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    #1

    PC / Graphics card question?

    Hi,

    My younger sister has this PC:

    http://www.hp-expo.com/uk/eng/products/homepc/p1089a.html


    It has a NVIDIA GeForce2 MX-400? 64mb Graphics card and tbh it's crap. It can't play The Sims without crashing never mind anything else worth playing.

    Can someone recommend a card that is better than this one and is as cheap as possible that will cope with The Sims & maybe play Halo on the lowest settings without the slowdown she gets now?

    I will probably add 256mb of memory at the same time if the card is cheap enough.

    Thanks,

    Darryl
    Tags: None
    #2
    Odd. My laptop (433 celeron, 384meg, 8meg ATI ragepro) plays Sims fine.

    Mind, your box there is an 1800 of reasonable spec, so you could quite easily bung a fairly recent card in there and garner decent performance from it. How about picking something up of gf3/4 specification? IIRC, that would give you gf3, gf4, ATI 8500, 9000 to hunt around for. I'm sure there are enough people with cards of this era wanting to sell up and upgrade to newer.

    Comment

      #3
      As Stu implies, its certainly not down to the speed of the graphics card. While the Mx400 isn't exactly the fastest card in the world, its good enough to keep up with most releases out there just fine. If you're getting crashes during the game, its an indicator that something is actually wrong, not just that you need a faster card.

      Drivers?

      Comment

        #4
        Whilst I think of it, my old P3 500, 384 meg, gf2mx420 (think it was a 420) runs/ran Sims perfectly.

        As mid suggests, perhaps there's something else at play here.

        Comment

          #5
          Like mid suggests I'd try a driver update and reinstall of DirectX before splashing out any money.

          Have you got any network drivers installed (i.e. LAN)? Try uninstalling them - I had a PC that was seriously under performing and the problem was due to network drivers. They worked 'fine' in terms of the LAN but made everything else run like a dog - uninstalled them - everything ran faster, reinstalled them and my PC was like it had been given a turbo boost.

          If that doesn't work... well... you could try the carpet bomb 'reinstall windows' approach.

          Comment

            #6
            Hi,

            It was a driver problem, thanks for the advice. It still isn't good enough to play Halo, what would be needed to play this on lowest settings on it? a new gfx card or just more ram?

            Thanks,

            Darryl

            Comment

              #7
              A graphics card at the very least along the lines I suggested.

              Comment

                #8
                Originally posted by Super Stu
                A graphics card at the very least along the lines I suggested.
                The mans right you know. I recently shifted from a GeForce 3 to a swish 9800 Pro. But to be honest - as long as I turned the detail down and stuff the 3 could still be used for the latest releases.

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                  #9
                  How much do you specifically want the PC version? In order to see Halo in anything like its full glory, you're probably going to want to spend at least the cost of an XBox on the new card. There are good reasons to want the PC version (mouse control, network play), but just bear that in mind.

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