Am I missing the bus? Upgrade advice...

S

splyke

Geek Trainee
Well I have come to that point in time that every man struggles with.

I was playing Battlefield 2142 for the past few weeks at my friends house and I guess my wife caught on to me talking about it. She went out and bought me the game for my birthday.

I obviously don't meet system requirments. I figured I run WoW fine, why not battlefield?

I am running HP m1264n
with an ATI 9250 PCI

Problem is that game keeps crashing. I checked and it says I "must have" a

PCI-E or AGP card with:
128 mb ram or >
support for Pixel Shader 2.0
Chipset of: Nvidia Geforce 5700 series or >
ATI Radeon 9500 series or >

Problem is that I don't have a PCI-E or AGP slot.

Now question is what should I upgrade. Should I get the Geforce 6200 OC PCI card? It's greater than a 5700 series no? Still isn't a PCI-E or AGP card. Anyone try running this game on this card? I don't want to spend the $$ and then wind up having to go to plan B.

Plan B would be upgrading my motherboard to something with a PCI-E slot. Problem is that it's an HP. Was looking around and can't find any info on whether or not my model has some proprietary design factors. If anyone has ever tried to upgrade the mobo on a media center please let me know.

Also anyone who has done this, did windows have any problems with it? HP doesn't give you windows CD's so if I have to reformat, and I haven't thought through the logisitcs of trying to use the boot partition with a different motherboard. Can i even do this?

Would it just be better to upgrade to an entirely new computer? I don't really have too much money to spend on this so I don't know if that is even an option.

Anywho any help lemme know. If this isn't in the right spot could someone move it?

Thanks,
Splyke
 
Well, your not going to get any good gameplay with any of those cards, your going to have to upgrade to PCI-E, its worth it in the long run.

Yea just because it says you must have a 5700 or above, doesent mean your going to have a nice experience running it with a 5700.. No, you cant use your existing windows installation with a different motherboard, most likely you would get a BSOD when trying to launch it, even if you had a installation from HP, that wouldent work on a different motherboard, its specificly made for that model of computer, unfortunatly, if you upgrade, your going to have to buy a new copy.

I think you should upgrade, havent you looked in your computer, i find it strange that your computer does not have a PCI-E or AGP slot, its Skt775, i just looked at the specs, and it dont seem to be a really old computer, from when you said, it dont support AGP or PCI-E, i thought it was an old computer..

Check inside your computer, look for one of these slots:
AGP: (brown slot)
http://www.benchmark.co.yu/tests/mainboards/asus/a7ve/agp.jpg

PCI-E:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Abit/AL8/images/slots.jpg
PCI-E is the black slot at the top of the picture.

Ok, here is your motherboard on the Intel site:
Intel® 915GV Express Chipset

It should support pci-e :s, manufacturer of the chipset in yours in Asus, so they must have modified it.
 
You should upgrade your motherboard along with the video card. This is probably going to run in the neighborhood of $200-300, depending on the motherboard and video card you end up with. My following example is less, but there's a wide variety of parts to go with.

This motherboard would allow you to easily swap out with your current motherboard.
You don't have to get that motherboard, but if you're going to stay with your current case you should stick with a Micro ATX (mATX/uATX) motherboard using the Intel 915 chipset. There's variants (G/L/GL, etc), but as long as it has a PCIe x16 slot, you'll be fine.

As far as video cards, something like this would be great. The next step down would be a card with the GeForce 7600GS or 6600GT, which would also do a pretty decent job.
 
No it does not. It has 3 PCI slots, 2 of which are filled by default (video card and modem).
 
ah, appares it must be a modified version of the motherboard, because i went onto the intel site, and it said it has pic-e :s
 
Yes I don't have a PCI-E or an AGP slot. =(

The computer isn't outdated on most of it's other stats, which is why I think that upgrading the motherboard to get a PCI-E slot would give my comp some extra longevity.

Thanks for your responses. I guess I'll really have to dig around for my copy of windows XP from my old machine. I know I bought it sometime, just gotta find that disc.

As for the motherboard you linked Big B, the first user response says

"Cons: Do NOT buy this board if you want to use the PCI-e Slot. It only works with a limited number of cards listed on the mfr website. They will flat out tell you it will not work with any others. In addition it only operates at 4X not 16X even if using a 16X card. Only one IDE channel, not a problem if using SATA, but could be a pain."

I'm hesitant about this one when someone says that, because the only reason I'm getting it is to upgrade to a PCI-E slot. I'll look around though. At least now I know a few more of the spec's that I'm looking for. Problem is that most of the boards that are 775 with the 915gv and in a mini atx are 184 pin mem, and mine is 240 pin. That means I'd have to upgrade my mem as well? Ugh.

Hmm well thanks for your help guys. At least I know what I'm going to have to do, and I'm not going to waste anymore money just buying PCI cards.

Splyke
 
OK, I just noticed this. The Intel 915GV chipset does support PCI Express, but it looks like it only has 4 lanes. Most boards have a minimum of 20 lanes, 16 of which are diverted to an x16 PCIe slot. That's probably why there were some issues with the MSI board. I should've expected that on a budget chipset that came out when PCIe was starting to emerge.

Anyway, I dug around again, and I think this Asus should do the job, with no cuts in the number of PCIe lanes. It shouldn't interfere with any PCIe video card.
 
Cool. Now will that work with the 915 chipset? It says 945G. It also only mentions the Core 2 duo, not the P4 HT.

Also can I get a 915G or 915GL or 915P or PL, or does it HAVE to be the 915GV? There are only 2 boards up there that I could possibly get that are 915GV. One of them is that one you linked before with the PCI-E "lite" slot that the users say doesn't work with all 3D cards. The other one doesn't take 240 pin mem.

Also I'm not just crossing off getting a new case/psu. I'd rather buy that than have to go out and get new mem for the 184 pin slots on most of these motherboards. Especially since getting a new case/psu will open up my options a lot more.

Like if I was going to just get an ATX case would this work? >link< even though it's a PL? It's gotten nice reviews and I wouldn't need to get new ram.

All in all i can say that I'm not going to buy an HP again....

Splyke
 
Well, any motherboard, regardless of chipset will work. So, yeah, that Asus board will work...the one you were looking at.

The particular reason for a chipset with the 915 family is due to the chipset being the foundation of communication on the motherboard. Generally, Windows doesn't like having the chipsets swapped out from under it, but it can be done. If you don't get an exact 915 family motherboard, then you'll want to go into Device Manager and uninstall everything first, for the reason I just gave.
Also, as with any major system upgrade like this, it would also be worth your while to back up any important data.

Since you're looking for a more robust upgrade path and mentioned the PSU and case, I'll just jump into that. Make sure to go with a case that has open ventilation in the front. There's a few out there that have this blocked off (the CoolerMaster Wavemaster comes to mind). Hot air rises, and not having the front intake (lower front) stops cooler air from coming in to help cool the system.
As far as power supplies, you don't want to skimp here. A particularly bad move would be to purchase a case and power supply combo (unless it's an Antec case with a 450W or higher unit inside). The reason being (Antec excluded) is that the power supply included in cases are low-quality in general. They're typically bottom of the barrel units tossed in to make the case look more appealing---which does work. Unfortunately, the days are over when any PSU will do the job.

Look around for your tastes, but a 450W or higher from any of the following companies will work great:
-Antec
-Enermax
-Hiper
-OCZ
-FSP/Fortron/Sparkle (same company, different brands, all good)
-XClio
-Silverstone
-Seasonic

-XClio and FSP/Fortron/Sparkle are your best bets for a cheap PSU. You should be able to find a no-frills PSU for around $50. Additionally, FSP has a 400W unit that is nice. It's the AX-400-PN.

HP isn't bad if you really don't do upgrading to them. They use a very compact chassis in most scenarios, so fiddling around inside really sucks. It took me 3 hours to open one up to get to some RAM to move to another HP (which is still running last I checked) and then close both boxes back up.
 
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