Having trouble playing PC games

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Ruined Embrace

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I've had this computer for about 5 years and I'm just now getting into PC games. Mainly was in console games but now I'm slowly transferring. I bought Guild Wars Collector's Edition and I've had problems playing. When I load up the game, the screen will go black and then it will go back to the desktop and then it will turn black again and then back to the desktop with Guild Wars being minimized in the taskbar. I click on it to bring it back up but it keeps doing the same thing. So, I visit this site and try to do some research and I find someone has a problem similar to mine but it is shutting down his whole computer, so he downloads a program that speeds up the fan in his tower. So I give it a try....it suprisingly works. I downloaded Speedfan from download.com. I guess my motherboard was overheating and it was shutting out. But now with that program running behind the game, it lags really bad. So how do I fix this problem with hardware and not software? I'd rather spend money and have it fixed than just let it keep annoying me. Here's my system's guts:

Windows XP
AMD Athlon Processor 1.1 GHz
256 MB RAM
256 MB GeForce FX 5500 video card
74.5 GB on C drive....50.9 free space

Here's the game's minimum requirements:

Pentium 3 800MHz, or equivalent
256MB RAM
2GB hard drive space
32MB 3D Card (Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3 or 4 MX)
Internet connection
 
#1 - you're running an old computer with not enough memory. "Windoze" is a memory hog. Have at least 512MB of memory when using windows. "Windoze" uses at least 200mb of memory for itself - that doesn't leave much for your games or other programs.


#2 - your graphics card sucks. Most games today eat lots of memory in graphics processing alone. You need an AGP card that at least has 128 MB of onboard memory.

Many games today will struggle with computers that run less than 1 ghz on the CPU. But if you really beef up the graphics card say to 256MB card , you might swing it. The memory onboard the graphics card will alleviate some CPU processing.
You need more memory on both the motherboard and the graphics card!

I have a 1.2ghz computer with 512mb memory and a 128mb ATI card. It runs most new games to include doom 3 - not at the highest resolutions, but still very playable. My newest computer is an athlon 2500+XP with 1.5 gigs of memory and a 128MB NVIDIA card, it runs DOOM 3 great even at high resolutions.
 
Ok, thanks for the reply. I'll take your comment on the fact that I need to upgrade my hard drive to 512 mb of RAM. But will this resolve the problem of my computer shutting every game out? I mean, like I said in the first post...I do have a 256 MB GeForce FX 5500 graphics card.....does this card really suck? I bought it recently for $130. I have a 1.1 GHz processor. I understand my computer is about 6 years old but it holds up well. It's just the fact of it overheating and making it where I can't play games because it won't load them. I don't want to rely on the software I downloaded to keep me being able to play my games. I'd rather upgrade and have it working fine. So do you really think boosting my RAM to 512 mb would stop it from overheating and I would be able to play my games with ease?
 
Ruined Embrace said:
I do have a 256 MB GeForce FX 5500 graphics card.....does this card really suck? I bought it recently for $130.

Yes, regardless of how much memory they slap on that card the chip itself sucks. Return it and balance out your system with say a 9800 Pro or xt. Anything more is too powerful for your system to fully utilize.
 
You're not doing anything with the hard drives.

Your upgrading motherboard memory and getting a video card with higher memory.
 
I have a 128MB GEforce FX 5500 card. What you have is even better than what I have. You'll be just fine with that card. Now upgrade your motherboard memory.

Getting another card would not be worth it for your system. It's starting to get long in the tooth and your motherboard might not handle a high end video card very well.

The root of the problem is you are severely short on motherboard memory, plus your CPU is a little slow.
 
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