which is probably why it says you have 448MB of RAM, while you probably have 512MB in there -- some of it is deducted for graphics usage). get a decent PCI graphics card or a nice PCI-e one (if your motherboard has PCI-e -- it could go both ways with a PC of that age, I'm saying probably not)

RAM wise: you need to get 400MHz or less DDR RAM (each slot can only have 512MB chips, for a total of 1GB). You have two 256MB chips in there now, totalling to 512MB, with some deducted for integrated graphics.

You CPU: You got an old AMD chip -- only 266MHz Front Side Bus. might want to consider upgrading, but it's probably going to be hard finding one with that socket (socket A) on sale nowadays. 2GHz is fine, IMO, being as you probably won't be doing anything hardcore with that PC anyway.

Also; you might want to look into getting a new hard drive. Probably like a 320GB or 500GB 7,200RPM IDE, as you have an 80GB 5,400RPM one in there now.

And -- get back on XP! Vista, on that machine?? I'd rather claw my eyes out.

#507012

I have a desktop pc and a notebook pc. My desktop has XP Professional. Notebook, Vista Home Premium. If I had to choose it would be vista. I haven't had one problem with vista.

#507043

Whats the difference between AGP and PCI? There's only 1 APG slot and 2 PCI slots (no PCI-E). I've seen graphic cards that are compatible with AGP and PCI. What's the difference?

#507049

AGP is faster than PCI and PCI-E is faster than both of them... I'd go for a decent AGP card as the PCI would be rather laggy by todays standards.

#507084