Video Card Help?

Well right now I'm running a Nvidea Geforce Fx5500. Yea its pretty old. Anyways im wanting to play a few games such as Left 4 dead on my pc and ect some newer games even Left 4 dead 2 if i get a decent video card.

Atm I only have 1.2G of ram, Which I will be upgrading that soon.

Right now my system specs are:

Operating System:
Windows XP (32 bit)

Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 256 MB


Memory:
RAM: 1278 Mb

I believe my processor idk never knew much about one, it sais Pentium 4 CPU Intel 2.80 Ghz.

Anyways Im looking for a vid card like i said, I would be purchasing it on new egg but not right now will be later on, Just wandering what would be a decent video card I could purchase, Not serial but IDE.

Im looking into Nvidia Gforce 7000 or So, I Believe my budget would be around $40-50 would anybody be interested in showing what would be a good video card for my budget?

I know I will be upgrading my ram soon, But as for processor Idk anything about. so any help on that would be great.


Also was looking how do I find out if I have DDR2 or whatnot? Can I change from DDR2 to 3? Im not familiar with this.

 

You may as well just buy a whole new computer, your RAM won't handle shit and your processor is a pile of donkey shit. (no offense)

 

Your processor is fine, you need to work your RAM up to atleast 4 GB to be sure. Go for a GeForce 295.

EDIT: Your are not getting anything that will run L4D or L4D2 good for 40$...

 

Just so you know, video cards do not use SATA or IDE interfaces. They typically use PCI, or PCI-express. Sometimes AGP.

As said before, I'd look into buying/building a whole new system if you wanted to play up to date games. On your current system you're always going to have a bottleneck somewhere that will keep you from playing newer games.

As for DDR2 vs DDR3.. No, they are not backwards compatible. You can not use DDR2 memory in a DDR3 slot and vice versa.

Your current system won't play newer games well (choppy even on lowest probably) if at all. For example, L4D2 minimum system requirements are:

CPU Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
Memory 1 GB (XP), 2 GB (Vista)
Graphics Hardware DirectX 9 compatible video card with 128 MB, Shader model 2.0. ATI X800, NVidia 6600 or better

Bear in mind those are minimum required.. those pretty much are enough to play on lowest and even then you'll be laggy as shit.

 

The first two guys who posted just don't know what they're talking about. Please ignore them.

Considering your computer isn't completely run down with junk, considering you buy a decent graphics card, you'll be able to play L4D2 and games with better graphics easily on that computer.

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Buy a new graphics card, even if you get a new computer you'll still need a good graphics card.

Uninstall everything you don't need from your computer. If you know how, reformat it. When playing games if the computer is still slow buy an extra GB and you'll be fine. 99% chance you have DDR RAM, don't worry about upgrading.
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If you want to spend the money on a new computer that's your choice, but if you just want to play games, your computer will work fine for you.

 

Well LOL true I appreciate all the feedback, I am going to invest in a new pc, But just stating, If i get lets say 4G of ram, and a 7700 Nvidea Gforce Vid card. Do you think I could handle L4d at least?

 

So you'd like to insult my intelligence? I'm not going to get into an argument with some internet guy,

1. His Graphics card may be able to handle it (When he buys a new one), but without some more RAM, his game is going to LAG. Please note, the specs posted for L4D and L4D2 are usually considered BARE MINIMUM to run that game.

2. If he decided to get a new computer, which could easily be built on around a 400$ budget for the simple stuff, and up to 800$ for a even better computer, and probably around 1000$ to go with an all out, bad ass, gaming computer

3. While Un-installing crap you don't need is a good thing, it's not always the answer. Yes, you do experience slower run times with the more data on your hard drive. Users usually won't experience MAJOR dispositions in their computers performance until they hit around the 1GB mark of memory left, then the computer is a little too crowded.

Maybe you wanna reconsider your reading experience, to someone with personal experience. Thanks.

 

Are you honestly going to be that cheap? If you upgrade your computer with old parts like that, you may save money but you'll constantly be complaining about things you can't run.

If you have an old motherboard, upgrade it. DDR is old and slow so far as memory goes. A decent DDR2 & Socket AM2 compatible motherboard won't cost you much at all. In terms of processors, I'd recommend updating that too, considering Pentium 4 is also old and slow. Suppose you get a new motherboard (I recommend AMD, honestly, they're cheaper and just as good as Intel usually) which is Socket AM2 compatible, an AMD Athlon X2 or something like that won't cost much.

US$100 will get you a nVidia GeForce 9800GT. They're not the newest on the market, but they're capable from my experience of running essentially every game that's come out recently on decent graphics settings. I can run any game based on the Source engine (i.e. L4D) on maximum graphical settings with no lag with mine.

Personally I'd save up a few hundred and just upgrade or rebuild your entire system. 1GB of DDR2 is about AU$20, so AU$80 for 4GB, AU$125 for a decent graphics card, AU$100 for a decent motherboard, AU$50 for a decent processor, which totals at about AU$355 for an entire decent system. In US dollars that's probably closer to US$300.

 

I don't enjoy insulting you. It's just that if I don't someone may make a bad decision.

The Hard Drive takes a while to get the information off of it. RAM is used to temporarily hold the information that is being used (applications, programs, games, whatever). It is much faster for the CPU obtain the information that needs to be processed from the RAM compared for the hard drive.

If you don't have enough RAM in your computer the CPU will have to drag it off the hard drive thus making ones computer slow.

As long as he has enough RAM in his computer to hold his OS, game, and whatever other programs he's running, adding more RAM isn't going to do anything.

Lets say a computer we have two computer they are both the same except one has 1GB of RAM and the other has 8GB. They have nothing on it except windows XP. Since loading up just windows XP doesn't take more than a GB of RAM these two computers are going to run the same.

Yeah, the most he should upgrade his computer now is with 1GB of RAM, and a graphics card, but that's alright because he'll be able to use it in his new computer. The only things he'll probably be able to save is his case, DVD drive, and maybe the power supply, but if he's interested in learning to build and building a new computer this isn't a bad idea.

You'll only need to buy 1GB, 2GB is the most an XP computer would ever need.

That video card will be able to play L4D on high detail with your computer, probably any decent graphics card will. It's harder to say picking out a graphics card; none of the specs can accurately say how good the performance will be. It's best, when looking for a graphics card, to look at reviews, see what people say, do a little research.

 

as you can see he said first two soo if you knew how to count you would realize you are the third post on the thread therefore hes not reffering to you............

 

@wtp I mean no offense by this, but.. his current machine will not run L4D2 or even L4D smoothly on high settings (I'm pretty sure that is his goal here... nobody enjoys playing on medium-low)

His processor doesn't even meet the MINIMUM required. Keeping in mind that minimum basically is only enough to play on lowest while still most likely having a fair bit of lag, this is an obvious bottleneck/issue.

You're also thinking about the quantity of his RAM, and not so much about the quality. I'd be surprised if he wasn't using something close to PC 4000 or 4200.. either way, it's a very slow clock speed I'm sure. 2GB of PC 4200 compared to 2GB of PC 8500 or higher is a biiiig difference. It's not necessarily the amount of RAM he has..

Also, anything in the 7000 series won't run these games smoothly. Odds are he's going to want to play future releases as well. It makes no sense to save $50 and buy something that's already extremely outdated. $100 will go a long way in terms of video cards, and you won't be disappointed.

For example:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...500117&cm_re=nvidea_gt-_-14-500-117-_-Product

Spend a little bit more money and have your system last longer.

 

He's .2GHz behind, and they're being much more generous with the minimum requirements nowadays. My brother would play Crisis (a game with much better graphics that L4D) on an almost identical machine as his effortlessly.

"Also, anything in the 7000 series won't run these games smoothly."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI5f7-69Skc

The RAM speed is insignificant. I've never seen RAM speed make a noticeable difference.

I don't know why everyone has the mentality that you need a $5,000 computer to even think of gaming; his computer with a graphics card will run fine.

You don't have to believe me wait a couple days until he gets the graphics card and we'll know.

Actually I was.

 

RAM speed does make a difference, benchmarks prove it. I suggest you look at some of the popular gaming magazines.

 

Half-true statement. the difference between DDR2 and DDR3, and the difference between 800MHz and 1600MHz RAM is so trivial in realworld applications you'll barely notice anything. BUT, the difference between DDR and DDR2/3 is extremely noticable. Also, benchmarks are a load of shit, you'll never notice a 0.5ms speed increase.. same goes for FPS, anybody who bitches about only a 150FPS needs to be shot.

You only need the FPS to maintain a steady rate that is 1-10 fps above your monitor's refresh rate, and considering most monitors are 60Hz, you only need to maintain a rate of ~65fps to have smooth gaming... capping fps at this is fantastic and makes better use of your system.

To the OP:
Firstly, download a program called "Game Booster", run it, it is fantastic for low-end systems that need every bit of performance to run games.

Secondly, if you have any antivirus programs running, add "C:/Program Files/Steam/appcache" (change C:/Program Files to your install dir) to your antivirus' excluded rules. This will SUBSTANTIALLY gain you FPS.

Thirdly, your computer is shit, buying a new gfx card won't do you ANY good whatsoever, you'll have other bottlenecks to worry about.

Also, your budget of $40-50 will get you NOTHING. For the gfx card alone (most expensive part of the computer usually) you're looking at, the very least, $120-250 for a good gfx card, I'm about to upgrade to a gfx card that costs $650.

Purchase the following if you wish to game at the BARE MINIMUM for the cheapest:

-AMD Athlon64 x2 5050E 2.6Ghz ~$75
-GIGABYTE GA-M61PME-S2P ~$70
-4GB of DDR2 RAM ~$100
-GeForce 9800GTX+ 1GB ~$130

with those bare minimums you'll be able to play L4D/L4D2/most modern games reasonably well, as there won't be any single bottleneck to screw shit up.

 

You completely went around every point I made. The video you linked to showed him playing on lowest settings, and still having frame rate issues.

Not only that, but the person in that video's specs were much better than his specs. As I said in my previous post, I didn't mean to offend you. RAM speed makes a big difference :noworry:

I never said you would need anywhere near a $5000 computer, either. You can build a reasonable machine for about $400.. OP has also already stated he's going to invest in a new system, so I also don't see why you're still fighting this point.