ive got a constantly upgraded thru the years Gateway with a Dell monitor Detailed Water is barely able to be set for my computer
Thing about that is that you can only upgrade so much on a computer from 2001 and do any real improvement. That DDR1 is only so fast, those motherboards only allow so much FSB, so much ram speed, only such-and-such socket type CPUs.
I recently had to do a rebuild from scratch because I was backed into a wall, upgrade-wise. Needed a new motherboard, which then requires new CPU, new RAM (DDR3), and while I'm at it a decent video card, which required a new PSU, which required a new case to put it in..... Oh yeah, and Win7 64-bit to take advantage of the higher RAM count and 2 GB vid card.
I couldn't have had anywhere near the performance my new system has by upgrading the old one. Been there, done that, it's too much of a stop-gap. Sometimes you just have to start fresh with new technology.
I know, it can be pricey. Save up if you can. I got a tax return this year (did not last year) so I figured I needed a system to last me 5 more years, not sputter for 5.