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[TommyRed]

I've noticed a problem when I play SOF II, it plays in slow motion in certain areas. I was wondering if this could be a RAM problem, at first I had 256 MB but upgraded to 512 Mb. This didn't appear to help and as the game was installed with only 256 Mb present I uninstalled then re-installed the game once the 512 Mb was installed. 'System' shows that 512 Mb is installed but a little green info box at the beginning of the game only appears to recognize '253 Mb of Physical Memory'. I'm not a serious gamer hence my system which is an eMachines 420, 2.60 Ghz celeron processor, 80 Gb HDD, 512 Mb RAM upgraded from 256 Mb, onboard Intel Extreme graphics & OS XP home. Any ideas whats up? TIA TR

[DanMaggot]

I'm not one of the technical lads on the forum but I think you probs going to be your graphics card - onboard graphics may seem ok but it seldom has the punch requried for fast FPS games.

What's the minimum requirements for the game on the box?

I think it probable that you're onboard graphics "borrows" memory from the motherboard so that's where the other half of yours is going.....

not that I'm sure or anything, but that's what it sounds like.

Will the motherboard support an AGP graphics card?

[Rebel=UK=]

im most certain its a graphics card prob my first pc was a eMachines (700mhz,64,mbram,20gig HD) and it had a pathetic 2mb...yeah 2 stinking mb onboard graphics card. im guessing emachines havnt changed much, in 3 years.

{edit}

its a Intel Extreme Onboard . im guessing the Extreme is for Extremely poo

[simonp1]

Yes your GF dosnt have the grunt for games really..its onboard so it isnt designed for FPS gamers..

but for a small investment you will be well away, also very easy to fit so you wont have a problem their..

I guess a 9600 series..bottom link will do the job very well indeed

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/970...800_Series.html

These are very good cards..or

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/950...600_Series.html

These above will do the job very well for a small price..

[DanMaggot]

But before you fork out on a nice new card do check that the motherboard will support it. Some older machines (I know cause I had one not that long ago) don't have AGP slots they had PCI ones, and the cards simonp1 is talking about probably want a 4x or 8x AGP slot I would think.

If you don't know what your motherboard is and don't have a manual, you can grab a program like Belarc Advisor or ....I was going to say Aida32 but it seems to have been superceeded by a program called Everest, but it looks like it does the same thing, which is to examine your system and create a report on stuff - hardware, versions of DX, and of Windows systems and so on. Can be useful.

Everest is here and is freeware

http://www.lavalys.com/products/download.p...ang=en&pageid=3

Belarc is here and is also free

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

[TommyRed]

Thanks for all replies

No I looked into a new graphics card before and it doesn't support AGP only PCI, even opened it up and had a look. It doesn't slow up all the time, only when a lot of action or shooting is occurring. I'll probably just have to suffer it, thanks all. TR

[DanMaggot]

You might try looking for a PCI card (not the new PCI-E ones), you might also pick one up second hand, they were perfectly good before AGP came along.

Also, and you should ask a techie this first, but if the motherboard is filching memory to assist the graphics card then maybe adding another 256 or 512 or ram would help out.

Finally there's always the dropping down of the game's details which would probably improve performance over looks all-lround.

[Spook Tooth]

Sound advice from Dan.

You might benefit from whacking in a PCI graphics card as he says. Here's two places that do them:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Products.AS...&Thumbnails=yes

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/kl.asp?bn=10415

You'd need to disable onboard VGA/graphics, probably from the computer's BIOS before installing the new card. Reckon it would be worth it though.