ProCalx and Waffle,
I have attached a copy of my computer specs from AIDA. I wish to get one of the video cards that you recommended but do not know if my computer is compatible. I can’t tell the AGP from my motherboard. I checked the Gigabyte website and only found that it was adjustable through BIOS. How do you adjust that? Is my computer sufficient to play PC games once I get the video card? Any other upgrades that you recommend?
Thank you for your time.
bkyeh
hey bk, with that program, what you should do is, open it like u normally do, click on report at the top, then click report wizard, then choose hardware related only, then choose plain text. after you complete that step, hit finish, and it will generate a nice little report for you to let others to see, to a regular text file. On the top of the new window that pops up, u will see “save to file”, click that and choose where u want it at, preferably the desktop, then name it whatever u wish. then you should upload that new file (as you did the screenshot), to this site, which will allow us to see exactly what u have.
coolness. ok i have good news for you and bad news for you. first of all, the good news is, is that your computer ( in terms of speed ) is taken care of, running at 2.7 GHz. The bad news is quite bad im afraid…you do not have an AGP slot, which is the standard today for video cards. im afraid you only have onboard video right now. that will not cut it at all for todays video games. i suggest, u either get a computer with AGP video capabitlies, OR buy the best damn PCI card u can buy, but it still wont be good for the types of games of today…then again, i dunno what u want to play, so let me know, and i can help u further…and another thing, grab one more stick of RAM while ur at it, making it 1GB…stead of 512…makign sure its DDR SD RAM, PC2100=266MHz
Would I solve this problem by getting a new motherboard? Which motherboard would you recommend with my current configurations? How do you know if a motherboard has AGP slots? I have another motherboard in another computer that I could probably swap. I am interested in playing world of warcraft.
That’s a fairly decent board - Asus are known for quality, it has an AGP 8x Slot, which is what you need alongside a good graphics card to play the latest games.
It’s also very cheap.
You can go steps higher, obvisouly, but if it’s not for extreme stuff, is it worth it?
the report that u gave me indicated that it has no agp slots, and onboard video of 8MB ( l@me ) about ur other motherboard, see if u can get a report on that computer as well, using the same steps as u did with this one. the link waffle posted for u is a very good deal, for what u want, so consider that if all else fails. wolrd of warcraft i ahvent played, but if its anyting like war craft games, then u do need a decent video card for high frame rates (frame rate has to do with the smoothness of the game).
Bkyeh, your processor speed is more than enough for any games at the moment, and for the future as well :good:
However your motherboard has some things that are not so great for gaming:
There is no point in getting a PCI graphics card as they are 50% slower than that of AGP technology. Also you have SDRAM, SDRAM is the type of memory technology your computer uses, there are 2 Main types that are used:
SDRAM and DDR, SDRAM is the older and runs at 100Mhz-133Mhz which is very slow.
DDR runs at 266Mhz - 667Mhz, if you were to buy this new motherboard you would need new memory (DDR Technology), and you would have to get a graphics card as well as most motherboards do not have onboard video (good one’s). Bare in mind as well that graphics card use a fair amount of power and so does DDR memory, so you will most probably need a new powersupply.
Basically, you can use your old:
Hard Drive
CDROM / DVDROM Drives
Case
To get a new graphics card, you’ll need a new motherboard and memory and powersupply, you may want to think about just building a seperate computer.
You will be waisting your money buying a PCI based graphics card as it will not play anything very well now - even some older games.
You can quite easily pick up a 2.7GHZ Pentium 4 / 512mb DDR memory / Motherboard / Graphics card / Hard drive / cdrom / case / powersupply, reasonably cheaply. Just cut back on the size of your hard drive, case, cdrom e.t.c and spend your money on the critical components (CPU/Motherboard/Memory).
You need to think about this carefully as well, because if your going to buy a new system, you may want to pay slightly more and get a system thats going to last you longer..
I hope this helps, post back with any questions.
If you want us to price up some good hardware or a new system, just give us a realistic price range and we’ll find you something good :good:
p.s post where abouts you live, so we can get somewhere thats good for you to buy from 
Procalx,
I already purchased the ATI 9800 PRO video card. I could have sworn that I purchased a DDR memory stick. I am looking at the motherboard that Waffle recommended. Would this be sufficient?
The other motherboard that I have is a Gigabyte GA-8SR533. It has an AGP slot that is 4x compatible. Until I get a good motherboard, would this motherboard do? Can I just swap it? I don’t have a problem with the hardware swap, but I’m not sure how to do the rest.
Thanks for the suggestion Waffle. What’s the difference between the Asus P4S800 and the P4S800-MX?
The MX will have more features, check the asus site.
Yes if you have an AGP slot you can use your 9800Pro in it, however AGP 4x is quite slow, AGP 8x is double the speed of AGP4x, and i don’t think the 9800Pro will work properly, due to the voltages 4X gives out. So personally I wouldn’t.
Also make sure you get a new powersupply, as you’ll need it with DDR memory and a 9800Pro.
I suggest these brands:
OCZ
ThermalTake
Tagan
Antec
Enermax
Any of these are fine, and don’t go for anything less than 400W from these makers, you are buying quality that will last years with these brands and better performance and power compared to generic brands.
Make sure you have purchased some DDR memory, and make sure that its PC3200 or higher. (DDR400 = PC3200) I would recommend memory wise buying from these brands:
Crucial
Kingston
OCZ
Corsair
GeIL
Any series or ranges of these brands are fine, but try not to get anything thats worse than their “good” “value” range..
(GeIL do Value range and Golden Value, ie: go for Golden Value)
hope this helps :good:
when you get a new motherboard, do you need reformat the existing hd and reinstall windows xp?
While I was reinstalling XP, there was a prompt asking if I wanted to partition the hd. I selected yes and after windows has been installed, I don’t see the rest of my hd? Any suggestions? Do I need to resintall XP again?
What you’ve done is you’ve “Partitioned” your hard drive, basically “Partitioning” is where you are “Parting” your hard drive into lots of smaller hard drives..
IE, If I took my 80GB Hard Drive and Partitioned it, I could Partition it so “C Drive” is 40GB..
I hear you ask where the other 40GB has gone? it’s still their you just need to create more partitions..
Partitioning is where by you basically cut one physical drive into lots of different “sized” slices (which you specify) Windows then see’s these as different hard drives, it enables you to keep backups on one drive, games / music on another, and keep organised.
It also makes disk management alot easier, ie: scandisks take less time, so do defragments.. and its great for keeping backups so that you don’t have to worry about Viruses infecting your backups..
On your previous post you asked do you have to format and reinstall windows?
Yes you do.. but you will need to Format and reinstall windows once you have your new computer working, because windows loads support for your motherboard.. so you will need to rebuild the drive once you are using your new motherboard.
How do you create new partitions? The 50gigs is fine for my C drive. I want the remaining 30gigs for storage.
Are you using Windows XP?
If so, go Start>>Control Panel>>Administrative Tools (Classic view, otherwise performance and maintenance>>Admin. tools)>>Disk Management from the sidebar
There you will see your hard disks and their layout etc.
There should be a part saying “unpartitioned space”. Right click here and you can choose to format. Assign a drive name etc, and it’s useable - check it in “My Computer”, it will have appeared next to “C”.
You can have as many as you like (up to 4) by doing primary partitions. Otherwise to have more than 4 you will need to create an “Extended” partition, and then create partitions within in a partition.
Although having a 50gig and a 30gig sounds good.
Waffle,
You lost me on the next step after performance. I have XP. In the Admin Tools, I see component services, data sources, local security policy, microsoft .net wizard, services, computer management, even viewer, microsoft .net config, and performance. When I click on performance, I do not see maintanence. Thanks for your help…
Waffle,
Ok, I found it. Now it’s asking which file system, allocation unit size and volume label. My current hard drive is set as NTFS. Do I set it as NTFS as well? What allocation unit size? Do I create a name for volume label?
