Decision: Averted!

[sinanju]

I drove up to CompUSA this evening, intent on possibly, maybe buying some memory and a new graphics card for my computer. Alas, I left the specs on my motherboard at home, so I wasn't entirely confident of what I needed in the way of memory cards. The guy at CompUSA was sure, based on what I remembered, but...I decided to hold off. Also, my motherboard can handle 2GB of RAM (currently it's limping along on 256MB (which seemed like a hell of a lot when I bought it), but the biggest memory cards they had would have given me only a total of 1GB if I used all the slots. I can probably do better at Fry's.

I looked at graphics cards, too. I'm somewhat limited in my choices by my use of Win98SE as an OS, but dammit--I don't like ME, 2000 or XP.* Eventually--like, on my next new system--I'm gonna have to bite the bullet. But not yet. I'd like a new graphics card, but from what I've heard a big boost in RAM will produce a far bigger improvement in my gaming experience than a new graphics card, so if it comes to a choice of one or the other instead of both, I'm going to buy the memory expansions.

Still not sure about COH, though. It could be fun, but...I dunno. Will I really enjoy it? And even if I do, will I play it all that much?

*Yeah, yeah. I could go with Apple (yeah, right). Or Linux. I tried Linux. Tain't nearly as user friendly as I expected, and frankly, I didn't feel like spending the time to figure out how to do things that I had long ago mastered in Windows.

Comments

[aquamarcia.livejournal.com]

My take on Microsoft's PC OSes: 98SE is adequate - ME is crap - 2000 is good for work but not good for games some of the time - XP is very good. If you're choosing between the four, my advice is upgrade to XP or stick with 98SE. Upgrading to 2000 is not likely to be too advantageous and going to ME would be a downgrade compared to 98SE, given bugs of some sorts.

I'm a big fan of Apple but am not going to evangelize about it. And in any case, you can't play CoH on it and probably can't play BF1942 on it either.

Some Linux distributions are making claims of user-friendliness. These claims are, by-and-large, exaggerations. And many games don't run on Linux, either.

As for hardware upgrades, more RAM is always better. And there's no reason not to improve your video card other than money, I think. The trick is to make sure the speed multiplier of the card matches that of the AGP slot. (If your AGP slot is 4x, you won't take full advantage of an 8x card, frex.) The advantage you gain in a better graphics card is not only in speed, but memory for precaching of textures (which main memory doesn't do) and a wider array of capabilities like pixel shading and such.

Hope this helps...

[snippy]

Can you upgrade from ME to XP? What's wrong with ME? I've been running it for nearly 4 years now with very little problems. What challenges it?

[aquamarcia.livejournal.com]

Yes, you can upgrade from ME to XP. You can also upgrade from 98SE to XP, or from 2000 to XP. You cannot upgrade from 95 to XP.

I have very little personal experience with ME, so my info about bugs is second hand. What I'm given to understand is that new features put into ME that 98SE doesn't have are bug ridden. This would lead me to believe that if you've never used those features (I think System Restore is one) you won't have encountered problems. And to be fair, if you're using any OS and it's working well for you, that's good by me. :)