Off the shelf - what can I do??

philbf2

philbf2

philbf2

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I've got an off the shelf Intel Pentium D, Hewlet Packard desktop.

I bought it for my wife, she now uses a laptop and I want to fire it up for gaming - I play tournaments of Bf2. Mission: I'd like to reduce visual lag. On certain mod maps I'm getting lagged out badly and even blue screen ctds.


It has a decent ATI card that came in the box but it seems to struggle.
It has a huge slow hard drive (250 mb which loads maps in BF2 at record slow times) And only 512 of ram!!!
The box I have seems good, full of vents and fans, but I'm guessing if even if I only get a new graphics card I'll need extra cooling
DVD/rw gubbins etc all seems fine.
Screen fine.

What can I do to make this system better?


Oh and I'm a PC noob..... I've used Macs for years only recently throwing them out. About 3 in one go. I can give you the spec if someone can answer Q1 (shows what a noob I am)


1. How do I find out whats in side the thing? - what program can I download to display the components
2. What are the main components I can switch out to improve game performance?
3. how hard is it to set up a couple of drives to raid config or whatever you call it!!
4. Can I get kick ass performace without going into crossfire and sli?

Obviously I could throw money at this, but for once in my life I'd like to be smart...so I'm asking smart people... :)

Thanks in advance to everyone chipping in an answer here. I really appreciate it

So, er, any ideas?
 
before you do anything. you need to know spec's

If your a real noob, then right click My Computer and click properties.

Tell us what is listed under computer, this will give us a kind of idea

For a more detailed instruction, from there click Hardware Tab and device manager

Open each tabe and print screen or list it here.
 
I would go for a Sapphire X1950Pro it will run all the latest games on the highest settings easy. I would stick another 512MB stick of ram in it too. And get a 250GB seagate SATAII hard drive for it and stick your games on that drive and leave your hewet packard installation on the other drive. If your case is a small case maybe rebuild it into something you like. Also make shure your PSU can handle all of this and that you have all the necessary cables ect.
 
philbf2 said:
1. How do I find out whats in side the thing? - what program can I download to display the components
2. What are the main components I can switch out to improve game performance?
3. how hard is it to set up a couple of drives to raid config or whatever you call it!!
4. Can I get kick ass performace without going into crossfire and sli?
Click to expand...
1. Download Lavalys Everest from http://www.lavalys.com/ - do a Hardware report, and post the chipset, CPU, ram size, HD make/size, motherboard make/model, and graphic card make/model here.


2. Usually RAM and graphic card makes the biggest difference. But the fact you've mentioned a slow hard-drive, could mean that when Windows is accessing the pagefile, you may stuttering.

It could even be that the drive is failing, hence the slow performance, or that DMA mode is not enabled.


3. Depends if the motherboard has onboard RAID or not. If not, then you'll need to buy a RAID card.

Never setup RAID before, but I do know you usually need to feed Windows XP some drives during setup.


4. With the right drivers and the system setup properly, you could get decent performance out any machine. Whether or not that performance is enough to feed power-hungry games is another matter. It maybe that you have onboard graphics, which are tragically slow - in which case, buy a new graphic card.
 
philbf2 said:
1. How do I find out whats in side the thing? - what program can I download to display the components
2. What are the main components I can switch out to improve game performance?
3. how hard is it to set up a couple of drives to raid config or whatever you call it!!
4. Can I get kick ass performace without going into crossfire and sli?
Click to expand...

1) For a qiuck look at your graphics card simply right click the desktop and select properties, now choose the settings tab and it will tell you your monitor type and graphics card.
For a detailed look at your hardware click start, right click on My computer and choose properties, then hardware tab and device manager.

2) Getting the ram up to 2gb is a good start, then I'd be looking at a good hard drive followed by a new graphics card. To recomend the ram and card we need more detail on your system, hard drive is not a problem. Specifically your PSU and CPU type/speed. If we go low budget on this you'll most likely be ok on PSU, but it's still smart to match your CPU speed as if you have bottlenecks in performance anywhere you've wasted money.

3) Raid isn't too difficult, but being honest and not wishing to offend, if you don't know how to look at system specs I'd probably forget Raid for a while. Is more work, more things to go wrong or little problems to solve and the chances are 99% of them you'll have to ask for help with, making it a slow and painfull process. A single decent disk should go with your other upgrades very well.

4) Oh hell yes, infact I'd probably say forget Xfire and SLI for the same reasons as Raid. They add performance, but they add work for set up and getting it to work in games. For your needs I'd recomend not bothering.

Ok so that's your four questions answered, the 3 products I'd be recomending with taking guesses at the rest of your system are:

Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB ST3250620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache this costs £59.91.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-079-SE
I'd say this is the safe upgrade, you wont need to worry about power, these drives are incredible performance for your money, and short of file sharing you won't need more than 250gb.

Graphics card: GeForce 7600 GS 512MB DDR2 HDTV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express/AGP) £103.39
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-003-EA
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-031-BG
This is a solid card and available in Newer PCI-Express and the older AGP, without knowing which slot you have if it's over 2 years old then it's likely AGP.

Memory: At a guess I'll presume you're using 184pin DDR. So something that is 2gb of 3200 DDR would be ideal.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-006-OK
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-046-GL
Two choices here, first one is OcUK own, second is from Geil, about 10 pounds difference in price. £152.74 - £164.49.

Total for that mostly guessing (lol) set up is £311.34 without delivery.

It would easily play the games you mentioned on max settings provided you're running normal resolutions.
 
ok.....

computer
Hewlett Packard compaq presario
acpi multi processor pc

display adaptors
radeon x1300 series
radeon x1300 series secopnary

ide ata/atapi controller
intel(r) 82801G ultra ata storage
intel(r) 82801G gb/gr/gh (Ich7 family)

processors
intel d cpu 3.00 GHz

1 gb of ram


(ihad to do all this by hand since I can't find where print screen leaves images!!!)
 
If you press print screen, go into Paint and paste in there. Save the image as a jpeg file type.

Then go to www.imageshack.us and browse to the file, click upload, and paste the link in here :)
 
philbf2 said:
(ihad to do all this by hand since I can't find where print screen leaves images!!!)
Click to expand...

For future reference print screen doesn't leave images, it stores them on a form of 'clipboard' ready for you to paste them somewhere so if you opened up 'MS Paint' then you could paste and save the image ready to be used elsewhere. :)

Sorry I'm just about to head out for the night but if no one else has answered your questions I'll have a stab at it when I get back.
 
semi-pro waster said:
For future reference print screen doesn't leave images, it stores them on a form of 'clipboard' ready for you to paste them somewhere so if you opened up 'MS Paint' then you could paste and save the image ready to be used elsewhere. :)

Sorry I'm just about to head out for the night but if no one else has answered your questions I'll have a stab at it when I get back.
Click to expand...


yeah I use fraps in game (you know, pointless shots of noob pooning)
 
basmic said:
1. Download Lavalys Everest from http://www.lavalys.com/ - do a Hardware report, and post the chipset, CPU, ram size, HD make/size, motherboard make/model, and graphic card make/model here.


2. Usually RAM and graphic card makes the biggest difference. But the fact you've mentioned a slow hard-drive, could mean that when Windows is accessing the pagefile, you may stuttering.

It could even be that the drive is failing, hence the slow performance, or that DMA mode is not enabled.


3. Depends if the motherboard has onboard RAID or not. If not, then you'll need to buy a RAID card.

Never setup RAID before, but I do know you usually need to feed Windows XP some drives during setup.


4. With the right drivers and the system setup properly, you could get decent performance out any machine. Whether or not that performance is enough to feed power-hungry games is another matter. It maybe that you have onboard graphics, which are tragically slow - in which case, buy a new graphic card.
Click to expand...


How about the following......?


Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR4 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 XT-X SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR4 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £259.99
(£305.49) £259.99
(£305.49)

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £154.99
(£182.11) £154.99
(£182.11)

Western Digital Raptor X 150GB WD1500AHFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM Western Digital Raptor X 150GB WD1500AHFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM £140.99
(£165.66) £140.99
(£165.66)
 
Looking at your spec I'm guessing your tiny ammount of ram is making you write to page file constantly in games and at load up.

If I was trying to keep cost to a minimum I'd go for 2gb of ram. Maybe the Harddrive and then see how the card does, as it is pretty good and shouldn't be the problem in your system.
 
Fars said:
Looking at your spec I'm guessing your tiny ammount of ram is making you write to page file constantly in games and at load up.

If I was trying to keep cost to a minimum I'd go for 2gb of ram. Maybe the Harddrive and then see how the card does, as it is pretty good and shouldn't be the problem in your system.
Click to expand...


thanks man! Will do!
 
Surely a £300 video card is overkill for BF2? That 7900 someone specced you earlier should be more than enough.

I personally wouldn't bother with the HDD either - Raptors are fast, but the difference won't be that dramatic: I'm guessing you haven't defragmented your disc since you got it, and if you spend a few hours doing that you'll see a MUCH greater difference than by upgrading.

Do Pentium Ds use DDR2? I've never owned one so I don't know - if you download CPU-Z (or Everest, as someone else reccomended), it'll tell you. Alternatively, if you know the exact Hewlett Packard model number, just use the compatibility guide on Crucial's website to check whether it's DDR or DDR2.
 
The good news is your CPU is pretty good.
The first thing to do is replace the graphics card - this one
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-042-OK
for £115 will perform great.
Your hard drive is recent & probably pretty decent. As mentioned, it's probably that you could do with more ram.
You will almost certainly have DDR2 Ram with your Pentium D. Look how many slots your current RAm is using & how many you have free - is it 2 x 512mb or 1 x 1gb. Do you have four slots in total or two.
If you have some free slots, I would add another 1gb cheap ddr2 ram, such as this for £85:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-083-CS
With these parts, you should not have to worry about changing your PSU as the 7900GS has quite low power requirements whilst still being quick.
I've made these recommendations with a view to getting a big performance boost without spending silly money.
I would recommend getting the free program cpu-z to find out what speed your ram is so you can buy matching. Also, confirm if you have free slots for adding Ram & double check that you have a PCI-E slot for the graphics card.
This will make your PC pretty damn good & should run most games includeing BF2 at pretty high details without a hitch.
 
surely the slow loading maps is due to ram... definately get more ram, and a 76gt would be ample to play bf2, maybe not maxed out, but enough for it to be smooth...
 
Yep, get that 7900gs - the extra 1gb ram is more a nice extra touch if you have the money to spare. You can run all modern games with that card.
But apparantyl the x1600xt is in a different class to the other x1600 series, finally getting competetive with the 76000gt for similar money. Nevertheless, the 7900gs is a fair bit better than both.
 
Quixote said:
Yep, get that 7900gs - the extra 1gb ram is more a nice extra touch if you have the money to spare. You can run all modern games with that card.
But apparantyl the x1600xt is in a different class to the other x1600 series, finally getting competetive with the 76000gt for similar money. Nevertheless, the 7900gs is a fair bit better than both.
Click to expand...


thanks. I defrag my drive lol

Most lag occurs on the first run through of a game map after the first loading. after that its very smooth.

I was thinking that a new hard drive with just the game I play on it and the maps for that game might make it a little quicker....

I'm dissapointed in the graphics card I have. It doesn't seem to be able to handle much at all.

will try NVIDIA you suggest,
 
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