I'm woefully ignorant, please help

[evil-frosty]

Hello, I am in the market for a new desktop, mainly to play games on since my laptop cannot really handle it, and it will prevent me from playing video games too often. Anyway, I am still woefully ignorant of most computer stuff, though I am slowly learning. This (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229285) looks like a good deal to me, and should play most of the games I play. But I am worried about it since reading some of reviews has given me some pause.

On a side note, most of the games I really enjoy playing are older and I have had some issues playing them on newer machines(mostly with visual things) and I do not really know why. Could someone explain to me why this is?

List of games I play most, if it matters.

Brood War
Wings of Liberty
Icewind Dale
Icewind Dale 2
Age of Empires 2
Various Call of Duties
Diablo 2
Portal

I'm a bit behind on gaming/haven't invested much money into video games.

[Grinner]

Hello, I am in the market for a new desktop, mainly to play games on since my laptop cannot really handle it, and it will prevent me from playing video games too often. Anyway, I am still woefully ignorant of most computer stuff, though I am slowly learning. This (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229285) looks like a good deal to me, and should play most of the games I play. But I am worried about it since reading some of reviews has given me some pause.

Yeah. That will do quite well. Do you already have a monitor?


On a side note, most of the games I really enjoy playing are older and I have had some issues playing them on newer machines(mostly with visual things) and I do not really know why. Could someone explain to me why this is?

What sort of issues?

[evil-frosty]

Yes I do have a monitor, and some speakers as well from a very old desk top. And the resolution being out of whack, and the color not being right, like bright greens and reds speckling the screen. And in the instance of the older CoD's they would install, but then would not launch.

And thanks, I'm still learning about computers and I wanted a second opinion from people who know whole lots more then me.

[tyckspoon]

The monitor may just be dying; they do pretty funky things when they start going out. The other major cause of game problems is OS problems; Different versions of Windows are maybe 80% compatible (that number gets smaller the farther back you go), and games like to live in that 20% of things that don't work. How you fix that depends on how old the game is; Win95/98-era games are often still essentially DOS-based, which modern Windows doesn't deal with very well. Those can be helped by installing them into a DOS emulator. WinXP games *should* work on Win7; any conflicts there can usually be solved by forcing the Run As Administrator option, in my experience.

[evil-frosty]

The monitor may just be dying; they do pretty funky things when they start going out. The other major cause of game problems is OS problems; Different versions of Windows are maybe 80% compatible (that number gets smaller the farther back you go), and games like to live in that 20% of things that don't work. How you fix that depends on how old the game is; Win95/98-era games are often still essentially DOS-based, which modern Windows doesn't deal with very well. Those can be helped by installing them into a DOS emulator. WinXP games *should* work on Win7; any conflicts there can usually be solved by forcing the Run As Administrator option, in my experience.

Thank you very much, I will need to check the years on some of my games.

[factotum]

Win95/98-era games are often still essentially DOS-based, which modern Windows doesn't deal with very well.

I'd have to disagree there--DirectX was bundled with Windows 95 OSR2, and it didn't take long for games developers to start using it rather than writing their games for DOS. The original PC version of Tomb Raider from 1996 used it, for example, and Fallout (late 1997) is the last game I can remember that had a DOS version bundled with it--and even then, the Windows DirectX one was the primary version, with the DOS version just there as backup in case the Windows one didn't work.

You're correct in that games from that era often don't work, but that's more due to making invalid assumptions about the system the game would be running on--as a really simple example, Windows NT 4 didn't support hardware acceleration via DirectX, whereas its successor Windows 2000 did; this meant some games would assume you didn't have hardware acceleration if you were running 2000 and would either fail to start or would run in software mode. Since the Windows 2000 line is the one that runs through XP, Vista, 7 and 8, this problem persists to this day.

[Balain]

After looking at things a second time, for what you want it is pretty good. If you want to play current games or anything new say this year or next. The video card may have some issues running at max settings. Old stuff should be fine.

I will keep what I was going to post so you can take a gander at if you want about what I thought could be some issues.


Looking at the specs I noticed a couple of things that maybe an issue for you. The power supply was only 500w. And it only had an integrated sound card.

The sound card isn't too big of an issue these days. But for better sound quality, and to free up some processor time you may want to get a sound card. You don't even need to get a recent one. I Have an old Sound Blaster fatality 1 or what ever they were called. It is pretty old but works fine in windows 7 with the latest drivers.

The power supply seems to be low for a good gaming machine. I am not sure how good that video card is and such. Normally with a good video card, sound card, Hard Drive, Motherboard, All the things it needs you are looking at 750W just to make sure everything has enough power. And that is for something like my machine with a bunch of pieces that are a few years old. I am guessing 500w is enough to keep that machine running. Which makes me wonder just how good the pieces are in it.

I am kind of old school and would say if you can, don't look at buying a pre build machine, but pick and choose what you want on it( and put it together yourself). It can be tricky the first few times but it really isn't to hard to install your own video card or sound card, or memory. Mounting the motherboard is a little bit tricker, but normally the place you buy it from will install the CPU and memory and mount the motherboard to the case to flash the bios and what not and see it is working.

Anyways I have blatherd on too much on that since I know it is not possible for everyone to build their own machine, or want too.



As for getting old games to work. If it was a dos game, you really have no choice but to download dosbox. Older windows games there are so many things that can cause them not to work right from directx to video problems or sound problems. I was able to get MIght and magic 6 to work fine in windows 7 with some tweaks, but for the life of me couldn't get Heroes of might and magic 3 to work. One game I got to load but the image was so distorted it wasn't playable. Eventually I bought them from GOG.com when I saw them on sale and those version work great in windows 7

[tyckspoon]

Looking at the specs I noticed a couple of things that maybe an issue for you. The power supply was only 500w. And it only had an integrated sound card.

The sound card isn't too big of an issue these days. But for better sound quality, and to free up some processor time you may want to get a sound card. You don't even need to get a recent one. I Have an old Sound Blaster fatality 1 or what ever they were called. It is pretty old but works fine in windows 7 with the latest drivers.

The power supply seems to be low for a good gaming machine. I am not sure how good that video card is and such. Normally with a good video card, sound card, Hard Drive, Motherboard, All the things it needs you are looking at 750W just to make sure everything has enough power. And that is for something like my machine with a bunch of pieces that are a few years old. I am guessing 500w is enough to keep that machine running. Which makes me wonder just how good the pieces are in it.


Most people are honestly not going to notice the difference a standalone sound card makes unless you're doing studio-quality work on your computer and have the attendant high-end speakers and/or headphones to hear it. I wouldn't worry about it.

As for the power supply.. the processor has a max pull of 125. The GPU in that box caps around 75 (this is incidentally the max power that can be supplied by a PCI-Express slot, so no card that uses only slot power can use more than 75 W.) That's 200W on your two largest most power hungry components, and everything else in the system isn't going to tap even another 100W (motherboards tend to lower double digits, hard drive and optical drive are maybe in the teens, fans are single digit draws.) The system linked by the poster would be perfectly comfortable on a quality PSU of ~350W (if you can find a quality PSU that low. It's not a popular zone for the gaming manufacturers to work in.) 500W is more than sufficient even accounting for potential expansion and efficiency losses when it ages, and 750 would be complete overkill. You really *don't* have to get a huge power supply to make a gaming system.

[evil-frosty]

Thank you so much guys, I greatly appreciate all your feedback/advice. I knew I could count on the playground :smallsmile:

[Balain]

I did say it would more than likely be fine, but also wanted to point out some things that might want to be considered.

Give or take a few watts I am currently using close to 510W and I have removed some stuff from my case I use to have more. Granted I have multiple drives a bunch of usb devices, even my case uses a few extra watts for the front displays. So yes it is possible not to need more than 500w, but it is not unheard of to need it either. The last place I worked at we had a machine that needed more than 750w

[olelia]

You might also want to check Walmart of all the crazy places. That's where I purchased my Cyberpower PC. I had to get a new power supply and graphics card but now they have a "Build Your PC" for cyberpower and IBuyPower where you might be able to save some money...if you were wanting to that is. But as far as Cyberpower goes my only complaint was the wiring was...impeccable on the inside. It had so many Zip-Ties to make the wiring all neat and bundled on the inside it was a royal pain removing the Zip-Ties to put new components in. Welp...that's my 2 cents!

[scurv]

The listed PC there for its price should serve you quite well. I would look at a ram/video card upgrade in the future for it and its power-supply might need an upgrade if you put in a high end video card. But at the listed price It will do nicely.