PC hardware upgrade advice for kids games

Hi
Ive got 2 PC's at home i need to upgrade to allow my kids to LAN play 1942:
Battlefield (a game they both love and all their friends play)

The games minimum requirements a
pentium3 500mhz. (My kids PC is an intel pentium3 450 mhz and Pentium 2 and
the game wont run)

Therefore i wish to upgrade 2 computers to be able to cope with the latest
games (but dont want to shell out for top end stuff)


Could someone please help me as I want to do it quite cheaply. I will
probably buy from somewhere like ebuyer or special-reserve.co.uk where
delivery is fast and prices are meant to be reasonable?

I need to know what processor + motherboard to buy for both PC's that would
make them pentium4/equivelent as there are so many to choose from.
Will i need new cases? and will their existing memory slot onto the new
pentium 4 (or equivelent) motherboard or will that have to be upgraded too?

What graphics card should i buy that can cope with these games? (something
good that will do the job but not THE very latest expensive ones)
I think the one in there pc is a voodoo 3 and voodoo 2 but not sure if those
would handle the game or not.

Please can someone recommend a processor + motherboard, and fairly good
graphics card and tell me if i'll need a new case and memory.
I just think that doing it this way instead of buying 2 complete new
systems, will save alot of expense. I just dont have a clue at what to buy
as their are so many different types of everything to choose from. I could
go into PC world for advice, but ive heard they are useless and expensive,
so I thought I'd ask around on the groups.

Many thanks
Chris

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 22:53:48 +0000, sarahandchris while doing time wrote:

Hi
Ive got 2 PC's at home i need to upgrade to allow my kids to LAN play
1942: Battlefield (a game they both love and all their friends play)

The games minimum requirements a
pentium3 500mhz. (My kids PC is an intel pentium3 450 mhz and Pentium 2
and
the game wont run)

Therefore i wish to upgrade 2 computers to be able to cope with the
latest games (but dont want to shell out for top end stuff)


Could someone please help me as I want to do it quite cheaply. I will
probably buy from somewhere like ebuyer or special-reserve.co.uk where
delivery is fast and prices are meant to be reasonable?

I need to know what processor + motherboard to buy for both PC's that
would make them pentium4/equivelent as there are so many to choose from.
Will i need new cases? and will their existing memory slot onto the new
pentium 4 (or equivelent) motherboard or will that have to be upgraded
too?

What graphics card should i buy that can cope with these games?
(something good that will do the job but not THE very latest expensive
ones) I think the one in there pc is a voodoo 3 and voodoo 2 but not
sure if those would handle the game or not.

Please can someone recommend a processor + motherboard, and fairly good
graphics card and tell me if i'll need a new case and memory. I just
think that doing it this way instead of buying 2 complete new systems,
will save alot of expense. I just dont have a clue at what to buy as
their are so many different types of everything to choose from. I could
go into PC world for advice, but ive heard they are useless and
expensive, so I thought I'd ask around on the groups.

Many thanks
Chris

Help should be found in alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt-pc if you add more
detail about the 2 pcs, like the power supply, type of the cases (AT/ATX
1.0), motherboards, soundcards, hd sizes, etc.

Your question in this forum when you supply details should be "how to
overclock my p3-450 on this motherboard and my p2-xxx on that motherboard
to 550mhz".

The p3-450 should be able to run that game maybe a bit slower but add as
much ram as possible. To avoid obsolence and greatly improve game play, I
recommend motherboard/cpu combos like Elitegroup KS75A/XP2000 or
K7LVTA/XP2200. These have onboard sound, usb and lan then add a GeForce
440MX or equivalent ATI. A better graphics card will improve play but it
depends whether the game is graphics intensive or cpu intensive.

You search ebay and google for motherboard/cpu combos that come with
onboard sound, lan, usb and video. These won't be bleeding edge but more
than good enough for gaming and most PC users.

I am still using an Intel CA810E/p3-933 with a 10usd pci lan card but
onboard sound and video. It started life with a Celeton 633 which would
run your game, but it runs every P3-cpu from Cel550 to p3-1.0g

Hi there,

I am sorry to say, but BF1942 is a rather demanding game. As a rule, minimum
specs printed on a box are just that -the minimum (ie barely) playable
specs. In some cases the game will run but haltingly and with graphics
options down so low that it looks worse than older games that it supposedly
supercedes (eg Counterstrike et al).

BF is both system (processor+bus speed+ram) and graphics bottlenecked.

I would recommend looking at Duron 1.4/ 1.6GHz processors (these can
overclock quite well to the 2GHz+ range) or cheapest Athlon XP you can buy,
and nforce2 motherboards with onboard MCP-T sound (this ensures that sound
is processed in hardware and not reliant on so many CPU cycles as with other
onboard AC97 sound solutions (MCP, C-Media, ALC650 etc). AMD systems are
much better bang for buck than the P4 equivalent.
You will require newer DDR RAM (min 256, preferably 512MB), say PC2700.

You can then put in a low end new AGP card such as a Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB/
Radeon 9200 Pro (same card effectively), or Geforce 4 MX 440 64MB. Ensure
you get a card with 128bit DDR RAM and not 64bit. This makes a big
difference in performance. The amount of RAM isnt such a huge issue for
these slower cards. I would personally go with the Radeon cards.

Most nforce2 motherboards have onboard LAN, USB, etc etc. Some even have
onboard firewire -which can be used for a very fast network between
computers.

For these systems you will need an ATX case (or microATX if the motherboard
you select is mATX), which in all likelihood, your existing P3/P2 systems
are built around. You will however need to ensure your power supply is at
least 300W for these newer systems, as the demands on the PSU are higher.

For playing games newer hard drives arent a necessity -apart from
maintaining the large install sizes of newer games on the computers. This is
easily something you can upgrade further down the line. When shopping for a
new motherboard check for one that has support for the newer Serial ATA
format -to make this easier in the future.

The rest you can pillage from your existing systems (ie CDROM, floppy,
monitor, kb, mouse).

You may decide its easier to hock off the old PCs and begin from
scratch -but I imagine thats not your intention.

Good luck.

Mav







"sarahandchris" wrote in message
...
Hi
Ive got 2 PC's at home i need to upgrade to allow my kids to LAN play
1942:
Battlefield (a game they both love and all their friends play)

The games minimum requirements a
pentium3 500mhz. (My kids PC is an intel pentium3 450 mhz and Pentium 2
and
the game wont run)

Therefore i wish to upgrade 2 computers to be able to cope with the latest
games (but dont want to shell out for top end stuff)


Could someone please help me as I want to do it quite cheaply. I will
probably buy from somewhere like ebuyer or special-reserve.co.uk where
delivery is fast and prices are meant to be reasonable?

I need to know what processor + motherboard to buy for both PC's that
would
make them pentium4/equivelent as there are so many to choose from.
Will i need new cases? and will their existing memory slot onto the new
pentium 4 (or equivelent) motherboard or will that have to be upgraded
too?

What graphics card should i buy that can cope with these games? (something
good that will do the job but not THE very latest expensive ones)
I think the one in there pc is a voodoo 3 and voodoo 2 but not sure if
those
would handle the game or not.

Please can someone recommend a processor + motherboard, and fairly good
graphics card and tell me if i'll need a new case and memory.
I just think that doing it this way instead of buying 2 complete new
systems, will save alot of expense. I just dont have a clue at what to buy
as their are so many different types of everything to choose from. I could
go into PC world for advice, but ive heard they are useless and expensive,
so I thought I'd ask around on the groups.

Many thanks
Chris

Maverick wrote:
Hi there,

I am sorry to say, but BF1942 is a rather demanding game. As a rule,
minimum specs printed on a box are just that -the minimum (ie barely)
playable specs. In some cases the game will run but haltingly and
with graphics options down so low that it looks worse than older
games that it supposedly supercedes (eg Counterstrike et al).

BF is both system (processor+bus speed+ram) and graphics bottlenecked.

I would recommend looking at Duron 1.4/ 1.6GHz processors (these can
overclock quite well to the 2GHz+ range) or cheapest Athlon XP you
can buy, and nforce2 motherboards with onboard MCP-T sound (this
ensures that sound is processed in hardware and not reliant on so
many CPU cycles as with other onboard AC97 sound solutions (MCP,
C-Media, ALC650 etc).

I have put several systems together recently using the Soltek SL-75FRN2-L
nForce2 motherboard and am extremely pleased with the results. It is
inexpensive and solid. (Although I am unsure of the type of on-board sound
it uses. It doesn't seem to hamper the board in the instances where I have
used it at all)

A review can be found he

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDY4LDY=

That links to the last page of the review, with the conclusions etc.

I think it would be well worth your time to also consider the Soltek
SL-75MRN-L motherboard. It has GeForce4 MX graphics built-in to the
motherboard, which I think should be adequate for playing BF 1942 (although
I haven't tried it myself), as well as an AGP slot that you can use if you
decide to upgrade the graphics at a later date. The difference in price from
my supplier is only in the region of 15%, a lot less tha buying a seperate
GeForce4 MX card. However, as the on-board graphics use system memory rather
than on-card memory as a seperate graphics card does they don't perform
quite as well as a seperate card. That being said I still think it may be
worth your while considering the option, especially if you are going to buy
512MB of RAM per machine. (Which I recommend regardless of motherboard
choice)

AMD systems are much better bang for buck than
the P4 equivalent.

(For almost all applications except video encoding. Not really relevant here
but just thought I'd throw it in))

You will require newer DDR RAM (min 256, preferably 512MB), say
PC2700.

It wouldn't hurt to get PC3200 if the price difference is small in case you
decide to further upgrade these systems sometime down the track. It may save
you having to buy new RAM all over again. I just bought some RAM and the
difference between PC2700 and PC3200 (which is capable of running at higher
speeds) was in the 5% region. Worth the little extra in my opinion to be
future-proof. It seems you are, like me, not in a position to just say "What
the hell" and buy the best of everything, you will probably be buying what
is refered to "Generic" RAM, as in not expensive name-brand stuff. Buying
slightly faster-capable RAM than you actually currently require (if the
price difference *is* marginal) will help to ensure you have less chance of
running into any RAM-related problems.

You can then put in a low end new AGP card such as a Radeon 9000 Pro
64MB/ Radeon 9200 Pro (same card effectively), or Geforce 4 MX 440
64MB. Ensure you get a card with 128bit DDR RAM and not 64bit. This
makes a big difference in performance. The amount of RAM isnt such a
huge issue for these slower cards. I would personally go with the
Radeon cards.

Most nforce2 motherboards have onboard LAN, USB, etc etc. Some even
have onboard firewire -which can be used for a very fast network
between computers.

For these systems you will need an ATX case (or microATX if the
motherboard you select is mATX), which in all likelihood, your
existing P3/P2 systems are built around. You will however need to
ensure your power supply is at least 300W for these newer systems, as
the demands on the PSU are higher.

All excellent advice. The only thing I'd add is that the power supplies will
almost certainly have to be replaced, or modified by using an adapter (if
they are of sufficient capacity and quality) as (most) modern motherboards
require an additional 12v power input from the PSU. This takes the form of a
4-pin square connector with the wires carrying 2 X 12v+ and 2 X 12v-. There
are adapters available that will convert an existing spare Molex (HDD,
CD-ROM power connector) plug into the required plug. This, however, isn't an
ideal situation, even if your existing PSU's are otherwise up to the task if
you use relatively high-end CPUs. This plug supplies power to the regulatory
circuit for the CPU and can draw a high current with powerful CPUs. That's
why there are two positive and two negative 12v wires. With the molex plug
there is only one wire for each and the adapter just splits that into two.
Using the CPUs that Maverick recommends you may be able to get away with
this safely as they aren't as current-hungry as higher-end CPUs and probably
wouldn't overload the single 12v wires to the molex plug.

Another point to consider is that (some) older type cases don't have very
good thermal characteristics. Modern internals produce more heat than the
systems you are currently running and while the addition of a case fan can
often solve this some older cases don't have provision for the easy addition
of
case fans and can be difficult to modify. I was very upset (for sentimental
reasons) when I had to replace my favourite, solid, well-made desktop case
that had been with me through several re-builds with a cheap tower case.

I hope that helps,
--
~misfit~