HOW DO i MAKE OUR COMPUTER FASTER??

elmer

Hi, we have a year old computer which I dont know the speed of, but my daughter wants the new Sims games, and her current Sims 2 game slows it down considerably, and my husband says that our computer doesnt have enough speed for the new game, much to my daughters extreme disappointment. Can anyone help me make it faster in terms that an extremely computer illiterate user (me) can understand, or at least print out to show someone else who might understand.

Thanks Elmer

frak

Hi to answer this we'll need the specification of your computer.
Can you psot the follwoing
CPU speed and make
Amount of RAM in megabytes
Make and model of graphics card
Make and size of Hard disk
Make and model of soundcard

You can find this information in device manager in windows XP.
Right click on My computer and click properties. From here you can get cpu speed and ram. Now click on the hardware tab and then device manager. From here youc an click on each element and get the full specs for us. PLease be careful not to make any changes though. Once i've got that info i can tell what you will need, if anything, it maybe the case that you just need to do a bit of updating and cleaning up.

dan

alanrowell

Generally it's the graphics card that can't cope, so have a fiddle with the options in the game and turn dwn or off all the fancy graphics options like anti-aliasing

rchddap1

For Sims 2 the important bits are the graphics card and the RAM. However, no amount of fiddling with the settings will improve things if they are already on the minimum required. If you post some details of your system we might be able to suggest something further.

If you go to Run (on the start menu of Windows) type in dxdiag. This will pop up a window that will show you some details about your system. Just post here the important bits such as, CPU / Processor, RAM, Graphics Card.

Toxteth_OGrady

Any fellow techies up for a lengthy dialog on overclocking here?! :eek:

:cool:

TOG

bingo_bango

Not sure they'd get enough from OCing the card or CPU, but lets see what specs they post back before jumping to hasty conclusions.

elmer

Hi, thanks for that

the speed is 2.53 GHz with 248mb of Ram

under" sound video game controllers" there is a list that goes

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Device
Media control device
Realtek AC'97 audio
video codecs

the graphics card is listed as Intel R 828459/GL/GE/PE/RE/GV


are these the things that you need?

Sorry to be so computer pathetic, and thanks for the help

Elmer

rchddap1

My first instinct is that your processor is fine, but you could do with some more ram. I would suggest increasing your ram to at least 512Mb, or preferably 1Gb. However, we still need to work out what your graphics card is. If your graphics card isn't too great it doesn't matter how much ram you stick in the PC it will still be slow playing sims 2.

Edit: To find your graphics card...

1. Select 'Run' on the Windows Start menu
2. Type in Dxdiag and click OK
3. Dxdiag will appear and will start to collect information about your computer
4. Click on the display tab
5. The first entry on this tab is called 'name' under a heading of Device
6. The fifth entry on this list is 'Approx total memory'.

Post these 2 entries here.

elmer

hi

the graphics card is

Intel R 828459/GL/GE/RE/GV and the memory is 64 mb

Thanks Elmer

pjala

elmer wrote:

Hi, thanks for that

the speed is 2.53 GHz with 248mb of Ram

under" sound video game controllers" there is a list that goes

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Device
Media control device
Realtek AC'97 audio
video codecs

the graphics card is listed as Intel R 828459/GL/GE/PE/RE/GV


are these the things that you need?

Sorry to be so computer pathetic, and thanks for the help

Elmer

Looks like an "on board" graphics card to me. Usually the RAM is in multiples of 128, ie 256 not 248 - so you will be using 8M of the RAM on graphics, on the same board as the motherboard. I would go out and buy a 64M or 128M graphics card from your local computer store, cost I think around £30 or so.
It may be worth asking them to fit it for you, so you can make sure it works in your system and it isn't wasting your time. They will also turn off the on board graphics card.

You could try increasing the amount of RAM available first before you buy the new card? This is done by going into the BIOS - ask if you dont know how! - then looking for peripherals, and selecting to increase the RAM for the Video card. This will of course decrease your RAM for the main system by the same amount.

Just to note, on board graphics is ok, but not good enough for most graphics intensive games.

pjala

I have just read your second post!

Try going into the BIOS and checking to see whether the on board VIDEO RAM is disabled or not. This may be enabled and hence you are using the much slower graphics card on the system board.