[decayoflife]

I just bought a dell dimension 3000 from the gaming section of dell.com, it came with a s****y on board video as i expected, but what i didn't expect, when i opened it was that all it would have are pci slots. does this mean i just spent 800 dollars on a system i cant play games with?

 

[ebackhus]

That's why you don't buy Dell! Yes, unless you find a way to overcome the insane bandwidth lacking of PCI then you're stuck with late 90's gaming.

 

[PurpleSky]

Thats actually sad that you cant even really upgrade it. There was this review i found out for you. Also if you want to upgrade there are still good options with pci bus videocards. Such as radeon 9250 Pci . Take a look these reviews
review 1
review 2


Even 128 mb version is doing a pretty decent job providing high fps and refresh rates.

 

[crazijoe]

If I was to actually buy a mass produced machine I would make sure that it would not have onboard or integrated graphics. Normally the would tell you this in the description. I do know for a fact Dell does this.

Video Card
Integrated Intel® Extreme Graphics 2

Most interesting that you said that you purchased it through their gamining section since I don't see a computer in their gaminig section under $1500.00. And all their gaming computers do come with separate AGP or PCI-E graphics solution.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/xps?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
The 3000 series are listed in their home and home office section.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/desktops?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Our shop at work is an all Dell shop. 9 servers, Powervault storage, 40 workstations, and about 16 laptops. If I was ever to buy a mass produced machine it would probably be a Dell. Just because of their customer support.
However if I was to buy a gaming machine I would have to build my own.