Gaming How good is my computer?

[Canonbeat234]

You might want to make sure that your power supply is strong enough for an upgraded video card. I've had numerous customers who bought a GTX 250 or higher or a Radeon 5700 series with a low-end weak PSU. It will crash the PC.

Most definitely listen to this. Never overtax your power supply, as if it dies it could take out other parts in your system with it, permanently.

You know what, you know too much! My first time at rigging a PC was a very harsh experience. I will only rig one when I thoroughly read the specs and have professional tools.

 

[xmrnogatcox]

2.0's backwards compatible, and AFAIK only the highest-end cards (I'm talking dual-PCB cards) aturate 1.0's bandwidth.

True. I'll give you that one. Current cards only lose about 10% power.

I think another possible problem would be fitting the card in the case... Most Compaqs I've worked with have little room left over for cards.

 

[Rydian]

And if he's got a slimline he's limited to low-profile cards anyways, a double-edged sword (as far as upgrading while preventing damage from a card with high requirements).

But this topic was about how his current specs are so I didn't go into upgrade options originally.

 

[xmrnogatcox]

And if he's got a slimline he's limited to low-profile cards anyways, a double-edged sword (as far as upgrading while preventing damage from a card with high requirements).

But this topic was about how his current specs are so I didn't go into upgrade options originally.

I think it went into upgrade options because the OBVIOUS bottleneck is the video card. Between both of us, upgrading is the next step. Problem is that we can't just tell a user to "upgrade the video card" without knowing the rest of the system specs. I'm sure you can guess how that could turn out.

Back on topic, if you want to run SOME current games on low specs, I'm sure you could fit a 9600GT or 9800GT in the machine pretty easily, granted you don't have a low-profile case and mobo.

 

[Xoo00o0o0o]

Type: Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bitthats what makes it badQUOTE(xmrnogatcox @ Sep 26 2010, 09:04 PM)

Vista is garbage.

http://anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3666&p=7
There's seven pages of benchmarks showing that XP < Vista < 7 in terms of performance.

The terrible gaming has nothing to do with Vista, it's because he has a shitty integrated video card.

If you don't know fact from fiction, do not post. This is my only warning before I get mean.

Hey give the kid a break.

But you are right vista has nothing to do with the performance in games.

But I also agree with him, I had vista once, in honesty I will never go back, even if I do downgrade it will be to XP.

 

[Rydian]

What -exact- problems did vista have?

 

[Terminator02]

What -exact- problems did vista have?

omg, did you use it? on your main pc? it was terrible

Edit: also, this

 

[Berthenk]

The whole thing sucks, in my opinion. As far as I know it uses DDR1, and the processor sucks. Further, we have the IGP. I don't need to explain this, or do I?

 

[Originality]

It's much more likely to be DDR2, although nobody mentioned it, and it's not so important since I don't think that system needs the RAM upgraded. nForce 430 is from 2005, so that's a good guide to how old the system actually is. It was a low end system back then, although those days systems didn't need to be overly powerful. These days, it doesn't stand much of a chance in modern gaming.

I believe Rydian is more informed of how well a graphics card update would improve gaming performance, so I won't comment on that. I'd recommend a complete system upgrade (i.e. motherboard, CPU, RAM, graphics and case), but naturally that all depends on the budget available (which I get the impression is quite low in this case).

Vista's initial appalling performance has gained it a lot of hate, mostly due to pre-mature drivers (mostly associated with graphics), but since 2008 it's been able to match XP performance in adequate computers (which generally means ones that aren't low-end systems from over 3 years ago). Now it's a viable OS (perhaps with a little bit too aggressive UAC) for those who don't want to/can't afford Windows 7. Personally, I find W7 much more attractive as an OS - not because of performance, but because the interface is nicer (especially the "snap" functions). It also helps that I got multiple copies of Windows 7 very cheaply.

omg, did you use it? on your main pc? it was terrible

Yes, I used it on everything 4 years old or newer. My main computer handled it just fine. My media laptop was a lil slow to load, but it handled it fine. My tablet laptop is slow (I blame the AMD AthlonII CPU for that) and has a rather low battery life, but I still used it for all my university work away from home. My brother's laptop was a lil slow with it, but it still worked fine. His main PC was built with highest-spec parts, and did a lil song and dance for him when Vista loaded (just to show off how powerful it was). Of all the above, only my tablet laptop still has Windows Vista (the rest are on 7), and that's only because I've tweaked so many of the settings and system files to make it run at a normal speed on it that it half resembles my earlier memories of Linux - only with a pretty interface to work with. As you can tell, Vista was NOT terrible, at least in my experience.

 

[Rydian]

What -exact- problems did vista have?
omg, did you use it? on your main pc? it was terribleI didn't ask you what PC you used it on and what you thought of it, I asked you what exact problems you had.

Edit: also, this

I can count at least 20 citations which are before it was even released.

I'm trying my hardest not to talk to you like you're 7, but when I ask you to list your problems and you can't even do that, it's hard not to.




I really, REALLY hate any talk of vista because most people don't know jack shit about it and are just complaining because everybody else is.
QUOTE

...
Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.
...

 

[Terminator02]

when I ask you to list your problems and you can't even do that

it was slow and crashed a lot. i'm not gonna get into how it's better now and crap, when i tried it it sucked

 

[Rydian]

when I ask you to list your problems and you can't even do that

it was slow and crashed a lot. i'm not gonna get into how it's better now and crap, when i tried it it sucked

What was slow about it? What did you trace the problem back to?
What do you mean by "crash"?

You're going to have to give details.

 

[myuusmeow]

For normal usage: good enough

For low end gaming: bad. I used to play TF2 with a FPS config at 1280x800 with a 6150, playable but not optimal, not to mention ugly as hell

For high end gaming: don't even bother this card was ultra low end 5 years ago. Even today's low end is heads and tails over this.

 

[kanefan666]

I got a core i3 (2.93ghz) and this means that my video card is the Intel GMA HD which can max out any direct x 9 game out there and gives playabble fps! I do it on arkham asylum and left 4 dead 2. if not very high, i can play on high!

 

[Rydian]

I got a core i3 (2.93ghz) and this means that my video card is the Intel GMA HD which can max out any direct x 9 game out there and gives playabble fps! I do it on arkham asylum and left 4 dead 2. if not very high, i can play on high!

Run dxdiag, go to the video/display tab and take a screenshot for us.

 

[playallday]

.

 

[Originality]

The Intel GMA HD4500 (integrated in most Core i3/5) can play games like L4D, L4D2 and Borderlands, but only at minimal settings to still get playable framerates. Even then, I still get texture corruptions sometimes (patches of checkered pink) in L4D2 and a lot in Borderlands.

I don't think intergrated graphics were ever designed for gaming.

 

[kanefan666]

Dude INTEL GMA 4500 HD AND I5/I3 GMA HD are 2 different cards!!! i3/i5 GMA HD are 50 % more fast.... 4500 cant even play Arkham Asylum.

 

[Rydian]

50% faster than shit is still 50% faster than shit.

 

[Originality]

Dude INTEL GMA 4500 HD AND I5/I3 GMA HD are 2 different cards!!! i3/i5 GMA HD are 50 % more fast.... 4500 cant even play Arkham Asylum.

Hmm... seems like you're half right. Call me picky, but neither have ever been "cards" - they've always been integrated. Also the only difference seems to be that the Core i GMA HD are up to 700Mhz (CULV versions are around 500Mhz and i3 verisons seem to be around 566Mhz) whilst the GMA 4500MHD is either 400Mhz or 533Mhz, and uses a 45nm process rather than 65nm.

It sounds to me like trying to distinguish between the 8800, 9800 and GT 2xx series of nVidia graphics. They're all the same chip, just smaller process and slightly higher clock speeds.