Lee Reynolds

Started to play games now on the pc which is something ive never bothered with before. I just got tiger woods golf 07, and it runs but my graphics card doesnt support it.

What do i need to do? What card do i need???

This is my machine

Asus
AMD Athalon XP 2400+
2.00 GHz 480 MB Ram

Any help appreciated

collierm

Get some more RAM for starters, up it to at least 1GB, 2GB if you can afford it.

Then go looking for the most powerful AGP card you can find.

Have a read through here to find the one that suits you - http://tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/index.html

Cheers

Matt

BM08

yeah get at least another gig of ram, it doesnt cost much nowa days now that DDR2 ram is out.
For finding out what ram you need go to crucial.com, theres an online scanner that will tell you exactly what you have now and how many slots you have
Secondly what graphics do you have now? the guy above is assuming its an agp card, he's probably right judging by your machine but its worth double checking.

DaveZS

First off find out what motherboard you've got. No point spending money on upping the ram and getting an agp card if your going to get back into gaming, only to find you've pushed the mb as far as it can go and need to start from scratch.
Whats your budget?

BM08

If he said hes a hardcore gamer then id have said the same dave, but he didnt say that and he also sounded like he doesnt have alot to spend, in which case loads of new parts wouldnt be what he wanted........

We need some more answers from him first before we can give any more advice

Lee Reynolds

cheers guys

Right its just a std built in graphics card iirc....not sure what.

So i need more Ram, and then do the graphics card.

Im not a hard core gamer and never will be but will play the odd game like....

What am i looking at spending?

Also, can anyone help me with this game? Is this graphics card related?

When o open World snooker championship 2005, it comes on, SEGA screen, then the World snooker championship 2005 screen, little black loading bar at bottom starts turning green as it loads, then all of a sudden it just flicks back to main windows screen and has the 'send error report' window thing up...

BigMouthBillyBass

have you got the latest vga drivers installed??? latest version of directx etc??

If your going to buy a new card, check to see if your board has a PCI-Express slot to support a newer card. If not (like my old board that was probably a similar spec to yours as was an amd 2600+ setup) you will be limited to an AGP card only.

Lee Reynolds

BigMouthBillyBass


i installed directX9 with the game.....

collierm

The AMD XP+ CPu's I believe ran with only AGP cards. If its onboard, its likely to be either an Intel or ATI chipset. Its fairly straightforward to turn it off in the BIOS.

If I had to recommend a graphics card, I'd get either of these.

ATI Radeon X800XT
Nvidia Geforce 7600 (7800 is too much money)

Both are 256MB cards with decent speed GPU's. Where AGP uses some system memory, it would be better to get as much as you can afford as I said above, I personally would splash out and get 2GB and the ATI card. Where they are now owned by AMD, you may be in a better position with regards to driver updates and software add ons.

The crucial.com system scanner is here - http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/

Belarc Advisor is a utility that can tell you all your current setup. Download it here - www.belarc.com - this will tell you whether or not you have a PCI Express slot (doubt it myself) and how many free RAM slots you have just to confirm what hopefully the above scanner will tell you.

Cheers

Matt

Lee Reynolds

thanks mate

But after a lot of help from martin(s2 martin) ive decided to upgrade the lot rather than just the memory and card, as you can buy a good setup for peanuts dint realise....

BM08

upgrade your pc or buy a new one you mean? if your buying a new one and you want one with a decent graphics card then it will cost at least Ł500(with monitor and stuff)

sure you want to do that if your only playing games like snooker and golf?, your currant processor with new ram and graphics card will be more than enough for small games like those.

Just a thought

S2martin

He is going to buy a new one mate as after a bit of nosing around his one it is just a little too old now really and is at least 5-6 years old,

Also apparently his motherboard (asus a7sc ) only has 2 pci slots and no agp and also the fact he has very little memory i felt it would be a waste of time trying to get the best out of this system and to spend his money on a new pc instead

Mart

BM08

Oh right well if the motherboard only has the VERY VERY old PCI slots then thats next to useless, i dont think anyone even sells pci cards anymore, and even if they did they would be absolute cack for todays games.

He getting one from dell or something? i think there probably the best pre-built ones, prices arent bad either

S2martin

Well yes the very very very old pci slot

Well i did try and find a graphics card for him but i just couldn't

i was gonna try ebay but found this instead

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMDAM2-DUAL-CO...QQcmdZViewItem

What do you think for the cash? (and he told me he can claim the vat back through his company)

collierm

Not bad for what he wants to use it for.

This made me laugh

"Broadband Ready"

So its got a USB port and/or an Ethernet port then

S2martin

For Ł210 tho mate i doubt he could get much better?
I told him to ask how much extra for another gig of ram as well as it wouldn't hurt
Mart

collierm

True, I'd want more RAM, but apart from that its fine. Good that it runs on XP aswell. Vista is too buggy at the moment to be properly usable. XP has to be the most sorted O/S from MS that I've ever used.

S2martin

Well i just looked on there and he charges Ł55 for another gig of RAM and they fit it for him anyway so still worth the money as he said he isn't that great when it comes to pc's so for the sake of a bullseye i would let them fit it and warrenty it lol

Yeah i told him to stay away from vista for a while too as xp is perfect for someone not that savvy on the old pc's lol...

See everyone cunts off winme but i quite liked that too

skeg

The crucial scanner might work for you but for me it was useless, it could only estimate at what i had and suggest several and not lock it down to the 1 exact laptop. Neither did it get what memory i needed correct. Might work for some people though but still be vigilant.

I did order the RAM from them but went against what it said. Just go to your system manufacturer or motherboard and then order more of what it says it has.

collierm

Steady on fella, wouldn't go that far

S2martin

see

BM08

Got alot of pc for the money there, even if it needs one or 2 upgrades its still a good price
The bit that says 7.2GHZ is obviously wrong though

BM08

Oh and............... " End time: 9 hours 2 mins" be quick

Lee Reynolds

upgrade to a new one mate

Lee Reynolds

btw thanks all for advice and martin for help

BM08

No prob

You going for that one on ebay then?

BigMouthBillyBass

In a conversation at work with our sales manager the other day (bear in mind we are an IT company) i asked how much memory his laptop has when i was installing some software.

"it's got loads, top spec vista laptop with 2 mb of ram"

This guy heads up a team of sales people who sell it equipment to businesses and doesnt know the difference between mb and gb's. there is no hope

Lee Reynolds

not this minute as i want to get my office sorted out, then ill get one. I need to sell my drums so i can get this room done

BM08

oh right never mind im sure there will be another cheap good spec one come along

BM08

If it wasnt a slip of the tongue and he really did mean MB's then.........

Lee Reynolds

GTi_iTG


yeah am sure there will

collierm

Been there, heard all that aswell

New laptop, 2 Gigawatts CPU (??), 2MB RAM, 400GB memory for my files, CDROM for playing my DVD's, wireless bluetooth (WTF).

Makes me laugh, else I'd cry

S2martin

I never said that tho

S2martin

No worries Lee

BigMouthBillyBass

Sorry, fucked the quote up... I was just making a point that people that sell IT equipment usually have no fucking idea what they are actually selling, or what it does