New Computer

My current system is out dated. I have a new comp in mind but im not sure how well it will run guildwars and other games.

AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ dual core
3 gigs of ram
intigrated graphics

While I know the rest of the system is able to run the game on its highest quality, will the lack of a real graphics card inhibibit the frame rate enough that I should invest in one?(then i would have to down grade the rest of the system)
--thanks in advance

well...depends on if u like the bells and whistes of a game...the fancy lighting effects etc. I personally would go for a decent video card....maybe take a step down on the ram and go with 2gig and go down one on the CPU.

I have an ATI 1950..its not DX 10 compatible....but i felt it was a good video card for what i want out of the games i play.

If you have your heart set on the above system....go with it and then upgrade the vid card later....they can be put in at any time. Be sure to get a power PSU..say 500-600watts....and make sure you have a case is big enough to put in whatever you want at a later date. Good luck...and you may want to post in the technical forum with this...as there are several people there that are on top of tech issues.

Personally, if I were to use a computer for any type of gaming, I would always invest in a Graphics Card. An integrated graphics chip usually doesn't cut it for most things, you haven't mentioned a model or make for yours but they mostly work with Guild Wars to a point but you shouldn't really expect it to do very well, especially at high settings.

Yes its gonna hit you hard. If your gonna have to downgrade your system I suggest taking the ram down as 3 gigs is overkill, you'll want 2gigs for vista and 1 gig for xp. These are the requirements form the official site:

Minimum System Specs for Prophecies or Factions:
* Windows® XP/2000/ME/98
* Intel® Pentium® III 800 MHz or equivalent
* 256 MB RAM
* CD-ROM Drive
* 2 GB Available HDD Space
* ATI™ Radeon® 8500 or NVIDIA® GeForce 3 or 4 MX Series Video Card with 32 MB of VRAM
* 16-bit Sound Card
* 56K Internet connection
* Keyboard and mouse


Recommended System Specs for Prophecies or Factions:
* Windows XP/2000
* Intel Pentium III 1 GHz or equivalent
* 512 MB RAM
* CD-ROM Drive
* 2 GB Available HDD Space
* ATI Radeon 9000 or NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti Series Video Card with 64 MB of VRAM
* 16-bit Sound Card
* Broadband Internet connection
* Keyboard and mouse


Minimum System Specs for Nightfall:
* Windows XP/2000/ME/98
* Intel Pentium III 1.0 GHz or equivalent
* 512 MB RAM
* DVD-ROM Drive
* 3 GB Available HDD Space
* ATI Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3 Series Video Card with 64 MB of VRAM
* 16-bit Sound Card
* 56K Internet connection
* Keyboard and mouse
* DirectX 8


Recommended System Specs for Nightfall:
* Windows XP/2000
* Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz or equivalent
* 1 GB RAM
* DVD-ROM Drive
* 4 GB Available HDD Space
* ATI Radeon 9600 or GeForce FX 5700 Series Video Card or above
* 16-bit Sound Card
* Broadband Internet connection
* Keyboard and mouse
* DirectX 9

Integrated graphics is never the best option for gaming. The graphics are forced to share system RAM and CPU time with everything else that's running. With a lightning fast processor and plenty of RAM, it's less of a problem, but I would still consider adding a dedicated graphics card to that setup.

Hold on I want to make sure I read this right....

Dual core processor...and 3 gigs of ram....AND INTEGRATED GRAPHICS?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!

How in the world, or more importantly, who in the world made this? Just kidding...all that aside though....

This comp should blaze with a solid performing card from ATI....

Dont skimp on the vid card, its a ton more important then 3 gigs of ram which you dont really need. Even the dual core (although they are cheap now), you dont even need that. If your budget is an issue which I sort of get the idea it is, cut back on the ram/cpu and balance it out some...trust me, you will be a ton happier.

Invest in a solid pci-e graphix card from ATI...Id give you some links and stuff but I am at work.

-Tiki

If you're playing games, it is an absolute must that you have discrete graphics. My suggestion would be to get a cheaper processor and take out 1 gig of RAM. That should get you started on having the money to get a video card. A video card is orders of magnitude better at 3D graphics than a general purpose processor. One cycle of a GPU is worth 50 cycles on a CPU.

I run Guild Wars on an Athlon 3800 X2 with 1 GB of RAM and a geforce 7900 GT. If I disable vsync, I get around 80-100 fps in explorable areas with everything maxed. I have a friend who runs it on the same processor, with 1 GB of RAM and integrated Geforce 6100 graphics. If he turns everything down and runs at 800x600, he gets probably 30 fps. And even a Geforce 6100 with shared memory is faster than Intel graphics.

[QUOTE=Ghryphon]Hold on I want to make sure I read this right....

Dual core processor...and 3 gigs of ram....AND INTEGRATED GRAPHICS?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!

How in the world, or more importantly, who in the world made this? Just kidding...all that aside though....

Its from compusa and is an HP. I probably will endup getting a different computer but was just wondering about an integrated card and how it would preform.
Thanks for the ideas

I run an AMD 64 X2 4600+, GeForce 7600 GT, 2GB RAM and a 550W PSU. My rig runs GW at max with no problems, as well as EQII at extreme and Oblivion at max settings with mods for 4x wildlife and texture sizes.

Definitely upgrade from integrated graphics. Drop your RAM to 2GB; you don't need any more. A GeForce 7600GT goes for 79.99 with a $15 rebate on Newegg.com, and shipping on that item is ~$5.50. Cutting off 1GB of RAM should save you enough to allow that purchase.

If your really serious about investing money into a computer this is what I suggest.

CPU: Latest Intel cpu with 1333 fsb

RAM 2GB DDR2 Ram, Windows XP can only benefit from a maximum of 2gb of ram unless you go with the 64bit edition

If you have Vista Ultimate, I say load it up! Vista supports more ram then Windows XP and is power hungry as heck, go for 4gb depending on the motherboard you select

Video: Go for SLI DX10 video cards, Though Guildwars will not truly benefit from SLI graphics or DX10, just about every other new game out there willl

I just love NVIDIA when it comes to graphics, their high end graphic boards cant be beat.

I recommend getting two Geforce 8800GTS 640mb DDR3 cards from either EVGA or XFX, they make the best cards. The plus about the 8800GTS over the 8800GTX is that it can be overclocked to the same spead or dang well near to the GTX

The Ultra or Ultra Superclocked are overkill unless you just want to go for it (I have 2x EVGA 8800Ultra 768mb cards )

Motherboard: Find the best there is and buy cheap parts around it if necessary. Easy to upgrade hardware, Hard and often limiting to change the motherboard once its had a few years and you want to keep all your original hardware

*Note: Take a moment and write down on paper everything you wish to do and everything you POSSIBLY will want to do in the future and build a system around that. it will save you alot of problems

Power: Things to take into consideration

- Numbers of cores your cpu will have, most likely 2 or 4 cores
- Number of video cards. this will double both the heat and power consumption
- power concumption of video cards. these things now consume more power then a power plant!
- Number of Rails

*Note: It is MUCH better to get a Quality Single Rail power supply. Do NOT get a cheap power supply.

Single Rail power supplies are MUCH better then dual rails

Cooling: Stock cooling for newer Intel products are often good but I always opt for better cooling through the form of a better CPU heatsink, etc.

Case: VERY IMPORTANT!!!!
This may sound trivial but your case will make a BIG difference.

Your computer case will determine various factors:

- Temperature: if your case is cramped and you have hot components, there wont be much room for airflow
- Ports: if you like ports on the front or not
- Screws or Screwless: Screwless is nice and helps not damage your hard drives and such and makes for easier access, but costs more money

- Weight: if you move your case often or go to LAN parties
- Capacity: how much stuff you can actually get in it
- Clearance: High end video cards can now be up to 11 inches long. Graphical ports are often located at the bottom of the motherboard and installing a large video card may actually cause clearance issues with your Hard Drive cage, rubbing against your hard drives or physically not fitting

if you dont want to spend alot of money on a video card you can get even a Nivida Geforce 2 Ti for probley like $30 now and it will run gw on lowest graphics settings if your willing to spend like $130 you can get a Radeon X1300 XGE which i can run gw on max settings and get like 40fps

and to the abouve poster you said

I recommend getting two Geforce 8800GTS 640mb DDR3 cards from either EVGA or XFX, they make the best cards. The plus about the 8800GTS over the 8800GTX is that it can be overclocked to the same spead or dang well near to the GTX

He dosent sound like he has alot of money so 2 Geforce 8800 would be like

that would cost him AT LEAST $700-$1000 so i dont think he could aford that as he said to invest in a video card he would have to downgrade his system

and to the orignal post so if you cna spare like $130 get the one i said it works pretty well and can run games like Bioshock and Crysis

but if you dont got much money get something cheap like a nivida geforce 2

I just got almost the exact same thing, but with only 2 gig ram and an 8800 vid card. I am totally amazed at the way GW plays with this rig. My frame rate went from a mere 5 or 6 per second to a standard 60 to 70 FPS (yup, my old PC was THAT old). Of course, the human eye really can't tell the difference between 35-40 FPS and 70, but there are other things the PC is allowing GW to do that make it very photo quality, high end material.

I can actually see what the monsters are doing now, move for move rather than this clumping, leaping thing I thought GW was all these years - ouch! The world actually looks 3D too rather than the upgrade to South Park.

As a direct example of how helpful this set-up is for me - I couldn't win the Norn tourney for anything despite using the spirit spamming build that wins for others. I tried it again with this rig, and poof, finally winning almost all the time. The difference a few frames do for you.

I am totally amazed.

Of course, this means I have to redo all the campaigns so I can see what I was missing. Damn!

My question is what model is it. I know alot of the newer HP's have PCI-x slots so you really only need a new graphics card.

Your CPU and RAM is fine. Get a PCI-E video card, such as the 8800 GTS 320MB.
Don't bother with the 640MB version, it really only shines in very high resolution and very large screens.
Or even the HD2900 Pro, but I think they are slowly disappearing.

actualy yes it can the human eye can see past 100fps and even 200fps if you train your eyes AND STOP SAYING THE 8800 HE SAID HE WOULD HAVE TO DOWNGRADE THE REST OF HIS SYSTEM IF HE GOT A GOOD VIDEOCARD WHATS THE POINT OF A GOOD VIDEO CARD WITH A CRAPPY PROCCSOR

its 75 now http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130075 but only a $10 rebate so its basicly the same

your cpu and ram is very good why do you settle for a intergrated video card? it is every single gamer's nightmare.......

intergrated video card = 0MB video memory, quite literally. You can play old games such as Diablo2 on it....but that is it.

I believe I said the human eye can't tell the difference between the specified FPS, not that it couldn't see it. There's a difference, hence the . . . difference. Oh, my eyes have gone bug-eyed now, thanks.

you'll see a difference if the fps drops in half, even if it is still quite high. for example, a drop from 100 fps down to 50 fps is quite noticeable. however, if the game always chugs along at 50 fps, then no one will be able to notice any frame skips.

anyways, for a graphics card that won't break your budget, the ATI radeon X1950PRO is now fairly cheap, around $150 range. that card will give you some serious performance for its buck. just make sure your powersupply is up to snuff. i think it needs at least a 400 watt.

If you're on a serious budget, you can hop on Ebay and pick up a 6600GT which will play it just fine. I have one of those in my son's computer and it has no problems with GW. They got for about $30. Just make sure it's a PCI and not AGP or it'll be a $30 paperweight.

As far as the dual 8800 GTS's, that seems to be way overkill for over 99% of the systems out there. Might want to see if he's getting a monitor that would even display the kind of resolutions those are capable of handling. With my 19" LCD, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 2 8800's and my 7900GT, except for your walet feeling considerably lighter....