Release Date

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by War4ever
i was suckered into this HP everything computer a few years back when they were the rage... i have one of these recovery disks with win 95 and my sound and video card built in
if i knew then what i know now...there is no way i would buy this piece of crap they call a computer....

Join the club. I at least have Win98, but the sound/audio cards are integrated and so out-of-date that the last time I reinstalled Windows, I "lost" the sound card so that I don't have any sounds! I think I'll upgrade the whole hunk of junk once I have raised enough money.

[SerapisIV]

Now I have a P2-400, which is borderline with the Civ3 requirements. Now we all know that the Civ3 graphics aren't going to be very intensive, but would upgrading my really, really old video card help speed the game up? I have an Nvidia chip but it's about a 3-4 year old card, pre-TNT1.

[War4ever]

Originally posted by kassiopeia

Join the club. I at least have Win98, but the sound/audio cards are integrated and so out-of-date that the last time I reinstalled Windows, I "lost" the sound card so that I don't have any sounds! I think I'll upgrade the whole hunk of junk once I have raised enough money.

LOL i had the same problem when i reformatted my computer.... my basic win explorer is like version 3.0 LOL i get errors every page....although i can navigate thru them... it sent me for a loop.....

if i up my ram i should be just fine....if not i have an important decision to make......

probably need around 750 for the cards, motherboard, chip and such.... 750 i would rather not spend on a computer that is behind the times as it is

[SerapisIV]

Can't play at 1024? jeez, I have a 19" monitor and get frustrated when I can't get 1280 x 1024. Everything looks too big at even 1024 in my opinion, things are too blocky. The bigger the screen, the smoother the graphics (I don't play many graphics intensive games)

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by War4ever
probably need around 750 for the cards, motherboard, chip and such.... 750 i would rather not spend on a computer that is behind the times as it is

Same problem here. If those figures are USD, then I have just about the same sum as you currently. I'd need a new motherboard, a new processor, a sound card, a (good) video card... maybe not a DVD-drive... and at least 128 MB more RAM. The 8 GB hard drive is hopefully salvageable. I wonder how much I'd get for selling this piece of cr@p for office use.

[korn469]

SerapisIV

i too have a gateway p2 400...it came with 64mb ram and a ati rage fury 8mb video card...well i added in another 64 mb ram from crucial www.crucial.com and i bought a ati radeon 32 mb video card...the video card didn't help at all with 2d games like civ2, smac, starcraft, but with 3d graphics heavy games like fallout tactics, homeworld, diablo2, and emperor: battle for dune it made those games go from basically unplayble on my system to actually pretty good...so it depends on what kind of games you play, but if you do upgrade your chip DO NOT buy a g-force3...a 32 mb g-force2 MX or a cheap radeon would be all you'll need and you can find them both for pretty cheap

here is an g-force2 mx for 89.95
here
and here is an ati radeon ve for 89.95
here

right now i am waiting until next year when the amd athlon4 .13 micron chips hit the everyday market...i wanna see if that will become mainstream or if the cheap p4's will still let intel dominate...i also wanna wait till windows xp sp1 comes out and when the ultra ata 133 hard drive spec becomes standard...i'd also like to wait till the next graphics chips comes out from nvidea and ati...so most likely i will buy a new system late spring early summer of next year

War4ever

to upgrade your system it shouldn't cost you more than about 350 dollars (about 150 max for cpu/motherboard combo, about 100 for a video card, and about 100 for a hard drive)...if you are going to spend 750 dollars to upgrade i would wait a month or so and just buy a new system from dell...the only problem is when you build your own cheap system the single most expensive component is Windows...though you might be able to find overstocked windows 98 for fairly cheap...also since you already have 160mb of ram you shouldn't need very much more if any...unless it is really low quality ram...in which case i'd goto crucial and get you some new ram