How's my PC look?

I just looked at the system information option in Steam, and here's what I found:

Is it good enough to run most modern games?

edited 21st May '11 4:10:16 PM by thespacephantom

I don't think so, bud...

Lacking RAM. Bump that up to 4 gigs and get a better video card. If you have a PCI-E slot, there's plenty of good choices of video cars out there (assuming desktop).

edited 21st May '11 4:18:52 PM by pvtnum11

Mb OS Install Date: Dec 31 1969

Really now?

But yeah, everything else already said. RAM and Videocard.

Also: Desktop Resolution: 1366 x 768 Primary Display Size: 18.98" x 10.67" (21.73" diag)

Your eyes! Your poor eyes!

edited 21st May '11 4:24:28 PM by blueharp

^That's apparently the default date in UNIX or something.

Anyways, yeah, you need a graphics card, not a chipset, you need DirectX 9 or 10, and you might need more RAM.

edited 21st May '11 4:25:33 PM by RocketDude

yeah, I just think it's funny that the date is so wrong.

I should go check mine.

edited 21st May '11 4:28:15 PM by blueharp

You're running x64 Windows 7 on a computer with 2 GBs of RAM. I'm not an expert or anything, but I've heard that having less than 4 GBs makes a computer crawl with x64, so I doubt your PC is working as it should.

And yeah, there's also the fact you're using the on-board graphics card, so get a real graphics card too.

Not particularly well off. Not only do I agree that you need a good graphics card rather than integrated graphics, a little more RAM(4 GB seems to be the universal law for gaming nowadays, though I have heard Shogun 2 claim that bumping beyond actually does help), but you need a better processor I think, too.

You could afford a better computer than that for less than $300.

While all of this is technically true (more RAM and a CPU upgrade would produce huge improvements) all that you'd actually need to play most games today is a real graphics card. A decent low-end model can be had for about $25-$60, what you want is DX11 support.

Yuh-oh. How much would all these upgrades cost me?

Indeed for most computer games, graphics card is the most important part. You might could be fine on $60. As the most glaring improvement is the integrated graphics being ditched.

If you want to be ready for new games, you'll want to spend at least $60. If you have decent case and power supply, getting more RAM, a new, better processor, and HD series card, could cost less than $300 certainly. Since you don't appear to want to spend a lot of money, here's some recommendations.

[1] Cheap HD 6000 Graphics Card. Low end, but will still handle a lot if you don't need high settings.

[2] [3] If you want to be cheap, I can't work well with Intel. I would personally recommend just scrapping the Intel motherboard and getting this combo. If you're considering a better processor for a cheap price, that is.

And for memory, I would hope you're using DDR 3, though I have my doubts with that processor.

[4] However many sticks of this as you want.

Of course, you could also just try to find a better Intel processor for your motherboard and some DDR 2 which you most likely have. Though at the price if Intel processors, I doubt you'd save much money, if any.

Speaking of computers, my friend wants me to build them a super-budget PC and is impressed by how cheap I can build it for them, and Newegg has a 512 MB graphics card right now for $15. I'm tempted to get it.:/

edited 22nd May '11 11:55:18 AM by Ukonkivi

Oh, good. I was worrying that I'd have to spend $500+.

Cost is something I'm reluctant to say, because I really don't know what you have in the way of options, or desires. You could get ahead with just a 30-40 dollar investment, but would that be a sufficient investment towards what you want? I don't know. It might not even be feasible with your current system, some are not upgrade friendly at all.

Speccy might give us more information than Steam will regarding your system.

I'll admit, around $500 is where you get the "sweet spot", as Linus puts it. Which is, bang for buck.

But if you simply want to be able to play the games, you most likely won't have to spend much. Though all areas are kind of iffy. Wattage, power supply efficiency, cooling, all sorts of little things make a computer a little better. But just a graphics card like that should make a world of difference.

Since I've got trouble with slowdown on games sometimes, and this seems to be an appropriate thread, I'll ask here: what would you recommend I upgrade to improve performance?

• Processor Information:
  • Vendor: Genuine Intel
  • Speed: 2800 Mhz
  • 2 logical processors
  • 2 physical processors
  • Hyper Threading: Unsupported
  • FCMOV: Supported
  • SSE 2: Supported
  • SSE 3: Supported
  • SSSE 3: Supported
  • SS E4a: Unsupported
  • SSE 41: Unsupported
  • SSE 42: Unsupported

• Network Information:
  • Network Speed:

• Operating System Version:
  • Windows 7 (32 bit)
  • NTFS: Supported
  • Crypto Provider Codes: Supported 323 0x0 0x0 0x0

• Video Card:
  • Driver: NVIDIA Ge Force 8400 GS

  • Direct X Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll
  • Driver Version: 8.17.11.9562
  • Direct X Driver Version: 8.17.11.9562
  • Driver Date: 20 Nov 2009
  • Desktop Color Depth: 32 bits per pixel
  • Monitor Refresh Rate: 85 Hz
  • Direct X Card: NVIDIA Ge Force 8400 GS
  • Vendor ID: 0x10de
  • Device ID: 0x6e4
  • Number of Monitors: 1
  • Number of Logical Video Cards: 1
  • No SLI or Crossfire Detected
  • Primary Display Resolution: 1280 x 1024
  • Desktop Resolution: 1280 x 1024
  • Primary Display Size: 17.80" x 14.21" (22.76" diag)
    • 45.2cm x 36.1cm (57.8cm diag)
  • Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
  • Primary VRAM: 512 MB
  • Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x 8x

• Sound card:
  • Audio device: Headphones (High Definition Aud

• Memory:
  • RAM: 2046 Mb

• Miscellaneous:
  • UI Language: English
  • Microphone: Not set
  • Media Type: DVD
  • Total Hard Disk Space Available: 476845 Mb
  • Largest Free Hard Disk Block: 31377 Mb
  • Steam Hard Disk Usage: 11686 Mb
  • OS Install Date: Dec 07 2009
  • Game Controller: None detected

Seems decent, it looks like. To attempt to maximize performance, I recommend Auslogics Disk Defrag for defragging your disk drives and a good free Anti-Virus software for getting rid of any malware that can slow down performance.

If your computer shuts off randomly, look into getting a Power Supply that can power your graphics card.

edited 22nd May '11 9:24:13 PM by RocketDude

I would make sure that your drivers are up to date and make sure that FSAA is not being forced.

Disk Defrag is not a high priority issue these days. It's about tenth on the list of things that cause problems. Yeah, sure go ahead and do it if you want, but I doubt you'll see major improvements.

That said, Driver: NVIDIA Ge Force 8400 GS is a kinda wimpy GPU, and your driver from 20 Nov 2009 is about 2 years out of date. Go to nvidia.com and download something newer.

Also, your RAM is kinda minimal. I would get another gig or so.

edited 22nd May '11 10:22:46 PM by blueharp

Well, maximizing the performance you have always helps.

And I admit that I thought that the 8400 would be good enough, but there are better Nvidia cards out there.

The 8400 GS was a low-end for its generation, 2 or 3 generations back, it's not even as good as the 7200 and 7300 models.