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Graphics Card - Help Please !!

My son has received Sims 3 for Christmas, however it won't work on our PC as it says the graphics card needs to support Pixel Shader 2.0 or above ( which apparently ours doesn't )

The PC currently has a NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420 installed - it is quite an old PC ( Dell Dimension 4600, Windows XP Home ), but I've never come across anything yet that won't work on it.

Anyhow, from Googling around it looks like I need to buy a new graphics card to let the new game run, but I don't have a clue :-( A brief search shows cards can be bought from about £20 to £500, but I can't see any mention of whether they support this Pixel Shader thingy, whatever that may be ! I'm guessing it's a case of pretty much any newer card will support it, but how on earth do I know for sure ?

So, the nub of the question - what's the cheapest card that'll do what I want, and will actually work on my PC ? If it's a case of spending 20 or 30 quid I'm fine with that, but I'm not shelling out £500, I could get a new PC for that !

Yes my PC is ancient by current standards, but it's been ( touch wood ) extremely reliable, does what I want and I can't fault it ( thinly veiled plug for Dell ! ).

Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • JJ_Egan
    JJ_Egan Posts: 20,281 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Look at cards supported on the SIMS 3 website .
    Pick the cheapest and i would hazard a stong guess that your machine would need an AGP card as its to old for PCIE graphics ,

    jje
  • Ah, never thought of looking at the game website ! Many thanks. ( You can probably tell I'm not a big gamer myself, a PC is just a tool to me ! )
  • spannerzone
    spannerzone Posts: 1,560 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    edited 26 December 2010 at 11:39AM
    NOTE! as mentioned above - all new graphics cards use what's called 'PCI-Express' connection BUT your PC uses the now old/obsolete 'AGP' connection. The slot in the PC is pyhsically different in design and specification and a new PCI-Express graphics card will not fit into an AGP graphics slot although they look similar.

    So, you need to buy a graphics card that has AGP connection which are few and far between these days but a few can be picked up and nice and cheaply on Ebay.

    SIMS3 graphics requirements here
    http://www.thesims3.com/game/systemreq

    You'll most likely have to get second hand from Ebay as few retailers sell AGP new anymore.

    If it were me i'd consider:
    This one or This one or This one or This one well you get the idea.

    Never trust information given by strangers on internet forums
  • Oh Blimey ! Thanks ever so much for that, Spanner and JJ. I would have blindly gone ahead and bought any old one. I'll hunt around and make sure I get I get and AGP card. Thanks again.
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