A gamer I am not. But, I would like to get HL2 at some point. Any problems with this game on this machine?
If push comes to shove, I can always upgrade the video card and power supply if need be. I feel pretty comfortable doing this sort of stuff, the first thing I did when I got the machine home is ripped the cover off and checked out the guts. Lots of room inside and easy to get to everything.
One thing I noticed about this unit is that it is really quiet.
That, and air flow tunnel directs the air right over the cooling sink for the processor. The fans (push/pull) on this machine are very large and run slow to keep the noise down while still moving tons of air.
Oh, and the memory does run at 400MHZ.
Here are the general specs for the Radeon;
**Powered by RADEON X300SE Series VPU, driven by quad-pipe rendering architecture
Full support for DirectX® 9.0 and the latest OpenGL® functionality
64-bit DDR memory interface, featuring HYPER Z III bandwidth-conserving technology
128MB DDR SDRAM memory
400MHz RAMDAC
Native x16 lane PCI Express support
VGA connector, TV-out connector **
Why not so good?
HL2 recommends a 256 card but the minumum sys requirements are only;
**1.2 GHz Processor
256MB RAM
DirectX 7 capable graphics card **
with no mention of minimum card memory.
I’m not so sure you can replace the power supply - at least, not with an off-the-shelf standard ATX ps - you might want to check with gateway about that.
You know at first I was gonna post about how damn tough these guys are being on you US but then I remembered this was StraightDope and any bragging threads are open invitations for verbal abuse. I was rather surprised my Geekier than Thou thread didn’t bring more heat.
And damnit if you all aren’t horrible influences on me, my computer is quickly becoming dated and I want to upgrade the ram, reading this thread is only encouraging me but I really shouldn’t spend the money on it right now.
Well, first of all, the amount of memory isn’t a good indicator of game performance - even the latest games use less than 128MB, except at the highest detail levels, so having 128MB of RAM is sufficient for now. In any real game, a highend-card with 128MB RAM will massively outperform a budget cards (like the x300 or GeforceFX 5200) that happens to have 256MB of cheap RAM stuck on it.
The more important things are the number of pixel pipelines (the x300 you have has 4 pixel pipes, which is okay, but note that higher level cards have 8, 12 or even 16 pixel pipelines) - the number of pixel pipelines determines how many pixels can have processing done on them at the same time by the GPU, the clockspeed of the GPU (325mhz, in your case), and the memory bandwidth. (Basically, how fast the memory is. )
Memory bandwidth is determined by the memory clockspeed times the bit rate of the memory interface - your card has 400mhz memory, which isn’t bad, but it is cripplied by the 64-bit memory interface - better cards tend to have 128 or 256 bit memory interfaces.
For a real world example, in Half Life 2, most of the benchmarks I have seen would give you a frame rate of 25fps or so, when running at 1280x1024 (since you mentioned you have a 17" LCD monitor, most are that resolution.) A card like the Geforce 6600GT would give you around 70fps when running at the same resolution.
Oops, my mistake in the above - the 25fps I gave was for the regular x300 cards that I have seen benchmarked - I dug up some benches for the cripplied x300se version that you have, and the results are more disappointing - 10-15fps at 1280x1024, your monitors native resolution.
Thanks, but when I put this>(Let the bragging begin…) at the end of the OP, I was giving up my right to claim superiority (apparently only within my household) and was opening the door for the rest of you guys to chime in.
So far so good.
One thing to note about LCD monitors and gaming is that most of them have pixel refresh rates above 16ms. This means that no matter how great your video card is, you will see “ghosting” or blurring when playing a graphically intensive game like HL2 or Doom3.
I can get this card;
**
RADEON® X700 PRO 256MB PCI EXPRESS™ + FREE SHIPPING
Price: $219.00 **
If I feel the need to step it up a notch. Not too pricey either.
I couldn’t find, though, if it needs a larger power supply. Since the fans run at lower speeds than normal maybe I’ll be ok. I can take some readings off the power supply and figure out what the current draw is. I’ve got access to a Fluke 43B Power Quality Analyzer.
The point was to get something cheap-yet-reasonable. Remember, the system it’s intended to replace is a 300MHz!! Chances are, by the time I get around to upgrading this one again, the choice between a 754 & a 939 would be irrelevant - I’ll still need a new MB with a new socket/slot/whatever. OTOH, it saved me about ~$50.
I would go with a Geforce 6600GT myself - even with only 128MB video RAM the 6600GT generally outperforms the 256MB Radeon x700 Pro Comparison here. This card is cheaper too, at $185 with free 2 day shipping, and also note, it has dual dvi ports, if you decide to add another LCD monitor.
