System Specs...

[GrayDuck]

I was trying not to get excited about NS2... but I failed. I can't wait! The problem that I have is I'm not sure my ancient machine is powerful enough - it was a champ in it's day - but that was probably 4+ years ago. Provided she doesn't fail on me, here are her specs:

Dell Dimension 8400
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.2GHz
3Gigs Ram
Radeon X800 XT (dying - needs replaced) - I was thinking about getting this card: http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-4670PE31G ... 438&sr=8-1

Money is an issue (so is time, but who really needs sleep anyway). Do you think my machine can hack it? Any better video card suggestions? Any knowledge of a deal on a better machine (and monitor, my fracking monitor has more vertical dead stripes than a zebra!)

I see on the NS site the min. specs are below my machines - it's just the age I worry about! (min specs being 1.2Ghz proc, 256MB RAM...)

Signed,
GrayDuck - Ready to come out of Retirement and chomp some marines!

[BigDXLT]

I'd be surprised if that didn't run NS2 quite well, other than the parts that you say are on the verge of death.

Those minimum stats suggest that they are aiming to include machines from 8+ years ago!

[shipwreck]

Yeah that looks like a solid little rig there. If you can scrap the loot together to pick up a new card then do it.

[Niteowl]

I have nothing to add, since I know nothing about hardware, just posted to say HIYA GRAYDUCK!

[pr0phetik_dreamz]

Yeah, the HD4670 is a pretty solid card. It's only slightly slower than 1.5 years ago's HD3870, and a hell of a lot cheaper than the high end cards were then. It's a good choice for an older system. Anything faster than this card, you'll probably see bottlenecks in the CPU, RAM, or bus. Moreso on the CPU/bus side though.

Just make sure your motherboard can handle a PCIe graphics card. I know many of them Dells either omit the PCIe X16 slot entirely, or it has an x4/x8 slot instead.

If you want to buy a new rig, I'm assuming you can put it together. Judging from your past posts, and this one, it looks like you're pretty comfortable taking off the side of the case. If you're *really* thinking about it, let me know your price range, and I can make a recommendation that falls within the budget constraints. If you're planning to reuse some of your old parts, let me know what you've got as well

[pr0phetik_dreamz]

Nevermind about finding your specifications. I found it here: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/s ... #wp1052308

Yes, looks like you can slap the HD4670 on there. Since your computer uses DDR2 memory, you may be able to reuse those on your new computer. I'm taking a rough guess that you have 3x 1GB modules.