The Dimension 5150 describes a "line" of Dell computers. It would be the first information you'd need to provide in order to search for details at Dell's support website. If you don't have an Owner's Manual for your specific machine, you may be able to download one from Dell, and you will want as much info as you can get before diving into changing much.

The Pentium 4 is a line of Intel processors, and I believe the 630 describes a particular processor in the P4 line.

The 3.00 GHz should be the processor clock speed, and the 2MB cache means that the processor can store up to 2MB of data in the processor buffer to help maintain input/output efficiency. While hard-core gamers are using faster processors now, the 3.00 GHz should handle anything the rest of the system is good for. Any significantly better processor likely would require a new motherboard.

The 1GB RAM is fairly typical for WinXP computers. It's above the fictional 512MB that Microsoft says is the minimum required. For gaming, even on WinXP most would want at least 2GB. Microsoft says that you could move up(????) to Vista with 1 GB RAM but 2GB is generally considered the minimum that gives good performance with Vista (if you believe "good" isn't a non sequitur used with "Vista").

For the 32-bit versions, neither WinXP nor Vista can actually use more than about 3.3GB of RAM, but you can't physically install 3GB with reasonably available chips, so the "workable" choices for RAM installation are 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB.

It is a point in favor of upgrading the Hard Drive that it's shown as an SATA, since that's the kind most available now. The 7200 rpm is a good nominal speed, although if you find that HD speed is a limiting factor you can get 9600 rpm drives fairly easily in convenient sizes that might be a little faster. (HD manufacturer's specs must be read with caution.) While 12000 rpm drives are available, the prevailing opinion as I've seen it is that they're generally considered useful only in server farms where the drives are "hot swappable," due to slightly higher failure rates. I wouldn't expect the 7200 rpm to cause any real problem.

The 160GB HD size is a little questionable if you're looking for improved performance but it's not because you may have the drive stuffed full. The default settings for WinXP only allow the computer to use a fraction (about 1/4?) of the free space on the drive for Temp files. A 160GB hard drive probably has only around 140 - 150GB of usable space on it due to drive "overhead." A "typical" WinXP installation, with minimal other programs, may use about 80GB, leaving 1/4(?) of the remaining "free space," or 15GB for Temp files. Since lots of programs demand their own "private Temp folders" the drive can get choked up rather quickly. The "static" temp stuff, like cookies etc., don't generally use much disk space, but it's the "dynamic swap files" that move program bits in and out that gets cramped.

It is possible to change the settings to allow WinXP to use more than the default fraction of free space for temps, but it is not recommended by any but the "wing-nuts" due to other problems that can be caused if you mess with it. Some "background processes" can use all of the free space that's not reserved as Temp, and raising the temp limits can cripple maintenance processes (I think defrag may be one of this kind) that you're not supposed to need to notice.

Stepping up to at least a 250GB HD might help, but if you're serious about making a significant improvement I'd suggest you consider a 500GB hard drive. You might be able to connect an external drive and move all of your data files to it to maximize the system HD free space, but that's pretty much a "stopgap" step that depends on you keeping anything not part of the program environment off the "little" C:\ drive. (Programs should, of course, be on the main HD, and gamers tend to want lots of programs - some of which are fairly large.)

I didn't find the EN8400GS graphics card, although there are a few comments on the EN6200. The "SILENT" line is generally advertised as a decent entry level gaming card. You should be able to get full specifications from ASUS (the manufacturer) and perhaps look at what later/bigger/better ones may be available. Many graphics cards have their own BIOS onboard, so you can look for a BIOS update for the one you have while there.

I'd suggest looking for a Dell User's Guide if you don't have one, since it will tell you some details, mostly about the hardware. Dell Support would be a good place to start.

At Start|Programs|All Programs|Accessories|System Tools|System Information - or something very similar since I may not have remembered the WinXP path - System Information (SI) can show you quite a bit of information about your computer.

SI can usually tell you things like who made the BIOS on your machine, and sometimes BIOS upgrades may be available that significantly improve performance. It may or may not be able to identify manufacturers for all the drives/drivers etc you have, since some of them identify themselves (via PNP) only as "generic."

A WARNING: A first sight of all that System Info shows sometimes tempts people to "print it out" to read later. A full printout of SI for a WinXP will eat around (at least) 1,000 pages, so DON'T. You usually can safely select an individual "branch" of the info to print, but don't try to do the whole thing.

You can also tell quite a bit about what things might be hindering performance by opening Task Manager. (Ctl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager, as I recall). Most people are familiar with using it to "kill" a program that gets hung, but the other Tabs there have lots of info about what's going on. Much of it may be unintelligible, but even if you don't have much of an idea what it all means just seeing something that "looks odd" can be a clue.

For now, the recommendation that you look at SI and Task Manager is just to suggest getting familiar with where you'll be able to find stuff you may want to know after you've considered some of the things you might be inclined to do. (You could threaten the kid with enrollment in a good "Military Academy" to get his mind of the games, but that's a little extreme for most of us.)

John