PC Question

[Ralphy]

Looks like my CD drive is fucked

Sonic, you advised me to get a lap top earlier in this thread, just out of interest, why?

I'm more likely to have a new pc built because I got a 19 inch Hewlett Packard LCD monitor for my birthday. The picture quality is awesome.

My current PC is a 1.8 GHz AMD Sempron Processor
512 MB RAM
112 GB Hard drive

[Simon Pieman]

You can get a decent cd drive for less than £20 Ralphy.

Your hard drive, RAM and CPU are unlikely to make the graphics on your monitor better. Make sure you get a decent graphics card for that, but then don't go too overboard unless you're using it for gaming.

[sonic youth]

because i've grown to hate my PC and love this laptop.

[Ralphy]

You can get a decent cd drive for less than £20 Ralphy.

Your hard drive, RAM and CPU are unlikely to make the graphics on your monitor better. Make sure you get a decent graphics card for that, but then don't go too overboard unless you're using it for gaming.

Si, in modern terms, how far behind is my Processor speed wise?

To run games like FM 2008 quickly and smoothly, is 1.8 GHz and 512 MB RAM sufficient?

I've sourced a new CD drive for £25.

[flammableBen]

There's a big difference between a game like FM2008 which isn't very graphically advanced but does loads of data processing in the background and something like Bioshock or whatever new PC games are out recently.

For FM your graphics card won't need all the latest fancy light shadery stuff but you'll probably get a good speed boost when playing with more teams with more Ram and Processing power.

That is unless FM has changed drastically since I last played it anyway.

[Ralphy]

Any idea how I can quickly find out what Graphics card my PC has?

Will it tell me in windows anywhere?

[Simon Pieman]

It will run FM2008 fine, though looking at the min system requirements, your pc is only just good enough.

Rather than build a new pc, you could just buy an Athlon Dual Core processor (much faster) and upgrade your memory to 1 or 2 gb. This would be fairly inexpensive (about £150 for some pretty decent kit).

[Ralphy]

Thats what i'm thinking of doing Si.

I just googled ''find out graphics card info'' and got this........


http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36253


I tried this, and where it says 'device' it appears i have no graphics card  :?

Says N/A next to all the headings.

[Ralphy]

Current display resolution is 1152 x 864 32 bit 1 Hz.

[Simon Pieman]

Ralphy - do the same run thing but type in msinfo32 instead.

Then select "components" in the menu tree, then "display"

[Ralphy]

Ralphy - do the same run thing but type in msinfo32 instead.

Then select "components" in the menu tree, then "display"

Yep just did that, nothing came up in the right hand side :?

[Simon Pieman]

Right click on your desktop and select properties and then go to settings. There should be a drop down box with your display adapter listed

[Peter Venkman]

CD drive £3.99
or
DVD writer SATA dual layer £18.99

500GB 16MB cache SATA disk drive £50.99

Motherboard £27.99

Athlon 64 3500+ CHIP £22.99 includining cooling fan

Kingston 1GIG PC2-5300 ddr2 RAM £14.99 (2gig £29.98!)

About 1 hour to fit and reinstall Windows

Would be about double the speed of your Sempron 1.8 which is archaic.

A good PCI-E graphics card to go with it....ATI x1950pro top spec graphics card £75.99

Brand new case £9.98

500W PSU £8.25

All prices include VAT but not delivery if all ordered at the same time delivery is free.

If you wish to reclycle disk drives/case/PSU etc then obviously the price would be well under £100

There thats how cheap it is for a brand new system that would run circles round what you have now.

[Samdy Gray]

Right, whilst people are feeling helpfull - how easy is it for me to swap all my gubbins into a new case?

The one I've got is piss poor for air flow and it's too noisy (mainly the PSU fan which doesn't have a speed control and is constantly on full). The CPU sits at around 27c in idle and upwards of 46c on full load. I'm eyeing up a new Antec case with a ultra-quiet PSU and going to get a new ultra-quiet CPU fan and heatsink.

[Peter Venkman]

To be honest Samdy.....I did that yesterday, just remember where all the cables go and it will be done in under half an hour max.

Just make sure you make a note of the cable connections for the LED/SWITCH/HD the new case will have all these labelled but if you make a note exactly of where the old ones came off from its no problemo at all, you can get a nice full size case without a PSU for under £10 from ebuyer or dabs.

If you want an Antec ultra quiet you will need to spend about £70-80 like this one http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128045