computer help please

[rembrandt]

well I got this new game for my daughter called wildlife park2 but it wont play jusy get his message

THE MINIMUM SHADER REQUIREMENTS CANNOT BE MET (VERTEX-PIXELSHADER 1.1) THE PROGRAMME WILL SHUT DOWN)

well im guessing my graphics card isnt up to it so any ideas what I have to do (thiking about a complete new computer as mines 5 yrs old ) or what to buy to get it working

[kasandrich]

I would guess at graphics but I'm no expert in the field of games and graphics.

What spec is your old pc? I have a 1.4ghz AMD machine spare and available for sale for a very reasonable price.......or in exchange for some spraying lessons ;) if you want to try running it on there? Its a complete working machine, 17" crt monitor, DVD writer etc.....Give me a shout via PM.

If you want any help with upgrading or building a new machine I am willing to help. Can't get any bits cheap but can point you in the right direction to get them sensibly priced, or Jon may be able to help.

[Gixxer-TeZ]

If you end up going for a new pc, I would personally recommend one of these.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1142209487.117064034 5@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdgaddkdffdgijcflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=ProductList&category_oid=-27735&show_all=true#ADVENT:(any):(any):(any):(any):(any) :(any):200:700:PageNo_0:SortOrder_DOWN

I've run Advents for 4 years and swear by them. My current one was custom built for me by advent and to be honest they are the only decent ones available at PC world in my opinion. Mine has always been very stable and I've never had a single problem with it ( well ....... apart from the coffee that finished off my keyboard ).

They have also dropped in price by a massive amount over the last year. I paid £1200 for mine with a 3.4ghz hyper threading processor, 2mb ddr ram ( now upgraded to 4mb), dual 250gb hard drives, dual layer dvd drives x2 and all the usual upto date graphics card, sound card etc etc.

[richy rich]

i'd recommend a dell... you can get them for 250 quid i think now, if not 300, and they are all upto date stuff

[kasandrich]

You will find Dell are VERY reluctant to sell you anything at their headline prices, these headline prices are very poor spec, and they hope to get you with ad-ons at the time of order. If you do order a low end spec cheapie at their headline prices, you may find it is out of stock ;)

Fezby......only 4mb of ram? I have 512mb in mine ;) ;) ;)

[Gixxer-TeZ]

Fezby......only 4mb of ram? I have 512mb in mine ;) ;) ;)



errrrrr..........Sorry. That was ment to be 4gb :reading

I wouldn't touch Dell either. We used to have them at work and they cause the company a lot of headaches.
They are a typical mass market producer who bulk buy components and sling them into a tower unit. It isn't a good recipe. I rank them at the same level as Packard Bell, Gateway and Compaq

:shooter

[SDM]

Dave you work for ECFRS and they use DELL :grin2 :grin2

[2E]

well I got this new game for my daughter called wildlife park2 but it wont play jusy get his message

THE MINIMUM SHADER REQUIREMENTS CANNOT BE MET (VERTEX-PIXELSHADER 1.1) THE PROGRAMME WILL SHUT DOWN)

well im guessing my graphics card isnt up to it so any ideas what I have to do (thiking about a complete new computer as mines 5 yrs old ) or what to buy to get it working

Definately a graphics card problem... you can get another depending on what slot you have in your computer, possibly AGP but cant be sure.

Maplins do PCI-BUS graphics card which slot into the pci slot (look at your motherboard, the white slots at the bottom are pci slots) you can get them for 30-40 quid which will do the job fine. Id recommend that if your moneys tight and you dont want to shell out on a new computer.

Im very reluctant to buy ready built pcs from pc world... i prefer to custom build my own, i just built my own 2GHZ AMD ATHLON 3200+ PROCESSOR PC which has the Ati Radeon X550 Graphics Card In It.
Not the best computer in the world, but cost me about 150 quid to get the motherboard and processor and graphics card from maplins, then took ram etc out of the other computer.. :D

I also dont touch Dell... for the pure reason we have so many people come into maplin and say 'i need ram' ok.. start selling, 'its for a dell dimension' and nobody can sell you parts other than dell..

Everything dell puts in their pc are custom made.. the rams slightly longer/shorter.. graphics cards are inbuilt.. and its difficult and expensive to get upgrades for them. I NEVER recommend DELL for that reason.:grin3
I think the only universal part of dell pcs are there monitors as ive seen a few people with them... but cant be sure either..:D

Anyway if your interested in a PCI graphics card then give me a pm, and ill see if i can sort you out a discount ;)

[SDM]

errrrrr..........I wouldn't touch Dell either. We used to have them at work and they cause the company a lot of headaches.

:shooter

We have used DELL for a long time now :grin2 :grin2 , perhaps your IT department needs a bit off training :grin2 ................

[Gixxer-TeZ]

Horse for courses like everything in life I suppose. Seems strange that they binned the Dell and everything has been ok now.

They are always moody so I think they have already done their OFF training ........ :grin2

[richy rich]

well i would have thought that if you bought a decent spec dell then it wouldn't need upgrading for a long time, you can build them over the fone so you get what you want

[Gixxer-TeZ]

well i would have thought that if you bought a decent spec dell then it wouldn't need upgrading for a long time, you can build them over the fone so you get what you want

Yes. Very true richy but for £250-£300 you are looking at a base model with basic features. As kasandrich said above, they make their money from all the add-ons and upgrade options and as also said above (like with a few pc makes now) everything is custom fit so you can't buy a generic part to upgrade.

[Ducky]

If your comps 5+ yrs old, just buy a new one! But I would budget at least £5-600 minimum for a reasonable spec job!

[RaceMeNSee]

just let me know what you want!?

[chromium05]

^^^

Motherboard / CPU and Ram I need.

Currently have 1.7Ghz Celeron with 1Gb ram but the board is ****. And 350Gb of IDE hard drives (split between 4 drives)

Looking for 3Ghz + new mobo with minimum 2Gb fast ram and SATA drives.

If anyone has the means to acquire and arrange a deal on any of these bits I would be very grateful.

I usually use http://www.dcs-online.biz/shop/conditions.php (VERY cheap) or www.aria.co.uk but money is very tight at the moment.

[Lateshift]

I had a quick look at this earlier and before you do anything about the PC you look at the box for the software and check the minimum specifications required to run it.

Having done that they are very basic,



• Intel Pentium IV 2 GHz or compatible
• 512 MB RAM
• Operating systems: Windows 2000 or Windows XP
• Free hard drive space: 1.5 GB
• Graphics card: DirectX 8.1 compatible with 64 MB RAM
• DVD/CD drive
• Mouse



Near enough all Graphics/VGA cards be it PCI/AGP and even the later PCI-E ones are all DX8.1 compatible as Direct X 8.1 came out ages ago and 64mb of RAM on a card these days is base line.

What you need to do first is check what spec system you have.

If you have got by without worrying about it until now then i personnally dont see the need to upgrade, if the PC was slowing down all the time, giving lots of errors then fine, however in this case its just so your daughter can play a game.

Now whilst you say the PC is 5 years old, the software was released in June last year, it would have been developed probably at least a year before that based on the baseline spec required to run it at that time.

So unless you are worried about future compatibility for gaming then the chances are you need to just upgrade the VGA card at the moment.

Now going back to the age of the PC, if it is around 5 years old and as a typical basic PC user you wandered into somewhere like PC World and took the advice of a salesperson there, the chances are high that you have "onboard" VGA, this would have been fine at the time, however the error you have received specifically relates to the lack of Vertex shader 1.1 which is only normally found in the architecture of a dedicated VGA card (that has the hardware to run the calculations required for the graphics seperate from the CPU in the PC).

Vertex shading normally requires an AGP port (or at least an accelerated port) because its calculated in billions and trillions per second.

So once you know what specification PC you have it may just be that for the time being you can get away with upgrading the VGA card.


The only thing that gets outdated really quick these days is VGA card architecture, the moment its released its old news, for the most part for everyday life lots of RAM, a fairly decent specification CPU (at least 1.5ghz in this day and age) and at least 128mb of dedicated VGA RAM will get you by,

unless of course you want the rig for gaming in which case its a battle to keep up to use the full options of the software anymore ;)

[NitroDaze]

Nowadays, If you are buying a brand new pc, l would recommend that you do not bother with anything without a dual core processor because Microsoft has release a new operating system (Windows Vista) whic only work on these.

If you are not fussed or are looking to buy a 2nd hand PC, a centrino laptop or pentium 4 desktop will be ample for games, word processing and internet surfing.

The other things to watch out for are,
1. Memory size
For dual core pc, make sure the minimum memory is 1Gb
For other lower spec pc, they are usually 512mb, dont bother with
anything less.
[Note :- you can always up grade the memory as well]
2. Hard Disk
External hard disks are getting cheaper nowadays, most new machine come with 60 - 120gb is not the end of the world as you can buy 120 - 350gb external harddisk at reasonable cost to boost things up.
3. Graphics Card
If you intend to play computer games which require directx 9, then you should a pc with a top graphics card with up to lots of onboard memory (64 -128mb). I.e NVIDIA

4. Processor Speed (Clock speed)
This is the rate at which the processor processes data. It is measured in hertz. Nowadays in Giga Hertz. The Higher the clock speed, the shorter is the time you have to wait for applications to startup or do something.

For dual core is starts from 1.2Ghz to 2.3Ghz (this is what l am aware of at the mo, look around). A 1.66Ghz machine are usually better priced and are more than enough for what ever you want to do on it.

6. Price
You pay for what you get basically. But you can pick up a quality machine for less than £500 nowadays. I would recommend buying a quality brand like toshiba, HP, Compaq or Sony. They guarantee quality and have a better support service for those frustrating moments when something goes wrong.

Shop around on the internet, you will find some amazing prices.

[2E]

Nowadays, If you are buying a brand new pc, l would recommend that you do not bother with anything without a dual core processor because Microsoft has release a new operating system (Windows Vista) whic only work on these.



I personally am NOT going to Vista, my uncles been beta testing it and has told me that it is the biggest pile of s%^t going!:shooter

The reason for this is that you cant do anything without vista checking it, and if you do something wrong, e.g. you download music (slap my hand!) through Limewire or something then vista will either a) not let you run it b) flag it up as pirated program c) Deactivate the windows (Yes they can and will do it or so ive been told).:grin1

Basically windows are doing this to stop copyright infrigement, pirating DVD's etc.:clap

All the 'bonuses' to vista could of been added to XP quite easily, instead, microsoft being microsoft decide to bring out another piece of rubbish software that people will buy and be stuck with.:shooter

Oh and another thing you cant do, you can only use the disk TWICE, to prevent you installing it on different machines, once youve installed it twice then the disk becomes useless (they either wipe it, or deliberately corrupt it) Microsoft have said that on average, people only re-install windows when upgrading their systems, which is why you can only install the disc twice. :laugh2

I think Vista may be ok for schools/businesses/companies etc but for home use, i think its too much. ;)

But well.. thats just my opinion on the subject, and of course my uncles first hand experience with Windows Vista.:grin2

[Lateshift]

As with any software unless you as a home user can actually come up with some spangled idea as to why you need a new operating system (other than trying to run software that isnt compatible with your exisiting one ;) ) then i really dont see the need for it.

I got by with Windows 3.1, changed over to Windows 95 because thats what we were all using, bought Win98 because it was all singing and all dancing, ended up using NT at work, thinking oooh this is nice and spangly when W2K appeared, laughed my tits off at WinME and then settled for WinXP (i honestly dont think there is anything that WinXP cant do that i need it too otherwise i would have noticed it by now :D ).

I have to say as far as operating system go, Windows XP Media Centre does it all, gives the option to pump multimedia elsewhere and isnt overly complicated to use, has all the necessary networking tools and security, job done :)

[rembrandt]

the info I now is chip is a AMD Athlon XP1700+ 1.47ghz, 512mb ram, sound card avance ac97 , graphics card NVIDIA GEFORCE4 MX440 64mb ,motherboard via kt333/kt400 , I think thats it lol

[Lateshift]

Just upgrade to a newer AGP VGA card, the Geforce 4 series card are well past their sell by date now and with 64mb would struggle to run anything graphics intensive that has been released in the last few years :)

Anything with around 128mb upwards and from around the Nvidia 7300 range or ATI Radeon 9550 should do the trick and not cost you much more than £40

You could go the whole hog and stick another 512mb of RAM in there too so the there is less of a bottle neck for graphics but seriously that CPU is more than capable of running for a little bit longer on all but the top selling games that are out at the moment (which stretch even the top end PC's anyway).

There are PC's out there at the moment that cost well in excess of £2500 built specifically for hard core gamers, that have already been proven to struggle when trying to run a game on its full intended settings ;)

[NitroDaze]

I personally am NOT going to Vista, my uncles been beta testing it and has told me that it is the biggest pile of s%^t going!:shooter

The reason for this is that you cant do anything without vista checking it, and if you do something wrong, e.g. you download music (slap my hand!) through Limewire or something then vista will either a) not let you run it b) flag it up as pirated program c) Deactivate the windows (Yes they can and will do it or so ive been told).:grin1

Basically windows are doing this to stop copyright infrigement, pirating DVD's etc.:clap

All the 'bonuses' to vista could of been added to XP quite easily, instead, microsoft being microsoft decide to bring out another piece of rubbish software that people will buy and be stuck with.:shooter

Oh and another thing you cant do, you can only use the disk TWICE, to prevent you installing it on different machines, once youve installed it twice then the disk becomes useless (they either wipe it, or deliberately corrupt it) Microsoft have said that on average, people only re-install windows when upgrading their systems, which is why you can only install the disc twice. :laugh2

I think Vista may be ok for schools/businesses/companies etc but for home use, i think its too much. ;)

But well.. thats just my opinion on the subject, and of course my uncles first hand experience with Windows Vista.:grin2

There are a number of reasons why if you are buying new that you should consider Windows Vista, namely:-

Windows Vista is 64bit processing while Windows XP is 32bits.
New PC have dual core processors which mean 64bits procecessing
Future softwares will be written for 64bits. Hence 32 bits PC will soon be unable to run post Windows Vista software. Therefore why buy a PC that become useless very soon.It is a good point that you can get by with older operating systems for home use. Besides there are lots of software for older op sys. Remember they all said the same things about Windows XP.

[2E]

Dual Core proccessors are the latest for 64 Bit that are released..

But they arent the newest, Quad Core proccessor motherboards are being prototyped in Japan, and some have been purchased already by some of my uncles friends... so its only a matter of time before Dual Core becomes old news too. :grin2

[NitroDaze]

Dual Core proccessors are the latest for 64 Bit that are released..

But they arent the newest, Quad Core proccessor motherboards are being prototyped in Japan, and some have been purchased already by some of my uncles friends... so its only a matter of time before Dual Core becomes old news too. :grin2
They would normally make their way into servers first and then trickle down to desktops and laptops. That would be a good while before they get cheap enough to be offered on home PCs. Dual core is the newest on the market.


By the way, there is a 32 bit Windows vista. I can't see the point of it, best stick with XP.