Accounting Troll Posted August 15, 2005 Share Posted August 15, 2005 Hewlett Packard are really serious about making it hard for you to save money by upgrading individual components instead of buying a new PC. I decided to upgrade my RAM from 256MB to 1GB because of the hefty RAM requirements of the forthcoming UFO: Aftershock. The easy bit was finding the right model components on the internet (two 512mb DIMMs, appropriately). The hard bit was the installation. When I opened the case, I discovered that over the last three years, the interior of my PC had accumalated more dust than a Welsh coal miner's lungs. I mean, what kind of cooling system sucks all the dust laden air in the room into a PC and filters out the dust before expelling the warm air? I haven't had to use the vacuum cleaner in three years because I have a PC!!! Once I had stopped coughing, I was able to start looking for the RAM slots in the motherboard. Some ******* engineer at HP must have said to himself "this motherboard can handle up to 2 Gigs of ram, so let's save money by putting in an eighth of that total. There's plenty of free space underneath the transformer, so lets put the RAM slots BEHIND the DVD and CD ROM drives instead because anybody who buys this model is going to want to upgrade. The (L)user who trieds upgrading this piece of tat will have to spend four hours taking the component parts out while trying not to sneeze on anything important." Mind you, the installation instructions for the chips wasn't much better. "Do not touch the chips or the gold contacts. If you do, your PC will turn into an evil android and anniahlate all life in the galaxy." I then took some classes in a Buddhist monastery so that I would be able to use the power of my mind to levitate the chips into position without physically touching anything. Getting them through that one nanometre gap between my hard drive and my DVD drive was a bit hard though. Then I put everything back together again, switched on my PC, and voila! Windows XP decided to restart halfway through loading up, even in safe mode. I never had this trouble with Windows 98! It took a six hour long system restore before WIndows XP decided to load, and I still don't know why it felt uncooperative... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kernel Posted August 15, 2005 Share Posted August 15, 2005 Didn't you know PCs are better than vacuum cleaners for sucking up dust and holding onto it. It's a well known fact. You wouldn't beleve the amount of dust we get in the PCs are work. It's amazing they keep working. The ram slots being behind everything is pretty normal for older motherboards. Not necisarily HPs fault but the motherboard manufacturer. All RAM installation instructions are like that. It's their way of saying "If it doesn't work it's not our fault, you must have broken it.". Not sure about the Windows XP thing, but that's Windows for you. Reloading the BIOS defaults sometimes help. The maximum amount of memory Win9x supported is 512Mb anyway (withough a registry hack that makes it more unstable than a one legged stool) so you'd be stuffed if you kept Win98 anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted August 15, 2005 Author Share Posted August 15, 2005 I was around in the days when RAM was measured in kilobytes (remember those?) And my trusty old Psion II is still going strong 18 years after it was manufactured. I knew there would be a lot of dust inside the PC as I've opened them up before, but I was REALLY impressed by the quantity. We're talking enough dust to bury Pompeii. I'd have made a fortune in the days when taking snuff was the height of fashion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
infael Posted August 15, 2005 Share Posted August 15, 2005 Where'd ya see the game req's for AS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted August 15, 2005 Author Share Posted August 15, 2005 This thread. Thorondor found the latest information on Cenega's website. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted August 15, 2005 Share Posted August 15, 2005 Whoah... that's a big game! That's, what, twice as much as what my brother's got Half Life 2 running smoothly on (low-medium graphics detail naturally ). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matri Posted August 15, 2005 Share Posted August 15, 2005 Wow... That is... a whooooole lot of RAM... Maybe if I'm lucky I can get it to slideshow... :nea: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kernel Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 Those specs are actualy pretty much the same as most new strategy type games coming out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 I dunno, half the point of my new PC was to run Aftershock (the other half was ebcause I like shiny new things ). I only have half a gig of RAM - how will I cope?! Still, the P4 3.2ghz processor should shift it a bit. Kinda hoping my graphics card is up to scratch though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted August 16, 2005 Author Share Posted August 16, 2005 I've just checked the PC World website, and they're still selling PCs with only 256 megabytes of RAM. I suppose that since the PC manufacturer buys the RAM from another company, it works out cheaper for them to just barely give you enough RAM to load Windows. If anybody else is planning to upgrade the RAM on their PC, there's a useful tool at https://www.crucial.com/. If you tell it what your model is, it can tell you what RAM it had when it left the factory, what you can upgrade it to, and what models are compatible with your PC. Just don't forget to tell me where the manufacturer hid your RAM slots Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kernel Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 People who buy PCs from PC World probably arn't likley to be playing the latest games. I think 1Gb is the "normal" amount of RAM most gamers have in their machines. 512Mb is on the low end and 256Mb is the absolute minimum.People who have 2Gb are just crazy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 On the contrary, people who by Advent PC's from PC World and don't mind paying a little extra for a decent graphics card will generally get a pretty cheap deal and a reliable machine. I'm on my second Advent machine from them (their own brand) and despite the usual Windows XP error screens I've had on every machine since XP came out (what can I say? I run it into the ground constantly) I've had no trouble playing all the latest games at blistering speeds I definitely need to upgrade the graphics card though. This one was fine about 12 months ago, but now it's a joke - I think it's nVidia's slowest card from the 5000 series (I think it's a 5200 if one exists) that's still on sale! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matri Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 I have 256MB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 I remember my ooooold 486. That had enough RAM slots to upgrade to 1GB RAM! Never got it that far (despite the manual saying that I could if I wanted to). Can you imagine a 486 with 1GB of RAM? It'd spontaneously combust or something! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
infael Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 1 GHz<--- CPU speed, 256 MB RAM, GeForce 4 Ti 64MB RAM Thus, 512 MB RAM (half a gig of RAM) is enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kernel Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 I remember my ooooold 486.<{POST_SNAPBACK}> Tut! Kids these days.... I remember the 286 with a WHOLE 640Kb of RAM!!!! AND a 10Mb Hard Drive!!!! WOW!!! I can even briefly remember an 8086/87 running at a cool 2Mhz! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted August 16, 2005 Author Share Posted August 16, 2005 I feel REALLY old now. My Psion II has 64 kilobytes of RAM. No sissy hard disk, but it does have two expansion slots for 64k datapacks - the flashpacks go up to an unnecessarily extravagant 256 kilobytes. The processor runs at 0.92 Mhz, which is why the battery lasts for six months And it's sturdy enough to beat a maurading chav to death - how many iPaq or Clie owners can say the same thing? I used to have a Commodore 64 as well - you guys might have seen one in a museum... UFO: Aftermath runs much faster now since I upgraded my RAM. Urban combat in particular used to be slow because of all the smoke and fires that had to be animated. I'm a bit worried about my graphics card. It's an intergrated Intel 82845G/GL graphics controller with 64 MB of memory to play with. A game that works with a 64 MB GeForce will work with it, so should I just try it out and give you guys a progress report in October? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blehm 98 Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 my computer doesnt' slow down for Aftermath but i'm worried, although i think i do have 512 Megabytes of RAM, i might have two sticks actually, i'm pretty sure my dad does. I don't remember the GeForce installed on this thing, but i do remember wanting to upgrade it to Radeon 9800 a little while ago Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matri Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 I can even briefly remember an 8086/87 running at a cool 2Mhz! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ki-tat Chung Posted August 22, 2005 Share Posted August 22, 2005 man, im too young! the oldest computer i have is my 486DX2 which ran at 66mHz when on turbo. remember that? the turbo button!well anyways, even from the start, the architecture of a PC allowed for a maximum of 4GB of RAM...and that was an odd 20 years ago. oh and AT, how much dust was there between the fan and headsink of the CPU? i had a friend once who's computer wouldn't start. i couldn't figure it out until i opened the case: there was a freakin blanket of dust everywhere! the gap between the fan and headsink was packed with dust! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matri Posted August 22, 2005 Share Posted August 22, 2005 Call an archeologist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted August 22, 2005 Author Share Posted August 22, 2005 The inside of my PC wasn't quite THAT bad. All the same, I found a Bronze Age burial ground next to my fan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted August 22, 2005 Share Posted August 22, 2005 And your fan was a little old guy waving a giant palm leaf? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Accounting Troll Posted August 22, 2005 Author Share Posted August 22, 2005 And my processor is a stone circle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matri Posted August 22, 2005 Share Posted August 22, 2005 Well, you're missing the shaman! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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