New PC or upgrade help

[maestro]

Im looking to either upgrade or buy a new PC that will let me play the lastest games, to be honest I really want to play call of duty 2.

My current pc is a medion 1.7ghz pentium 4
256 MB ram
Geforce 2 mx/mx400 graphics card.
40 gb hard drive

I dont know a great deal about pcs so looking for advice

I would rather upgrade rather than buy a new pc but I dont know even if this is possible or pricewise which is the more expensive.

Ive been searching around and what I thought I need is something like this

Upgrade to 3ghz or more pentium 4
1gb of ram or more
Bigger hard drive
much better graphics geforce graphics card, which one?

So what would people recomend, is it better to upgrade or a new pc, how much would it all cost etc?

I was hoping to try and spend around £300 but again im not sure how realistic this is

many thanks

[cumbrian_eagles]

I'd keep your eyes open for anything in the sales from the usual online stores, might be some bargins around. But then I gave up ages trying to keep up with PCs for gaming.

[maestro]

Thanks, what are th best sites to look at?

Are there any good sites or anyone know anyone that can build you a pc to your own spec?

[dave_who_ru]

Not sure an upgrade is the appropriate route as it looks like you want everything upgraded! Also £300 might be pushing it for your high spec. If you just need a new box then that will reduce the cost. Try www.ebuyer.com or look on ebay as to what spec is available for the price.

Isn't a standalone games machine the better option?

[Son of Selhurst]

Ebuyer, or NOvatech, who do base machines and m/b bundles

[Gravedigger]

With a 1.7 ghz pentium 4, u'll have the old chipset which the newer pentium 4's dont work in, so u'll have to replace the whole motherboard along with the processor, probably the ram too. As previously said you can get bundles of these three things already put together for you, ranging from about £80 to about £160 i think.
For a decent larger harddrive, you're talking about £60+ depending how big you want it. You will need more harddrive space i would think, as a lot of modern games put gigs worth amounts of space on the harddrive, and then you have saved games on top of that. You could get a new harddrive and keep the old one though.
The Graphics card is upto you and how much you want to spend, and how long you want it to last. You can pick up pretty decent ones for around £70 to £90 i think, but if u want it to last a couple of years so you can play top spec brand new games as they come out, u want to be looking at the more expensive ones which can be anything between £150 and £300.

Another thing that you need to consider is how confident you are in upgrading the parts of your computer yourself. Personally i find it easy, but you do have to be careful, if you break anything, theres no one else to blame.
If you want to upgrade all the things you have mentioned, then i dont think £300 will be enough, and if you plan on paying for a shop such as pc world to do it for you, then you'll need a lot more than that. If u are looking at getting a shop to do all that for you, i would suggest you actually bought a new system - probably cheaper, and at least a years warranty.