my wife likes playing the sims and i've always wanted to play computer games but never had a good enough computer to get into it. right now my computer can almost play cad:waw but the video card fails and everything else is pretty much pass the minum requirements from what states

heres what my computer has

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
CPU Speed: 2.29 GHz Performance Rated at 6.60 GHz
System RAM: 1.7 GB
Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, 32-bit (Build Service Pack 16001)
Video Card: ATI Radeon X1200 Series (ATI Radeon X1200 Series (0x791E))

heres what it states about my Video Card Features

Video RAM: Required - 256 MB
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes
Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes
Vertex Shader Ver.: Required - 2.0
Pixel Shader Ver.: Required - 2.0

so im barley missing it because i need the last 2 to be 3.0

should i go and upgrade my graphic card? Or just wait because im buying my wife a computer and i know all she really wants to do is surf the internet, play games and watch movies. I could just spend enough money on making it a gaming system and then if i have money left over i could upgrade my system. so should i spend the extra amount on her computer which we're going to share anyways and wait on my computer or is the video card i need cheap enough to get now? im not sure how much money im going to be able to spend im hoping at least $500 but i wouldn't mind spending more if i can

does anyone have recommendations on what computer i should get? i really just wants a fast gaming computer with hd thanks in advance

Hi,

Technically all monitors [even old CRTs from 10 years ago] are HD (pal and ntsc have resolutions of 700x400 and HD is only 1080xWhatever - Its early I aint had coffee yet bare with me)

You have enough general power all you need to do is the following.

Ram: make sure you have at least 2gb - 4gb is best and ram is dirt cheap.

GPU: or graphics card grab an HD4650 or 4870 which ever is in budget I run the budget HD4650 and I score over 5 out of 5 in vista experience index, and can play Grid at highest res, crysis, COD:WAW etc etc etc.

Most games simply want brute GPU power and not much else.

Also install the 64bit version of your OS, you will get 40% more power out of your CPU in intensive operations.

That would be the cheapest upgrade I could think of that would let you play more or less anything under the sun.

Windows 7 x64 is also nice

Xtreame

windows 7? can my computer hold x64? i downloaded a copy a while ago but im afraid to install it, i have a lot of things on my computer which i can easily move it to my 1tb hard drive but this is the only computer we have right now i dont want to try and install windows on it and the install fails and im stuck with no computer. i downloaded the os off of another site and scan cleanly for no virus's and the guy stated that it was untouched and can active with no key. is their a way to check it to make sure?

Yup all dual cores support 64 bit or RISC instruction set code.

Also the x64 installer will not allow you to proceed if it does not

I recommend a clean install not a upgrade.


Windows 7 is the next Microsoft OS There is a link to the correct retail version in the other section

7600.16385.090713-1255_x64fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULXFRER_EN_DVD.ISO

Xtreame

what other section? i do want to do a clean install would get rid of a lot of problems i have with my computer now but im just nervous about the files being bad and being stuck with no os

there is a section called "Other"

i did a search for what u type and windows 7 and didn't see anything about windows 7 but wall papers and themes, so which post r u talking about lol im totally lost man sorry

its easier to page through the other section than search, search never finds anything properly in my experience.

Your looking for Windows 7 build 1600 RTM its a bunch of rapidshare files with softarchive at the end of them and there are 16 of them.

i looked through the 60 pages 3 times lol and didn't see it, the first 2 times i did a ctrl f search for Windows 7 build 1600 RTM and windows 7 and then just took my time reading evryone of them and didn't see it. its cool though dont worry about it im sure its not going to be any better thn vista, windows just sucks which i wasn't so lazy and actually got into linux lol well i just found out theres a chance that i might be able to have more money for spending i was wondering if u could post some links to the cheapest one i could use and then the most expensive, if u could possibly use the bestbuy website so i can easily pick them up instead of getting them mailed to me unless they dont have it, if its not to much of a hassle for u. also for another computer whats recommended? i know im either going to have to get a vista or windows 7 os system i just want another computer for gaming and internet. thanks so much in advance man

Windows 7 Ultimate 7600 16385 RTM X64 R3tail English DVD-WZT

PS, Vista is amazing is configured right, and Windows 7 kills my Windows XP SP3 in non senthetic benchmarks

aw its hotfile its cool though im not that worried about it, how can u configure ur vista the right way to make it good? i've always been told vista was a joke and not to many people wanted to switch from xp to vista from what i seen...

Scroll down the last set of links is rapidshare

And listening to people who have not made the change, means your listning to people who dont know what they are talking about, but hey stick with a 15 year old OS if you want

lol no man i got vista is their a tutorial for making vista better? whats the difference between vista and 7 i tried looking on the mircosoft site but they show nothing for comparing them . thanks for pointing out the rs links i didn't even see the scroll lol

7 is basically a refined version of vista, which includes directx11, and tighter intergration.

Vista is the most compatible of windows built, it allows you to run Win 95 and up application through its virtualisation layer.

Imagine someone took Vista, decided how could we take this kernal and make it faster (baring in mind its ten years of improvements on XP to begin with and that XP SP3 turns XP into vista kernal anyway )

Now then take this new faster vista (win 7) strap a tank of NOS to it, and rip out a bunch of services that always ran and make them optional.

Then strip out all the protection services that vista had that non computer experts never apreciated, like automated hard drive failure recovery.

End results I can reboot my pc faster than the same pc with xp can shut down, I can run DX 10 and 11 games with faster bench marks than xp. (bettter quality graphics too)

Also there are a number of layers in the OS that were seperate in XP are no longer seperate, Which means that instead of each layer having to run relay with an overhead they are merged into a tigher rings, meaning better performance.

You have my msn, so install Win7 x64, then disable UAC (control panel -- user accounts), once that is done go to services stop Windows Defender and set its startup to disabled.

Then rebot and LOVE WINDOWS 7, cause it rocks.

Xtreame