The inevitable has occured...

[MadDog31]

Hey all,

Bought and installed Half-Life 2, runs like hell on the following system:

Asus A7A266 mobo
Athlon T-Bird 1.4 GHz
256MB PC2100 DDR
Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB

After much research, I've come to the conclusion I need to upgrade. Here's what I've found...see what you think:

Asus A8V Deluxe
AMD64 3500+ 90nm
512MB PC3200 DDR (Corsair Value)
Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB (keeping my same card)

I'm also using a new TurboLink 420W power supply that's been running awesome for me.

Yes more RAM will help, but I'll still only be able to have stuff on low or at BEST medium quality and that's not what this game was meant to be played as.

That said, do you guys think that's a viable upgrade? Eventually too, I want to put a SATA hard drive on there, but right now my IDEs are gonna have to do.

Need your professional opinions,
Ian

 

[blackeye]

I would say that would be a decent upgrade. I might get another 512 of ram though. Half life 2 needs a lot of ram apparantly. The videocard should be fine for a while still and you could probably uprgrade the videocard in the spring when the new ones are released and that way get a x800 or 6800 series card for a good price.

 

[BaNDiT]

get a cheaper ram upgrade and buy a new gfx card. 9800 are almost as cheap as 9600, and theyre much faster.

 

[Asus]

That is a very nice CPU. TIP, downgrade it to a 3000+ or 3200+ to put money into another 512MB stick. With HL2, and all the loading, you want 1GB of memory more than a faster CPU. Loading between sections will be MUCH faster and loading durring levels will be much less likely to lag during gameplay. Besides, any Athlon 64 will wipe the floor with HL2.

The 9600pro is a good card and would cost too much to replace with better. Keep it.

 

[Subatomic]

Ditto @ Asus, was going to say the exact same thing.

And your HDD's are fine

 

[MadDog31]

Great tips guys...I'll keep looking into a config, but I feel like I'm getting closer. If anyone has other stuff to add feel free!