Best upgrade for gaming?

[DreamSlave2112]

I have an HP Pavilion 751n with a 1.8 Ghz Pentium 4, 256 MB RAM with no after-market hardware upgrades. The OS is Win XP SP2 and I have a SyncMaster 150MP LCD screen (not the best for games, I know)
For e-mail, writing, net surfing, etc, it runs fine. I primarily play two games on it, CivIII Conquests and SimCity 4. CivIII starts to bog down in the later stages of the game, as the AI is processing turns for several computer players. I suppose this is just the nature of the game and only a faster chip would solve that, but I could be wrong.
The main issue is when I play SimCity 4, which any fan of the game knows is HEAVILY graphic intensive. In the bigger cities, zooming in takes awhile and the buildings look blocky at first and take some time to show finer resolution.
If I want to do a light upgrade, what would be the best option, exp. for SimCity 4? Memory, chip or graphics card (which I'll bet is integrated into the motherboard and prob. uses sytem memory). Any particular brands or types?
thanks.

 

[ghost]

Whats your budget m8 ? I would suggest a mixture of more RAM and a better graphics card.

 

[_simon_]

You could do with at least 512MB ram. I'd suggest an Nvidia Geforce card (personal preference), maybe a 6600 or 6800 - they're fairly cheap now and will handle those games very easily.

 

[ghost]

It appears the motherboard is only a AGP 4X so i would get ATi X800 series or a nVidia 6600 series graphics card.

You have 2x slots on your mobo so i would make the most of them and get 2 512mb PC2100 Sticks. This should give ya pc a good kick up the ass

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07029

 

[DreamSlave2112]

Whats your budget m8 ? I would suggest a mixture of more RAM and a better graphics card.

Budget wise (and this may knock a few suggestions out of the ball park )
I'm trying to keep it under $100.00.
Would extra memory also solve my time lag in CivIII (not sure if there are any sim gamers here). That way I can just boost the memory, or would that not solve the SC4 problem at all?

 

[DSM1999]

Budget wise (and this may knock a few suggestions out of the ball park )
I'm trying to keep it under $100.00.
Would extra memory also solve my time lag in CivIII (not sure if there are any sim gamers here). That way I can just boost the memory, or would that not solve the SC4 problem at all?

bro with 100$ your not going to do that much cause only the memory cost half of that depending on the size of the ram. you would need a better video card and some rams. and that would be around 150 or 200. unless u get crapy brand stuff

 

[{LSK} Otacon]

There isnt a huge difference between AGP 4x and 8x anyway, the difference is mininmal in gaming. A 6800 would be a great choice for AGP, i think the GTs are about $180 now? And i also recommend at LEAST 512mb of ram.

With your budget, i recommend this card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814127164R