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Complete newbie question

km5973

n00b
Joined
Oct 25, 2005
Messages
4
Actually maybe newbie isn't the right word as much as oldbie who's been completely passed by.

Just so you know where I'm coming from, a few weeks ago my most recent machines were a Nintendo 64 and a HP Pavillion 6340. That should tell you all you need to know (so be nice is all I'm saying....)

Anyway, the HP crapped out and I got a new Dell. It has an integrated intel extreme graphics 2 card. I know I'm not going to be able to play half life 2 on that, and that's fine. But I wouldn't mind picking up some older and/or less graphics intensive games to play on my computer, but the problem is whenever I see graphics card info it always says that it needs a card that is capable of doing a bunch of stuff I don't understand. I know that most of those descriptions do not describe an intel integrated extreme graphics card, but it would still be nice to know what I *am* capable of doing with this card. I've googled and yahoo'ed a bunch and I find either a bunch of stuff I don't understand or a message board where someone asks if they can play (fill-in-the-blank with some new game that obviously won't work) with this card and the obvious answer is no.

While searching I came across a thread on this site where the person asking the question wasn't chewed out for not knowing much about graphics cards so I figured I'd give this a try with getting some help :D

(since asking on a website is far less embarassing than going into EBGames and asking what kind of games I can play with my Intel Integrated Extreme Graphics 2 card - "but it's called extreme, it should be able to play anything!")
 
Do you know if your new system has an AGP slot or PCI e slot or just PCI. Better yet can you tell me the model of the new dell so I can recomend a videocard that can handle hl2 among other games.
 
Actually, the point was that I don't really care so much about playing newer games. I don't have the money to spend on a graphics card anyway. I just wanted to know what I can play if I come across something old that looks like fun.

(and for the record, I don't even know anything about Half-Life 2 - I just picked that at random because I know it's popular)

Although, since you asked, it's a Dell Dimension 3000
 
You can run all kinds of games with that onboard card but will need to turn down all the graphic settings to make the newer games even playable at 30fps. And the highest end of games will not run at all because they require a card that has at least shader 2.0. Just so you know a PCi videocard is your only option with that Dell. I would suggest the geforce FX 5500 PCi. Best price I found it for is $55.00. http://froogle.google.com/froogle_c...53888426048765&btnG=Search+Froogle&scoring=pI guess if your not trying to buy a new card now at least you know what to save for when the time comes you want to run a game and it looks upon your intel extreme with mocking eyes. :D
 
Thanks. That's pretty much the info I was looking for. One last question though - how do I turn down the graphic settings? (is that done in windows or in the specific games?)
 
cool.

Thanks for taking the time to help an ignorant newbie and thanks for the graphics card suggestion. I bought a pretty bare bones system, but I'll probably upgrade it a bit (nothing too elaborate, just some more memory and maybe a new graphics card) once I get some debts paid off, so it's good to know a quality cheap option.

Thank you once again.
 
Intel extreme graphics can't play much of anything. Older games that run on it have to be really old--try searching for a MAME emulator-it works on my laptop which has intel extreme graphics in it. Other than that, I recommend Starcraft, a great game that is still being played online. Also works on my laptop well. Unreal Tournament (the first one) won't even run decent on that. Card games and game pack discs and the like will run on it. That graphics card mentioned is also horrible-don't even bother. Im not sure if you can get a geforce 4 TI in PCI or not, but you can get the geforce4MX version in PCI. The 4 TI would be great for any older games you would want to pick up.
 
I play WOW on my 1.6ghz PentiumM laptop with Intel Extremely Slow Graphics all the time. I can just get about 30 fps at low res with the detail on low.
 
I know you don't want to upgrade but seriously upgrade save some money

All i have to suggest for you is

http://www.pogo.com

Youd ont need a top of the line system just a higher end graphics card

I agree right now i'd probably buy the 6600 you can pick one up with help from one of us on the furms for about 85 dollars and it'll last for a long time.
 
I can run guildwars on my Intel extreme graphics 2 laptop, also runs quake 3, unreal 2k4, etc. Haven't tried wow, fear, or hl2 on it yet, but thats why I have a desktop anyways.
 
talley said:
I can run guildwars on my Intel extreme graphics 2 laptop, also runs quake 3, unreal 2k4, etc. Haven't tried wow, fear, or hl2 on it yet, but thats why I have a desktop anyways.


For my intel extreme grahpics 2 on my laptop, i was not able to run HL 2. IT would lag very very bad. :(
 
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