Building/Upgrading a PC for TS2

[veilchen]

Oh yeah, I do have Morrowind. I have been playing it all along. I also had some good mods, that went down the drain. I need to do some 'shopping' for that one as well. I was using Motoki's better heads, and Gorgh's Balmora expansion. I hope I can find that back. I haven't seen Motoki in ages, and Gorgh's site is gone. I'll try the VGN Vault and Tessource, maybe they have their stuff there.

Still can't find BG, neither one of them. And they are not available in stores either. I guess I better check amazon, if all else fails... arrr and a bottle of rum.

But if the unit does play my games, including TS2, then that would mean that I got a whole lot of computer for the money. That unit cost me $1,002.00. I ordered the 2 x 2.4 GHz processor and Windows XP home edition. With the iBuyPower coupon, I think so far I got a good bargain. I checked around here, there, everywhere, and even though there was disagreement, everyone did tell me that Vista is not good for a laptop. Mainly because Vista is a terrible system hog.

[ililas]

Hello,

I'm actually on the process to buy a new computer for my sims 2.  I just receive a cotation with a configuration and I would like to know please for your advice on it.

The computer I look to buy is :

P4 Core 2 Duo 3MHZ Intel

motherboard : P5K-C INTL P35/ICH9 (Asus)

CPU : E6850 3.00 CORE 2 4M(1333 FSB)

MEM : DDR2 800

HARD DISK : SEAGATE 320GB

VIDEO CARD : SAPPHIRE HD2600XT 512M  (512MB ATI DDR3)

ON WINDOWS VISTA 32B PREMIUM



On this, can I be sure I will rock my Sims?  How do you think about it please.

Many thanks in advance

isa xxx

[J. M. Pescado]

Specs look good, but DO NOT PAY FOR VISTA!

[KatEnigma]

You mention the type of RAM, but not how much. I'm hoping it's at least 2 GB. Otherwise, it looks good.

[Zazazu]

I'll try the VGN Vault and Tessource, maybe they have their stuff there.

Also try Planet Elderscrolls. They actually are my preferred spot for mods. They have mods for Morrowind and Oblivion.

...actually, Motoki's Better Heads and NPC Replace are there.

[ililas]

Yes, my RAM will be DDR2 800  (2X2Gig)

[veilchen]

Thanks Zazazu, you've just made my day. I truly dislike the original heads, to me it always seemed as if they put the least amount of effort into those.

Nice machine Ililas. I learned a lot here in the last couple of days, that's for sure. I'll keep in mind to always search for Hegelian posts from now on. All the computer geniuses seem to post in his threads, and I can take it from there.

[nekonoai]

Well, my gaming computer died last thursday, and now I find myself in the market for a new rig. Gotta make a point to read through this thread completely while I'm browsing and perhaps even post my choices for criticism and general mocking before I actually buy anything. I know that I want to go for dual core, but I was thinking of going with an AMD processor, over intel. Mostly because of the price.

I have to replace all the key components: mobo, processor, ram, and MAYBE a new power supply..

Do you guys think that if I find a mobo with good onboard video to go for it, or do you think I should plunk down the loot for an offboard model? Right now I have I think it's an nVidea... 2500? It was good enough to play sims [without seeing fishes most of the time and having crappy ocean surf] AGP card, but a lot of the motherboards I'm looking at don't have AGP... is AGP outmoded or what?

It's hard to believe that only after 3 years all of the technology I have is already SO outmoded that none of the motherboards currently out there take the kind of RAM my motherboad does. Which sucks, because i JUST bought a gig of ram and now I hafta send it back and hope they give me a damn refund.

More to come. Thanks for any input. And yes, I'm gonna read the thread. I promise.

[KatEnigma]

There's no such thing as a motherboard with good onboard video.  And yes, AGP is outmoded.You must have the 5500. Wow, you are in for a treat when you see how awesome the game will look on a modern video card!

I'm going to be building a new system shortly, and I've made the decision to go with AMD because of the price, too. For what I can spend, I could get a slow Intel processor or a fast AMD one, so it's no contest.  Intel does make the fastest processor right now, but if you can't afford it, that doesn't do any good. 

[ililas]

Hello dear,

Just want to thanks all of you for your good advice.  Thanks Mr. Pescado, after I read what you say about Vista, I decided to stay on XP 

But for the rest, my technician will built me a brand new computer to rock my Sims 

I really want to play without any freeze or slow in the game 

[burnished_dragon]

Some places you just have no choice for VISTA , what a pain that op is.  I have an xp cd some where and when I feel ready to get the hated securom off my new laptop , I will just reformat and use xp or many even be brave and use a linux op, but for now I thought I had better stop in  here and [size=10pt]thank everyone for their advice way back in July [/size] when I was purchasing a new laptop.  So far I have been lucky as far as I know regarding securom, but then it is all over hubbys desktop and laptop when I installed C&C 3 (damn EA).  I am too lazy at the moment to be reformatting 3 computers.

[KatEnigma]

Ilias- no freeze or slow?  You're SO funny!

But you might want to consider a 10,000 RPM drive, to help with that. They are more expensive, and smaller, but make a huge difference in Sims. The game reads from the hard drive a lot, so the faster drive is worth the cost, to me.

[ililas]

Ilias- no freeze or slow?  You're SO funny!

But you might want to consider a 10,000 RPM drive, to help with that. They are more expensive, and smaller, but make a huge difference in Sims. The game reads from the hard drive a lot, so the faster drive is worth the cost, to me.

Are you telling me, even if I have the most ultimate computer, I will still have freeze or slow moments in my game???    Geez but when you look at the preview Maxis gave us, you see that there is no freeze, no slow, nothing bad... are they liar?    I would be surprise about the answer...

[KatEnigma]

Some call is lying, some just call it careful editing. 

[ililas]

Hey dears...

I want to present you my new baby...

NO freeze, NO slow, a real jewel!  I love it.  The game is so fast to load, wonderful graphics.  I never play before like I do now... its wonderful, I'm so happy 





Thanks once again for the time you took for me 

I am like a child at christmas mouahhhh   

[BlueSoup]

Are Alienware laptop motherboards proprietary?  My brother in law is giving me his old laptop if I want it (which is not going to be a gaming machine, so I'm not so worried about the specs), but he believes the motherboard is shot. 

[dizzy]

Laptop mobos suck. It's cheaper just to buy a new computer than to fix the mobo in a laptop.

[KatEnigma]

Well, not precisely proprietary, since all the companies pretty much use the same source for mobos, but it's very hard to find the motherboard, in the first place. Your best bet would be Ebay- try to see if you can pick up the same model cheap that has something like a broken screen or dead drives or something. I once made over $400 from a dead laptop, parceling out the parts on Ebay.  That is, if you're up to all the fiddly work of soldering and stuff it's going to take to get it to work.    If it were me, I'd say thanks, but no thanks.

Or take it, sell the parts yourself, and use the money to buy a cheap new laptop. 

[Hegelian]

I would like to suggest unpinning this thread, as I am not inclined to keep it current. If someone else wants to take over, that's fine with me. Otherwise I think it should be left to sink down the list like any other thread.

Of course, if you wish to keep it as a catch-all repository for hardware discussion, that's fine too. I will change the subject heading to remove the date.

[FlareStorm]

Just to brag...

I just got my new system put together. A cheaper dual-core, mid-range motherboard, nice video card (GeForce 8800), and 4 gb of ram.

I run seamlessly at max settings. With almost 1.5 gb of custom content, my initial load screen is 35 seconds,to the 'hood is about 5 seconds (its sparse), to a lot is about 5-15 seconds depending on the size. And running in a window I can task out to other stuff beautifully.

I'm pretty sure its all the extra RAM (which is cheap as hell now), but whatever the case it was worth it. No load times. About $900, shopping carefully and splurging a little on the case and keyboard/mouse and silly stuff.

[dizzy]

With almost 1.5 gb of custom content, my initial load screen is 35 seconds,to the 'hood is about 5 seconds (its sparse), to a lot is about 5-15 seconds depending on the size.

It helps to have a hard drive that can load (at least) 50 MB per second, apparently.

[bowrain]

With almost 1.5 gb of custom content, my initial load screen is 35 seconds,to the 'hood is about 5 seconds (its sparse), to a lot is about 5-15 seconds depending on the size.

It helps to have a hard drive that can load (at least) 50 MB per second, apparently.

How do you check how fast your hard drive is?

[dizzy]

If you have a known amount of content loading, and you know the time it takes to load, it's a simple matter of division.

Otherwise, I guess you could use hdperf http://sourceforge.net/projects/hdperf/ or something like that.

[bowrain]

Ok thanks

[Aggie]

I'm sorry to hear that you may or may not be keeping up with this thread, Hegelian. However, I hope someone can help me out a bit on this score:

I'm going to be buying a new computer in or around late Feb-early March. Unfortunately, it seems that every new computer comes prepackaged with Vista on it. I was thinking that I could simply use the WinXP System Restore Disks from my mother's computer (which is a Dell) to put XP back on it instead, but a local store dealer informed me that there may very well be an issue with the software it comes with not having XP drivers available. Would anyone be able to tell me if this computer would be able to take a System Restore XP installation on it with no trouble?