To the tech who built my computer...

[Naaman]

It sounds more like an onboard PCIe graphics chipset and no slot

[NightAngel]

DING! AGP is the correct answer.

I got my new card today- so Merry Christmas everybody!
I had to settle for a NVidia GeForce 7600 GS. All cards higher are PCI and I just don't care to upgrade the motherboard currently.
When I say settle I should say DAMN this is a freakin' awesome card!
ooooooooo....aaaaahhhhhh....

I refuse to ever have a Radeon again.

Hellgate London is a much cooler looking game than I realized before and now my hubby can play the Call of Duty 4 I bought him.

[Shabo]

Yeah, I don't blame you for not wanting to upgrade your mobo. That's a PITA.

Yay for upgrading graphics cards!!!!

[JustADude]

Proud owner of a GeForce 7800 GS, which is officially (now that it's a dead standard) the best AGP card, EVER. Bought it right after the price plummeted because of PCI-E and I'm only now starting to feel like my system's straining on the new games.

[Broomjockey]

Hey, congrats! That's awesome! And yeah, upgrading the mobo would be just a bit of a pain at this point, and there is way more to take into account that I ever thought. At least you can play wicked cool games! And yes, Hellgate is a very nice looking game

[Shabo]

Yeah, if I'm going to upgrade my mobo, I'll just buy a new case. It's far easier to switch things from one case and mobo to the other than have to rip out everything from the first case to get the mobo out. And new cases are pretty cheap for a decent one.

[claidhmore]

Bleh, I'm glad I was finally able to drop my AGP card and slot. My PCI-E'd GeForce 7900 is very, very tasty.

And IMO for a gaming machine there's no reason right now to not have 2 GB in your box. Games are actually seriously needing 1gb to play in the 'recommended' range, and sticks are just so cheap now (compared to before).

[NightAngel]

Games are actually seriously needing 1gb to play in the 'recommended' range, and sticks are just so cheap now (compared to before).

Are you running Vista? I'm going to take a wild stab and guess you are. Why? Because SysReq's for games are almost double on Vista than XP in most cases.

Makes me not want Vista even more.

[Shabo]

Are you running Vista? I'm going to take a wild stab and guess you are. Why? Because SysReq's for games are almost double on Vista than XP in most cases.

Makes me not want Vista even more.

Nope, I'm going to say he/she isn't. Why? Because Vista itself requires 512 mb ram to run, 1 gb recommended. And when I say recommended, I mean HIGHLY recommended. And I would even go so far as to say if you want a machine to run properly with Vista, DO NOT use less than 2 gbs.

Gaming rigs should have 2 gbs simply because people usually have more stuff running than just the game. They might have a browser open to look up info, or a VOIP server up, music program in the background, some sort of IM client, maybe an email client, etc... All this stuff takes memory, so if you don't have 2 gbs in a gaming rig, you are going to lag pretty bad with all that stuff running.

[NightAngel]

Here's an example of what I mean:

According to The Link Hellgate London requires 1GB memory and a 1.8GHz processor if you have XP. Originally listed as needing 512MB- the specs have been changed.

For Vista it requires 2GB and a 2.4GHz processor. I guess that's because it takes so much to run Vista to start with?

I suppose that since I don't run all that extra junk in the background is why I don't have problems. As a matter of fact I shut down all non-essential background processes before running ANY game. When I play I want the machine to be as focused as I am.

[Broomjockey]

I think part of the difference is also their equating Win XP = 32 bit operating system, and Vista = 64 bit, meaning that for the most part, Win XP = DX 9, and Vista = DX 10. Of course there are going to be exceptions, probably a lot of exceptions, but have you seen the size of the spec box? Not enough room to get into the nitty gritty. So if you're going to run DX 10 graphics, you're going to need more machine than running DX 9, and to show that, they're going to say if you're running Vista, you need X, while for XP you need Y.

And then there's the fact that Vista takes around 512 MB RAM to run idle...

[pyxee]

...
And then there's the fact that Vista takes around 512 MB RAM to run idle...

Which is why you wont see me with Vista for a very long time I currently run 1.5gb And I run some newer stuff okay, but I am not thrilled with it. There is no way that I can run the newest games at decent settings on my poor rig though.

[NightAngel]

I hadn't checked into Vista because I'm perfectly happy with XP Pro and have no plans on changing anytime soon.
So, no- I didn't realize how much it hogs up I was just thinking, "Damn! Do you see the difference in game specs?!"

But now, I know why.