New Member
★ Black Lounger ★
💻 Oldtimer
k well, ill explain the problem first.
i bought a 350$ refurbished hewlett packard off newegg several months ago (cantbe arsed to build one myself), and for a 300$ machine it is a monster. However something is keeping it from playing anything beyond half life 2.
the original half life 2 runs just fine, but the expansions slow down considerably and ive noticed problems with shaders. And frequent crashes with "video hardware errors" in Vistas error reporting thingy when playing those. For now, im blaming this on the onboard video but id hate to find out otherwise after buying an expensive card.
ideally i want to run half life 2, and its expansions shaders and all at a pwn framerate, without crashing >_>. I dont want to run crysis, I dont game on my PC THAT much. But i would like to play what i have.
worth noting it is a pre-built machine so its parts are probably very very cheap and/or sub-par.
it has a pci-express x16 slot, but it only has a 250w power supply, so you can see my dillemma. Upgrading one requires that i upgrade the other.
it also has 2gb memory, and a "AMD athlon 64 X2 dual core processor 4000+"
whats a good graphics card that would work with my existing PSU, and if that is a completely retarded question what is a nice cheap PSU/graphics card combination that is still fairly cheap.
(i hate installing PSUs btw)
i bought a 350$ refurbished hewlett packard off newegg several months ago (cantbe arsed to build one myself), and for a 300$ machine it is a monster. However something is keeping it from playing anything beyond half life 2.
the original half life 2 runs just fine, but the expansions slow down considerably and ive noticed problems with shaders. And frequent crashes with "video hardware errors" in Vistas error reporting thingy when playing those. For now, im blaming this on the onboard video but id hate to find out otherwise after buying an expensive card.
ideally i want to run half life 2, and its expansions shaders and all at a pwn framerate, without crashing >_>. I dont want to run crysis, I dont game on my PC THAT much. But i would like to play what i have.
worth noting it is a pre-built machine so its parts are probably very very cheap and/or sub-par.
it has a pci-express x16 slot, but it only has a 250w power supply, so you can see my dillemma. Upgrading one requires that i upgrade the other.
it also has 2gb memory, and a "AMD athlon 64 X2 dual core processor 4000+"
whats a good graphics card that would work with my existing PSU, and if that is a completely retarded question what is a nice cheap PSU/graphics card combination that is still fairly cheap.
(i hate installing PSUs btw)
