Long time no see! Thinking of buying this pc for gaming...help appreciated

[scheibler]

Hey guys, its been a while since I last posted. I built 2 pc's a while back and have since sold them cause I stopped pc gaming. I got the itch to play some games on the pc again and am thinking of selling my xbox 360 cause they break so much!

I know it is usually a no, no to buy a dell or similar b/c you can build your own, but I found this pc(tower only...already have monitor, keyboard, speakers, etc) and was wondering if it would play this gen games such as call fo duty 4, unreal tournament III, IL2 Sturmovik, Battlefield series, etc

DELL Dimesion 8400:
Intel P4 3.4ghz Hyper Threading
EVGA Geforce 7600gt with factory overclock
160gb sata 7200rpm harddrive
2gb unkown speed of ram 512mb x 4
CD-RW drive

Is a better video card needed? Is $250 shipped too much or a good deal? It seems to have white connectors on the back instead of the blue connector I am used to for my 19" CRT monitor...is there an adaptor I can buy?

[iamsostupid]

250 is a good deal but you'll need to spend about 170 to get a Radeon 3870. i don't know how well a 7600 will play modern games.

[PriMaTe]

I have en e6750 and an 8600gt superclocked. It could play COD 4 @ 1280X1024 most details at the highest and no aa/af. It was fine for single player, but when I played it multiplayer online I noticed that it was just a little too slow as far as fps to be able to play well. Like it was hurting my aim since the fps were dipping into the mid 20's or so, it wasn't playable for me. So you'll probably need to get a better vid card like iamsostupid mentioned

[scheibler]

well I'm not worried about the absolute highest quality and will run at 1280x1024. I'de like to match the quality of what I get on xbox 360 and those framerates. I'm assuming the pc versions have better graphics? What kind of framerates will I need on a crt monitor so that I do not notice framerate lag?

also any ideas on how to connect my monitor?

[PriMaTe]

Yea the pc has better graphics than the 360 version form what I can tell. I do'nt know what fps the 360 runs at, but 50-60 should be good for the comp. If you're using a crt just connect the monitor through vga.

[miltark]

CD Drive? I thought games like COD4 and UT3 would use DVD drives to install. Also i have a GeForce 6800, which maybe slightly weaker or similar in strength to the 7600, and I am able to play COD4 with everything on high and high resolution, but i have to turn shadows off!! It still looks incredible and 360-like. However when i turn on shadows, i have to make the resolution very low and turn the graphics settings to medium.