Can my PC handle HL2 and CS:S?

[Matt_PNEtownende]

Hi,

I wasn't sure where to post this, so I'll post it here and in the general forum. Anyway, today I bought HL2 and CS:S together as part of the HL2 Game of the Year Edition pack. I have it still seasled, so can get a refund - the reason I am worried about opening it is that I don't know if my machine will run it.

My machine is a Pentium 4 3.0GHz, with 1Gig RAM, which I gather is fine. However, I only have an Integrated Intel Graphics Accelerator 3000. This appear to fulfil the requirement on the box, of being Direct X compatible, but I dont' want to open the game if it's not going to run properly, or very sluggishly, although I don't mind if the graphics aren't running at top quality or anything.

So will my PC be able to handle HL2 and CS:S? Any advice much appreciated!

 

[Mahalis]

Try downloading the HL2 demo off Steam first. City 17 and Ravenholm are a pretty good test of the engine.

 

[Acepilotf14]

Trust me dude, My computer sucks, and it runs fine on mine. Although during loads it lags for a couple of seconds (Not a problem since action NEVER starts right at the beginning of a load). He11, I barely have 400 RAM, And I think my graphics card sucks. So, it should work.. EXCEPTIONALLY!
(P.S. My computer runs HL2:EP1 great, so get that too!)

 

[PimpinPenguin]

I would recommend you get a better graphics card then it will look a lot better but your system is quite good and should handle them.

 

[Murray]

Integrated graphics cards are made of fail and AIDS.

 

[Matt_PNEtownende]

We as long as it won't look like a pixellated mess - I don't really see the point in buying a graphics card as the only three games I play are HL, CS, and Football Manager (which is hardly graphics heavy).

 

[giant384]

Integrated graphics cards are made of fail and AIDS.

the card that he has is acctually kind of decent.

 

[Matt_PNEtownende]

the card that he has is acctually kind of decent.

Why thank you young man. Although I should point out that I have the GMA 3000, and not the X3000, which apparently is superior.

 

[FreemanHL2]

Well... You gotta remember counterstrike now has HDR and levels like de_nuke and cs_militia are extremely GPU intensive. Episode 1 is worse and... episode 2 will feature shadow-mapping and a greatly upgraded physics engine so I think the new year is a good time to move on from integrated circuits...

You can buy an fx5900 or 6800gt or wateva for about the same price as the game itself :S im not sure about prices (esp american ones), coz I only really keep up with the latest cards. All I kno is my 7600gt has trouble running Dark Messiah, and it only gets worse from here, games like Unreal 3 and Crysis are going to kill us all if we dont have directx10 cards lol...

Just get an nvidia card that supports shader model 3... 6800gt is kind of were it starts if you wanna be able to play CS:S, Episode 1 and the newer stuff from valve software.

I hope ive been able to help, You dont have to spend that much money to get something better then intergrated lol. cheers.

 

[Matt_PNEtownende]

Thanks for the replies. I went home, and installed the game last night. I didn't get a chance to play HL2 as it was late, but I had a go on CS:S, and it was pretty dire - running at about 15fps I'd say, if that. This was even if I changed the grapghics settings to the lowest possible (even though the recommended levels for my system were generally medium detaisl) So now I'm thinking, do I either

(a) cut my losses, and just not play the game
(b) buy a graphics card

(a) is cheaper, but then I don't get to play. (b) is more expensive, and I don't exactly have a lot of cash. Also, as I think I said above, I only play 3 games on my PC - Football Manager series (no graphics at all really), HL2 and CS:S, so that's another reason not to want to spend loads. Would be different if I played loads. The rest of my PC is P4 HT 3.0Gig and 1Gig RAM, so I'd think that it is the graphics card (or lack of one) holding things up. Also, although I have a fair bit of experience with PCs, I've never been in the back of one to install such a card.

I'm in the UK, if that helps in terms of deciding cards...

Thanks again!

So my next two questions are - what card would I need to run CS:S and HL2

 

[FreemanHL2]

I can only assume that you have 8xAGP... If you have sumthing like 4x then unfortunately my friend you will not be able to purchase a new card. PCI express on the other hand is even better. I went onto eBays UK site for you and found 2 cheap cards:

Asus NVIDIA GeForce N6200 128MB AGP8x card = 29.99 Pounds

XFX GeForce 7600 GS 256MB AGP8X = 58.00 Pounds


Obviously one is better then the other... These are the links:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Asus-NVIDIA-G...1QQihZ014QQcategoryZ27387QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/XFX-GeForce-7...9QQihZ003QQcategoryZ90710QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


Obviously they are pretty cheap... but you said you didnt want to spend that much money, I hope I have helped. Good luck.

 

[FreemanHL2]

Oh ye and installing the card is really easy. You just 'push' the card into the appropriate slot on the motherboard and it will 'clip' into place by itself. Then all you have to do is screw it in and turn it on. Cheers.

 

[Operational]

FreemanHL2 has a good idea. The alternative is you buy a PCI-Express Card, which means a new motherboard, which means a new CPU and possibly new ram. Not exactly the cheap solution.

FreemanHL2: are you sure 8x cards aren't backwards compatible with 4x boards?

 

[FreemanHL2]

Come to think of it, actually, yes an 8x card should work in a 4x socket, it will just run at a lower speed... Good thinking lol