Playing Games and Watching Videos...

[Adriano]

I'm struggling to play games and watch videos on my current PC and was just wondering if anyone could reccommend to me what i would need to do to improve watching videos and playing games?

i.e: Graphics, Memory, RAM??

Thanks

[LemonyBrainAid]

It would appear that it would be a graphics card problem, although it could be a memory problem.

What graphics card do you have, and what amount of RAM/Memory ?

You may just need to download the latest drivers for your graphics card...

[Adriano]

Originally Posted by LemonyBrainAid

It would appear that it would be a graphics card problem, although it could be a memory problem.

What graphics card do you have, and what amount of RAM/Memory ?

You may just need to download the latest drivers for your graphics card...

I haven't got a clue what graphics card or amount of RAM/Memory i have, how do i check it out, without going inside my PC?

[Scrubbs]

Start/allprograms/accessories/systemtools/systeminformation
That should get you to a menu with tabs on the top, have look around

[Adriano]

I hope this information will be enough for you to help me out?

OS Name Microsoft Windows
Version 4.90.3000 Build 3000
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name S7C7T6
System Manufacturer Micro-Star Inc.
System Model MS-6183
System Type X86-based PC
Processor Intel(r) Celeron(tm) Processor GenuineIntel ~468 Mhz
BIOS Version A6183MS V1.5B1 111999
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
Locale United Kingdom
Time Zone GMT Daylight Time
Total Physical Memory 158.38 MB
Available Physical Memory 324.00 KB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.75 GB
Page File Space 1.85 GB

[Halcyon]

Right well from that there are a number of reasons top games wont run too well....

1) Your RAM memory seems to be 158mb and this can be a little hard for games to cope with.

2) You have a celeron 468mhz CPU which means its not going to do things alarmingly quickly and may take some time.

Also from looking up your system spec, it seems that you have an integrated on boards graphics card so unfortunately that won't be too great for videos or games.

[Adriano]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Right well from that there are a number of reasons top games wont run too well....

1) Your RAM memory seems to be 158mb and this can be a little hard for games to cope with.

2) You have a celeron 468mhz CPU which means its not going to do things alarmingly quickly and may take some time.

Also from looking up your system spec, it seems that you have an integrated on boards graphics card so unfortunately that won't be too great for videos or games.

Is there anything you can suggest i do?

[Scrubbs]

Bite the bullet and buy a new computer?
cos I am guessing the only thing worth keeping will be your hard drive ...maybe

[Adriano]

Originally Posted by Scrubbs

Bite the bullet and buy a new computer?
cos I am guessing the only thing worth keeping will be your hard drive ...maybe

I don't think i have the funds avaliable to purchase a new computer...

[Halcyon]

Well you can probably upgrade the ram quite cheaply.
There may be a way where you would add more RAM and more of it could be shared to handle the onboard graphics, but you are not going to notice a great difference.

if you have a spare PCI port you could stick in a new grpahics card and disable the onboard one, but you would be looking at a low end model as your system would probably not support the latest graphics cards.

You could hunt around to see if there are better drivers for the graphics adapter but I doubt it will do much.

The problem is that if you uipgrade one thing, you will be limited by another, in your case the CPU and RAM.

There comes a time when your PC becomes only useful for browsing the net and E-mailing, or playing the retro game from the old days and thats where you are now.
Upgrading would probably cost money that wouldnt be a good investment as you'd find you'd belimited again later on.
You can get a good system that will play games for about £500 now.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Adriano

I don't think i have the funds avaliable to purchase a new computer...

How much can you afford?

It's not that difficult to build yourself a system, you can get something which would be quite capable of running a broad range of games (maybe not necessarily the top of the range ones) for about £200, although this does also depend on what case and power supply you have at the moment as you may need a different case and more power.

Have a look for the "building a PC" threads elsewhere on these forums eg
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...2&page=1&pp=15
for some ideas and check prices at places like http://www.dabs.com and http://www.redstore.com