4 Questions

[K]

uh i got a couple of questions lol im sorry if ur annoyed cuz im always askin for help but wat can i say i dont know that much about computers so help me out guys

System Stats
intel celleron proccesor
400 mhz
windows me(millenium edition)
128mb ram
XFX Pine Geforce2 MX400 64mb pci
PCI slots only no AGP

1st question:um as many of u know i bought a geforce2mx400 a couple of days ago i didnt get geforce fx cuz i thought itd be too powerful i also tried an geforce4 but it didnt work ,well thats not the point. A couple of days ago i saw a computer on tv and it said it had a ATI radeon as a vid card and that got me wondering will a ATI card work better than the card i currently have cuz i mean with my geforce2 mx 400 i get an fps of no more than 25 wen playing esf.Well anywayz my main question is will a ATI card work better with my computer?

2nd question: Does my computer with its current stats support newer games like GTA3 or Medal of honor(if its out for pc)and games like that?

3rd question:wat are those ethernet and 10/100 accesories for? r they to make your internet go faster cuz i have 56k.

4th question:If I do stay with the Geforce2 are there any ways i can tweak it so that it runs better. What i mean by tweakin is like changing some of the settings and stuff.

if u need to talk to me on aim to explain better pm me and ill tell u my aim lol o yeah and i cant forget i have a budget of $60 just thought id let u know

 

[DiebytheSword]

You're performance bottleneck is at the processor/ram/mobo level, not the graphics card. Which means, 25 is the best you will ever see. The newer games require newer silicon, thus, your aging Celeron will not run them. 10/100 is for lan equipment, which only works for lan parities, or for high speed internet accounts such as DSL and Cable.

 

[K]

wat i thought ethernter cards were to speed up ur internet and r u sure the radeon wont help?Plus wat do u mean the new games wont run do u mean they wont run well or that it wont run them at all?cuz a friend of mine ran spiderman with HIS intel celleron.

Besides i want to hear other members opinions

 

[Tassadar]

1st: Depending upon what ATI card it is, it will run better than your MX.
2nd: Absolutly not
3rd:Ethernet10/100 cards and things like that are for cable modem users, also LAN. so if you are on cable modem, a decent ethernet card could make your ping lower if you happen to have a really old one.
4th:There are TONS of tweaks for all kinds of video cards, what I would suggest you do is go download GameGain from megagames.com under the Tweaks section, and also get MagicTweak or TweakXP. All are very good tweaking programs.

About the spiderman thing, celerons range now-a-days from 350 MHz ro 2.5 GHz. I myself absolutly hate Intel, but thats just me. It is very possible your friend has a much faster Celeron than you do.

There is a thing you must understand, Cucumba is very right, your processor power is just as important, if not more, for running games. I'm currently onn a 1.6 GHz Athlon XP with a geforce fx 5600, I've had 0 problems in running any games so far.
And dont think of just running out and getting a new processor alone, you'll need a new motherboard, and most likely, new ram with that. And a heatsink.. fan.. new powersupply, and probably new case if you plan on doing that stuff. It has been said many times before on TechTV to never throw in a super-highend graphics card into a really old computer, like your 400, who knows, when/if your mobo dies it could take you **** with it, it's happened to me before unfortunatly. Not to mention even if you throw a Geforce FX 5900 Ultra you would probably get around the same FPS, maybe 10 more, but thats DEFINATLY not worth it considering the price of those. The processor is key.
Cuc is right with a 400Mhz processor the best you'll get is 25 fps on HL. Dont waste your money on other games until you have a better computer.

 

[ph34r t3h Cute]

Your wasteing your money on 3d cards, You cant just upgrade one thing in your computer, since all of the parts need each other to run, so a gffx would need 256mb ram at least, and you should upgrade your cpu too a althlon 2000 or p4, also meaning you should get a new mainborad, by the sounds of it, your wasteing so much money on video cards you could of got yourself a brand new computer for 200 and it would be a whole lot better then the one you have now.

 

[K]

ok so let me see if u have this straight 1)i shouldnt get the Radeon cuz it wont help much 2)my computer doesnt support newer games well wat kind of games DOES it support 3)no ethernet cuz i have 56k 4) Ok um in my taskbar theres something called media center that came with the geforce2 it has a lot of settings that i can change these are it:adjust display properties,performance and quality settings in there it has image settings which is in Quality it also has Antialasing settings and there are 5 settings in Antailasting theres:application controlled,Off no antialasting,2x,4x, and enable texture sharpening then they have another option called antialasting filtering it has these optionsff and 2x thats it for the performance and quality settings now for the rest of the media center it has,opengl setings,direct3d settings,a nd custom color settings but those 3 are all empty well can i tweak any of this to make games go faster?

 

[K]

o yeh sorry for double postin but edit dont seem to work dammit ,well im about to download Gamegain and o yeah i went to this software website and i looked for medal of honor and it said it required a 450mhz proccesor so my computer can run it right?

 

[MrTrick Jr.]

i think the GeForce MX is the only card that you can install on your mainboard, since you have NO AGP slot! well, it's really hard to find PCI g-cards nowadays, you should be glad, that you've found one!
so, there's no point in thinking about buying another card unless you get a new mainboard!
but let me tell you, for little money you can buy a new mainboard, RAM and processor! i guess it should be less than 100$....

 

[maxstokkebye2]

u now what? i suggest u go get a alien ware computer man!!! trust me they wont let u down! hahaha...i just got one and its wayyy gooood....
anyway i do know u cant run the newer games liek hl2,doom3,duke nukem forever etc. but hey u can play other cool games like half life..

 

[Cookster]

o yeh sorry for double postin but edit dont seem to work dammit ,well im about to download Gamegain and o yeah i went to this software website and i looked for medal of honor and it said it required a 450mhz proccesor so my computer can run it right?

Stick to half-life, and quake, or tribes 1. These are virtually the only games you can run.

450 mhz is minimum, yours is 400mhz, so no, you can not run it.

My advice, get a new computer, yours is too out dated to play games other than half life.

 

[Tassadar]

It is my personal belief that no one should ever buy an Alienware.
Ever.
Why? Why pay 3500 dollars for a computer when you could put together something yourself with nearly the same parts for MUCH cheaper, at least a thousand cheaper for Alienware's.
Also if you dont know how to make your own computer than maybe you should just pick up a cheap 400-500 dollar dell computer and put your MX in it, that way you would be fine with MOHAA and gta3. And most likely Half Life 2, since it is suspected to run under DX6 based cards/systems.

 

[DaWg]

yea alienware might be good, but it costs double what it should. I dont give a damn if they give me a mousepad and a t-shirt or a coffee mug.

As for your comp, you need a new motherboard for sure, and I would upgrade to at least a 1.5 gig - 1.8 gig AMD Athlon or equivalent pentium. GeForce MX are crap cards gaming-wise, as they were never meant to play them as well as anything else. I have met people who went from a Geforce 2 to a GeForce 4 MX without receiving any improvements gaming-wise. (FPS, smoothness, sharpness, etc. didnt change much if at all most of the time.) Once you upgrade your processor and motherboard, you can keep your GPU card (your GeForce 2 MX) or choose to upgrade it to better fit your more powerful system. My GeForce 4 Ti 4800 SE was $180 as opposed to the ATI Radeon 9700 for about $380 (although the radeon was the all-in-wonder, which has some more stuff with it). Some DDR ram would also be a good idea. 512 DDR ram should be plenty depending on what you are doing.

Excluding the software (OS and other things you may want with comp) you are looking at something about $800-$1000 I'd say depending on what you get exactly. If you do happen to upgrade to upgrade your computer along these lines, your computer should be more than a match to run most any game for the next few years (MMOs like Final Fantasy XI or Everquest 2 or maybe Planetside not included, but who plays EQ anyway?)

 

[Cookster]

Don't build your own, and don't buy dell.

If you have a high quality system, then you can upgrade it on your own, but buidling it is a waste of time.

If your buying a PC, go to Cost Co or Price club or sams club, you can't beat their bulk prices even online. Even if you peice it together with OEM parts you won't be able to beat their prices.

 

[Optional]

I suggest building one. You can build a seriously pimped out computer with just $1,300. Go to www.newegg.com . Get a nice 128 megabyte video card, 2.8 P4, 512 Corsair XMS RAM, a motherboard, a 60 gigabyte hard drive (make sure it is 8 megabyte cache), a sound card, and a computer case and your set. This computer will be nicely set for HL2. It will be able to take any game on the market currently. You can get it for cheaper if you use intergrated sound (no sound card), use your old speakers, keyboard, and mouse. That is, basicly, what I am doing. If you don't know how to build a computer, you can just look for one of the billions of tutorials on the internet. It is fun to build a computer, not a waste of time in my opinion. You should look for a tutorial on picking out the individual components because they sometimes arn't compatible. Read the specifications carefully.

 

[K]

uh ok but basicaly i shouldnt upgrade to the radeon right and besides im gettin a new comp next year i think or before that i dont really know. and as for games no newer games right? only games that meet my comps stats o and slander can u post a list of what tweaks work the best from megagames.com i mean tweaks for better gaming and such or better performance out of computers

ps.remember that last time i ask for help topic well i dont wanna post there again so ill just say it here. Even though i already did the virus and adaware check i still cant run scan disk whats wrong i mean it says to close all other programs but there is no other programs cuz im in safe mode for gods sakes. So please help lol :smile:

 

[K]

ok i tried to run scandisk AGAIN in safemode but it never advances it says to close some programs but i dont have any other programs open so wat should i do

ps. slander can u post a list of what tweaks work the best from megagames.com i mean tweaks for better gaming and such or better performance out of computers oh yeh for those of u who are wonderin y i am runnin a scandisk its because i want to defrag my comp but u have to do scan disk first

 

[GatSu]

megagames.com wont give you tweaks on how to get better performance...its mostly saved games, and back ups

go to tweak3d.net...search for your graphics card...ignore hardware tweaks...see if theres settings given to you by the card(like that program you have mediacenter)

also check out HL tweaks...they have it there...not sure where..just search for it.

::Edit::

dont change anything unless you know what it does...and if you have system restore...then make a save point before you do anything...

I personally dont like twaeking things but I understand you pain about the low fps.

 

[K]

well i remember a tweak from megagames called game gain that sounded pretty good bit i dont wanna get into that i can search for that wat im really interested in is my scandisk problem

 

[K]

um can anyone help me with the scan disk problem?

 

[Cookster]

press ctrl alt del which opens the task manager.

You'll see a bunch of things running, close every/anything you can EXCEPT Explorer.exe.

It might say this is a critical thing don't do it, don't worry, you won't do any damage, close what you can, then go back and run scandisk.