Rig for DD0, Help Please!

BoBoDaClown

Heya, my girlfriend has recently joined me in gaming!  Unfortunately we can't afford a new computer, so I am recycling an old machine.  We just want to get it to run smoothy on 1152x864, and it can be pretty damn ugly.  With the current rig her avatar rubberbands, and the game gets jittery during the 12man raids, while when I swapped her video card for my videocard the game continued to have low fps, but the rubberbanding did fix itself.

I would like advice on how to get the following machine into a more playable state(I don't have much technical know-how; a friend is doing the changes, so I don't want to change the motherboard in order to keep the work down).

 

DDO's minimum requirements:

P4 1.6 GHz or AMD equivalent Processor with SSE

512 MB RAM

64 MB Hardware T&L-compatible video card

recommended:

P4 3.0GHz or AMD equivalent Processor with SSE

1GB RAM

128MB GeForce FX or better video card

 

her computer:

 

motherboard: ASUS A7N266-VM

CPU: AMD ATHLON(TM) XP 1700+ 1.10GHz



RAM: 1.5gig (1gig DDR400MHz, 512mb DDR333MHz)



Video Card: Radeon 9600 (128mb)

So, the only part that is below recommended in the CPU.  I have just bought a second hand ATHLON XP 2400+, which is close to the max the motherboard can handle, and above the minmum requirements. 

Hopefully that will make a difference?

I figure 1.5gig of RAM is all good, but I was thinking of purchasing a second hand graphics card, any recommendations for this rig?

I was thinkin a 256mb along the lines of:

 

ASUS A9550GE/TD/256MB ATI 9550 256MB DDR TV-OUT DVI VGA

or

Gecube ATI Radeon 9600Pro 256MB AGP 8x DVI TV Out

or

GeForce 7300GT 256 AGP 8x DVI TV-out



I was thinking the GeForce, since I have had a lot of problems with the current RADEON and this motherboard.

 

Anyway, thanks for any advice!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

daylight01

If your rig has a pci slot I would say the 7600gt would be a nice card for you,Even brand new this card is about 70 euro's/dollars and is a solid gamming card,The amd 2400+ will defiently help but you havent posted your psu so I would check before you started to add video cards etc that your psu can run them all smoothly or your girlfriend wont have too much fun.

Orca

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Originally posted by daylight01
If your rig has a pci slot I would say the 7600gt would be a nice card for you,Even brand new this card is about 70 euro's/dollars and is a solid gamming card,The amd 2400+ will defiently help but you havent posted your psu so I would check before you started to add video cards etc that your psu can run them all smoothly or your girlfriend wont have too much fun.

---

You can't get a 7600GT for PCI, you can only get that for PCI-Express, which i hardly doubt his motherboard have.

I have no suggestion other than buying a new computer. Either you have to go for the 9600pro 256mb, but what difference it will make to the 9600 128mb, i have no idea. Since you are only running lower resolutions, the size of the memory should make no big difference.

Im sure a new video card will help, but im unsure about how much... About the PSU, if you have a 300watt or above it should do fine for your set up, even with one of the listed GFX cards.

daylight01

Sorry I did mean pcie(my bad),I dont know if his mother board supports it I had this card in my old amd 3200+ and run alot of games very nicely and would only take him a sec to open his pc and check and like he asked any suggests were welcome :P

Naitakal

I think you won't see much of a difference when upgrading to any of the cards you've listed.

The brought up 7600GT is also already dated. I'd look around for a 79XX model, like the 7900GS.

BoBoDaClown

 

Originally posted by Orca


 

Originally posted by daylight01

If your rig has a pci slot I would say the 7600gt would be a nice card for you,Even brand new this card is about 70 euro's/dollars and is a solid gamming card,The amd 2400+ will defiently help but you havent posted your psu so I would check before you started to add video cards etc that your psu can run them all smoothly or your girlfriend wont have too much fun.

 

You can't get a 7600GT for PCI, you can only get that for PCI-Express, which i hardly doubt his motherboard have.

I have no suggestion other than buying a new computer. Either you have to go for the 9600pro 256mb, but what difference it will make to the 9600 128mb, i have no idea. Since you are only running lower resolutions, the size of the memory should make no big difference.

Im sure a new video card will help, but im unsure about how much... About the PSU, if you have a 300watt or above it should do fine for your set up, even with one of the listed GFX cards.

 

Thanks for the advice guys!

I have a Nvidia Geforce 7600GT in my own computer, and I plugged it into my gf's computer.  It still ran very poorly but the rubberbanding issue was fixed.

 

Does this mean the 7600GT is compatible, because it ran at all?

I do lack computer knowledge!

 

cheers