Wow, so I'm going to have to get a new PC before I fly Lock-on... I don't have a video card, and it turns out, my PC isn't made for a video card, how dumb is that? If I wanted to buy a video card I would have to get a new mother board, srew that i'm just callen em and saying I WANT LOMAC TO WORK!!!!!!! and have them give me something.
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Counter-Strike is a way of life.....
A message from lqcorsa << thats a L not i.

Gosh, I love how everyone is so descriptive in their their topics when posting...

Sorry 'bout your luck bro!

wow that was fast...



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Jeez, How old is your PC? does it still have a 5 1/4?

So what do you have? Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway, etc? Many of these brands use what I will call "integrated" features that allow for little, if any, expansion. Not every model is like this, but many are.

I've been building my own computers since I got home from the first Gulf War. Generally, I've updated my hardware every 6-9 months and have stayed ahead performance-wise. I also swear by AMD and wouldn't allow a toaster oven in my house if I knew it had an Intel processor in it. (This is my opinion. I have my own personal reasons for this. If you want to use Intel in your system, that's fine with me. No problem.) However, because of the rise of the Athlon 64-bit technology and now dual processor CPU's, I've held off for almost 2 1/2 years to see where the dust will settle.

Corsa, here's the real deal. Here's my system specs, and LOMAC runs crappy here as well at times. It's almost more how you configure your system than purely about hardware itself when LOMAC is involved. I run a barebones hardware profile when flying for best performance.

ASUS A7N8X Dlx mobo
Athlon 3200XP processor
768Mb PC3200 DDR400 RAM
ATI 9700 Pro graphics card with256 Mb RAM (I think. It might be 128Mb)
Soundblaster Audigy2 ZX sound card
200Gb SATA2 primary hard drive, 2 74.5Gb running as backups and file storage (one of my hobbies is digital photography. Nikon RAW takes up lots of storage.
Win XP w/ SP2
Broadband internet
CH flight yoke and pedals
Thrustmaster Cougar and RCS pedals

The expense of a new mobo isn't so bad. It's all the other stuff that goes on the mobo plus all of the time that costs money. Don't know where you live, but I have some sources for hardware at decent prices.

Cheers
Kev

I have a new 2005 Dell Dimension 3000, and yeah it is intergrated thats why I cant just buy a video card. When I was buying the PC I could do a little form thing that would pick out the perfect PC for me based on what I wanted to use it for, I said gaming, course it came up with the Area 51, or whatever that 3000 dollar one is called... so I picked the next best thing, turns out is sucks for gaming, it's really not even made for gaming, they Dell guys said if I would have bought my PC online this wouldn't have happened. Here are my PC specs:

Dimension 3000

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

Pheonix ROM BIOS Plus version 1.10 A02

Intel R Pentiom R 4 CPU 3.00 GHz 3 CPU's

DirectX 9.0c

IntelR 82865G Graphics Controller

Chip Type: IntelR 82865G Graphics Controller

DAC Type: Internal

Direct Draw Acceleration

Direct 3D Acceleration

Sound MAX Digital Audio

Hardware Sound Acceleration

Wingman Attack 2 Joystick

What kind of expansion slots does the motherboard have (PCI, AGP, PCI-E...)?

LawnDart wrote:What kind of expansion slots does the motherboard have (PCI, AGP, PCI-E...)?

It has NO expansion slots which is what you get for getting a Dell.

And the fact that you use "new" is an understatement. It may be a new computer but the technology is 3 years old. You also didn't state your Ram or HDD which is normally incorperated when giving your specs.

Now with Alienware, its garbage. All your doing is paying for a name. You could pay someone to build a new computer for less and it would be faster. A 2,500 dollar alienware is more like 1,700 if you do it yourself.

And as for Kahuna's comment on AMD, yes it's true. Pentium is garbage and I don't know why people still buy them. AMD is cheaper, faster, cooler running, and uses less electricity. BTW, AMD is suing Pentium and Dell is testifying against Pentium stating that Pentium would cut their supply if they sold AMD CPU's.

Dell, Alienware, and many others are such over-rated POS's. Do it yerself and save $!

Okay, only problem is I don't know anybody who builds PC's... Plus I think I feel much safer buying PC's from people who are a actuall company and will refund me if it breaks if you know what I mean, what kind of PC's do you guys have? Anybody know any good PC's for cheap that can give me good satisfaction?, I heard PCI's aren't really made for high end gaming.

Corsa:

There are internet sites coming out the wazoo that tell you how to build a system. Someone like myself can build and tune a system and make it look good in about 2 hours and it will haul a$$. Crap, if you live close to me I'll build it for you and won't even charge you labor.

Or you can shop at a place like http://www.pcclub.com/ . This is a fairly large chain that you can get a high-end system from as well as customer support.

Here's a good example of what you can get and you can configure additional items for it as well. They will build it for you.

http://www.pcclub.com/product_system_de ... mno=EN-NE8

edit: Also, you referred to PCI as "not for gaming". The Old PCI is not for anything, as it's like major obsolete. However, the new PCI-E (PCI Express) is going to be the replacement for the current AGP (Accelerated graphics port) and within 2-3 years you will not see any new AGP boards whatsoever except for legacy support. PCI-E is, as of right now, going to be the next-gen AGP. And having seen PCI-E SLI technology in action, I can tell you that it is FAST!

Hope this helps.

Kev

The Dell Dimesion 3000 does have 3 PCI slots, I don't know how many are occupied on your computer. PCI video cards have gotten fairly rare. The best of the PCI cards are typcially the same as the lowest budget AGP/PCIe cards. If you get one of the better ones, you will find they actually allow you to play games a lot better than the integrated video. But even the best PCI card will leave you hard pressed to play LOMAC, though it should run at the lowest settings.

At work, we needed PCI video cards for some laptop docking stations used for 3d modeling. I normally prefer ATi, but their best PCI video card is no longer available: the Radeon 9100 128MB. The NVidia model we ended up getting is the PNY version of the GeForce FX5500 128MB since it had dual monitor outputs. It has turned out to be a pretty good card. BFG makes a 256MB version that it clocked a little faster as well, which is what I would have gotten if we didn't need dual monitors. This card is significantly better than your integrated video and is typically less than $100 and can be found for less than $80 if you catch it on sale.

While the PCI slot and the associated budget cards that fit them will be always be a bottleneck, I think you would be pleasntly surprised at how well your "new" PC would work for gaming with one of these installed (if you keep the resolution down to 1024x768x32 or lower).

In addition to the video card, you need to make sure you have plenty of system RAM as well. 512MB is the minimum I would use on an Windows XP gaming rig, but I personally would not run less than 1GB of RAM on any PC meant to play modern games.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Well I live in Olympia Washington. If you could build me a PC that would be friggin awesome, I just can't spen a lot of money for somebody that I don't really know. Do you have expierience building PCs? If you could build me a computer and you were going to charge me for it how much would you charge? I don't need a moniter. I am guessing you probobly live in Cali cause the Thunderbirds and stuff, I don't really think you would consider that close to Washington. As for my video slots, I do have some open, but the problem is, this PC isn't made for gaming so it might not even work if not make it worse, and it still runs slow. It is intergrated... So to get this PC to play LOMAC I would have to get a new motherboard in order for it to make it work, and PCIe vid card, that alone would void the thing on my PC so I cant return it, and pluss it would still run slower, and slower...

Thankyou for your help

lqcorsa wrote:Well I live in Olympia Washington. If you could build me a PC that would be friggin awesome, I just can't spen a lot of money for somebody that I don't really know. Do you have expierience building PCs? If you could build me a computer and you were going to charge me for it how much would you charge? I don't need a moniter. I am guessing you probobly live in Cali cause the Thunderbirds and stuff, I don't really think you would consider that close to Washington. As for my video slots, I do have some open, but the problem is, this PC isn't made for gaming so it might not even work if not make it worse, and it still runs slow. It is intergrated... So to get this PC to play LOMAC I would have to get a new motherboard in order for it to make it work, and PCIe vid card, that alone would void the thing on my PC so I cant return it, and pluss it would still run slower, and slower...

Thankyou for your help

Corsa, check your PM's. BTW, I live in Ohio, 20 miles away from one of my old Vipers, which is resting peacefully in the USAF Museum.

Makes me feel OLD.

Kev

well I got your PM, I don't understand, you want me to tell you how much I am willing on spending but you said it will be free of charge... Okay, to tell you the truth, this PC was almost 700 dollars, now I cant really spend that much money again... I can return this PC and get a credit, wich will give me a great deal on a DELL PC that will play LOMAC fine. But I cant end up spending another 700 that might not work for like $1400, hell I might as well buy that area 51 comp. I need help fast, some of my guys are getting tired of waiting for me and they are quiting...

HELP ME.. hehe.

Petty Officer 1st Class 2nd Bat.