Gaming Need 3 things for my computer.

[Aijelsop]

I'm looking for some cheap RAM chip things (I need enough some to play downloaded games without lagg, I only have 512MB atm)

I also need a decent graphics card to PLAY the downloaded games.

I am also in need of a good monitor as mine is really small. Anything 22'+ would be good.



How much do you think all this would be? (in USD) Would it be better to buy a new PC? I really don't want a laptop. Desktop only.
If it would be easier buying these parts, where could I get them, and where do I find out my computer information, and know what I need to buy?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Rydian]

http://www.crucial.com/index.aspx
This can scan and tell you what kind of RAM you need.

As for the video card we need to know what model computer you have...

Though if your computer only came with 512MB of RAM it's likely to be too old to play new games. yes things can be upgraded, but only to a certain point.

 

[Aijelsop]

Well, my computer USED to be able to play games, then my card died. We had one of those bare minimum cards that works at the least of anything.

This is what it says on the sticker on my tower: Integrated ATI RADEON XPRESS 200 (thats the OLD graphics card im assuming)

 

[Rydian]

No, that's the onboard (built-in).

We need to know what computer model you have.

 

[FAST6191]

Key word is "Integrated" aka onboard graphics.

This means it is likely the one on your motherboard rather than an external card. Traditionally (and give or take some laptops presently) integrated stuff is terrible for anything demanding (games being demanding) and worse do things like take computer memory to use as graphics memory.
You however probably had another card in there somewhere that the computer would use in preference to the onboard thing and said card had a bit more poke which has since died and you have fallen back on the onboard one.

As for what is necessary these are one of the interesting times since graphics cards got big in that DX10 and DX11 (I love openGL but it is not so much a games driver) have flopped somewhat and nothing much really requires them and near enough everything will run (and maybe even run well enough to be played) on what would have ancient hardware (time wise) a few years back. This means you can actually get away with a quite a bit.

After this we can help you a bit but it will take more info- there are many different standards of ram (and yours could be any one of three completely incompatible standards and there are several subdivisions within those) and graphics cards are technically spit in two but it gets more complex (they have subdivisions and we are also going to have to consider power supplies- graphics cards are power hungry beasts).

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php will tell us the motherboard model at least at which stage we can better direct you. I can try and guess but a quick lookup of the graphics chip sets off alarms in my head against doing such a thing (I have seen too many wide ranging things here). Be aware this could quite easily get to the point of justifying a new machine (everybody likes to spend a bit of money and see a performance boost in a machine- vendors know this and as $100 is still far less than a new machine even if the parts hits decent profit at $75 they will still charge $100 and there is nothing you can do about this short of going second hand (which you do not want to do without knowing about this game)).

 

[redact]

...I am also in need of a good monitor as mine is really small. Anything 22'+ would be good...

22 foot? that is a fucking big monitor...
but anyway, try this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16824001385
we sell them (well, we sell the b2030 which is the same but 20") at work and they're fairly good

 

[Advi]

512, DDR3 is pretty damn rare, so I'll assume you're using DDR2; geil, crucial, kingston and patriot all make good ram at a good price.

for a video card, a cheap 4XXX series raedon hd will get the job done fairly well. most budget brands here suck, but sapphire is semi-decent.

for a monitor, samsung's monitors are awesome.

you might just want to buy an entirely new computer though, if you build it yourself you can save a lot of money on it. but it depends on what games you want to play, some games require a lot more power.

 

[FAST6191]

@Advi you would be surprised- dell liked (not sure if the majority but certainly more than a few) to use SDRAM right up until the late P4 days.

 

[Aijelsop]

22" inch, sorry.