Poll: Your computer's weakest link...
- Thread starter dyre
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CPU fan, I haven't got round to fitting a better one, so I'm using the standard one that cake with my cpu and it can get quite noisy when playing demanding games.
My motherboard hands down, mostly due to physical constraints more than anything else. It's a 4 year old no name from the time before double wide graphics cards, so right now my graphics card blocks one PCI-port (and making one unusable, as I'd block the cooling on the card if I put something in the one PCI-port that isn't blocked) and two SATA-ports. The rest of my computer, though not high end at all, can hold it's own on just above average settings.
OS: Win7 64-bit
Graphics: GeForce GTX 460 1GB
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2,4Ghz
Ram: 4Gb
OS: Win7 64-bit
Graphics: GeForce GTX 460 1GB
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2,4Ghz
Ram: 4Gb
My lovely laptop has been able to run everything it has encountered on maximum settings to date. Our only issues are running out of HDD space. That and a faster processor, because emulating some of my PS2 games gets a bit laggy. (I own all of the PS2 games I emulate, I am in no way advocating piracy.)
This doesn't really affect my PC gaming too much but often my connection to the wireless network in my house cuts out randomly and I have to restart my laptop about five times to get it working again.
sadly my computer only runs old shareware titles. This computer struggles with almost any modern programming. even some flash games are slow. I'd blame vista, but really this just goes along with the rest of my broken stuff that somehow only i can make work, so i think really this one is another one for which i can blame god.
The weakest link would have to be the one holding the casing together since it's breaking and falling apart, and now a little wire somewhere isn't where/doing what it should be, causing the screen to flicker or go black. When the latter happens, sometimes the music{and by extension, everything else) keeps going like nothing is wrong, so hypothetically, i could still do stuff, if the screen weren't all black. When it flickers however, there is no hope, the music stops, repeating the less than 1/5th of a second of music it was on and the whole thing has to be shut down via holding the power button for several seconds. This is also the fix for the former. It's frustrating.
The weakest link would have to be the one holding the casing together since it's breaking and falling apart, and now a little wire somewhere isn't where/doing what it should be, causing the screen to flicker or go black. When the latter happens, sometimes the music{and by extension, everything else) keeps going like nothing is wrong, so hypothetically, i could still do stuff, if the screen weren't all black. When it flickers however, there is no hope, the music stops, repeating the less than 1/5th of a second of music it was on and the whole thing has to be shut down via holding the power button for several seconds. This is also the fix for the former. It's frustrating.
![[atomi|c|adaver]](https://eg-forums-escapist-data-bucket.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/data/avatars/l/70/70716.jpg?1620643596){kind=avatar}
My graphics card...AAGH
My laptop has 8GB RAM, and has a nice-ish ATI Radeon HD series as well as a standard Intel graphics processor, so i should be good in theory
It's supposed to be able to switch freely between the two adapters for optimal battery and graphics, BUT the bloody thing outright refuses to switch at times, and the cards won't run OPENGL drivers.
OS: Win7 64-bit
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 6490M & Mobile Intel(R) HD Graphics
Processor: Intel Core i5
Ram: 8GB
My laptop has 8GB RAM, and has a nice-ish ATI Radeon HD series as well as a standard Intel graphics processor, so i should be good in theory
It's supposed to be able to switch freely between the two adapters for optimal battery and graphics, BUT the bloody thing outright refuses to switch at times, and the cards won't run OPENGL drivers.
OS: Win7 64-bit
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 6490M & Mobile Intel(R) HD Graphics
Processor: Intel Core i5
Ram: 8GB
Well, the whole thing is a bit stale now, but the video card was never more than "satisfactory" even when I bought it (vs a strong CPU and average-but-upgradeable RAM & HDD).
Ultraportable laptop though, I think it's probably given a free pass on that. Some games work quite well if you cut the FX down to minimum, but others just die on their backsides - with somewhat less than 100% CPU use - because of the sheer number of polys... it just can't cope.
Is there such a thing as a mini-PCI upgrade card? Like, would an older (& otherwise dead) gaming laptop have one I could salvage?
Ultraportable laptop though, I think it's probably given a free pass on that. Some games work quite well if you cut the FX down to minimum, but others just die on their backsides - with somewhat less than 100% CPU use - because of the sheer number of polys... it just can't cope.
Is there such a thing as a mini-PCI upgrade card? Like, would an older (& otherwise dead) gaming laptop have one I could salvage?
I'd say the graphics card was the weakest link with ram coming a close second. Though the thread i started a few weeks back about looking for a new graphics card i posted the specs and the whole system came in for a kicking.
I have ordered a xfx hd 5770 though so i'm hoping the graphics card situation will be rectified soon.
I have ordered a xfx hd 5770 though so i'm hoping the graphics card situation will be rectified soon.
but you should be backing up the important stuff anyway, and if the drive with the OS fails, then games still won't work till you reinstall.Jamie Wroe said:
I don't know what this obsession is with living in fear of hard drive failure, it's never happened to me, and I enjoy a significant performance boost, not too much for a 32 gig ubs or blank dvd disks. if the critical files you can't reinstall exceed that then maby you should be running a RAID 1+0 array.
RAID fixes everything.
With 4 GB of RAM and 512 MB of VRAM, the dual core 2.0 GHz processor isn't as good as it could be.
To remedy your OS problem, there might be a fairly cheap solution. If you are a student, you can get a big discount. Might be worth checking out - http://www.microsoft.com/student/en/us/software/windows/default.aspxghostalker.cepo said:I built my PC as a cheap, mid end box in 2007, now it's pretty much meeting minimum system requirements for most games. Oh and it has Vista, something I desperately need to change. Anyone got a copy of windows 7 I can have for free?
