I'm wondering if you can help. If I'm looking at a new DVD drive what would you recommend? Don't worry about price range, I'll save up if I have to. Also, is there a reason to upgrade my sound card? It's at the latest an '02 model. I'm at work now so I can't check it. But sound on the latest games seems to work fine, aside from an occasional skip. Actually here's a good question. I want to play F.E.A.R. when it comes out. Bad. It looks cool. I realize that the tech specs for it haven't been released as far as I know, but would you be able to make a guess as to what I'd need to play it well. I remember most of my specs.

AMD Athlon XP 1600+ processor.
256 MB RAM
GeForce FX 5200 with 128 MB RAM (I think that is what the 128 means)
It's an '02 model. Got it in December '02 when it was brand new. If I forgot some essentials (I know I don't have sound) I'll try and list em this evening. I don't know how to check my motherboard without taking it out. Is there a way?

Thanks guys!

andrescasta

I don't mean to be a damper, but you are going to need to do some upgrading.

The CPU is hitting the minimum's these days, and when they say minimum, they mean it. Luckily, you will be alright if you upgrade to a higher-end AthlonXP. This way you don't have to shell out for a new motherboard.

Your RAM won't even hit the minimum with most modern games. 512MB is really required for most newer games, and probably FEAR as well. 1GB is reccomended anymore, and I am seeing some games creep up that ladder (BF2 eats up around 700-750MB of RAM on my computer).

The video card is also going to need upgraded. It wasn't the fastest when it came out, and not only is it lacking in speed, but in features. It runs with SM2.0 (i.e. pixel shader and vertex shader levels), but doesn't even do that well thanks to nVidia not running standard programs for it. It may have 128MB onboard, but that won't speed things up much. I would reccomend looking for a 6600GT or even a standard 6800 if you can stretch that far. They hold up both in features and in speeds. With the GeForce 7 series arriving next month, you may be able to grab some older 6 series models at a lower price.

So, in summation... faster CPU, but stay in the same line (if you tell us about your motherboard, we can reccomend a compatible, faster CPU), at least 512MB of RAM and 1GB if you want to run on high settings, and a new video card from the mid-lowhigh end of the GeForce 6 series (ATi has similar models, but they end up being a tad more expensive, and are running behind on SM features).

EDIT: Duh, the DVD drive. Look for whatever is cheapest at a speed of 16x. You can grab them cheap anymore ($20-30). I reccomend Lite-On as the brand if you really want a brand reccomendation.

kservice

Hmm how hard is it to install a dvd player? fairly simplish? Ive heard that games run on dvd players play much better, any idea why that is? And how much is it for a dvd rw ( w/e it is that lets you burn them)

The simplest thing if you know what you are doing. If you don't know about master slave jumper settings and IDE cabling do some searching on the net. As for DVD-ROM drives, they are very cheap nowadays, you can go for brands like LG, Sony, Samsung or Liteon. Nobody buys them anymore though because DVD-RW drives are also very very cheap. I got a Sony Dual Layer, Dual Format drive for about 100 bucks, you can probably find cheaper ones.

Oh and, don't worry about your computer's specs, I installed the above Sony drive on a P3-600, that computer still runs everything perfectly. If you look after your comp, stay with updated drivers and defrag, you won't have any problems, I dunno what kservice was smoking

go for lite-on.. i've bought several of their models and never had any problems. if yu want something pricey, look at the Plextor line.
I paid $40 for a lite-on 8x burner, and with a firmware hack it's now a 16x DL burner.