Halo 2 on Vista Home premium system help

[Guest]

have I have a Compaq model 2180NX with 250 G HD and 3.3 DRAM with > 2 Ghz
which I installed Halo 2 on. I have not installed a graphics card yet. The
Vista system experience lowest rating is 3.0 on memory (video?) and the game
will not work. I assume I need a graphics card. I have never used a graphics
card. My system has 3 PCI & 1 PCIe slots empty. I have seen the notes about
using a nvidia 6100 or ATI 700 or higher card on the game site. I have been
looking for these cards on line and in store but been too suceessful. Are
these card numbers old or there newer numbers? What should I look for?
Lokking to spend under $200-$250. Looking on the Nividia & ATI sites do not
give any understandable road maps. Any help or leads would be helpful.

 

[Andy [YaYa]]

have I have a Compaq model 2180NX with 250 G HD and 3.3 DRAM with > 2 Ghz
which I installed Halo 2 on. I have not installed a graphics card yet. The
Vista system experience lowest rating is 3.0 on memory (video?) and the
game
will not work. I assume I need a graphics card. I have never used a
graphics
card. My system has 3 PCI & 1 PCIe slots empty. I have seen the notes
about
using a nvidia 6100 or ATI 700 or higher card on the game site. I have
been
looking for these cards on line and in store but been too suceessful. Are
these card numbers old or there newer numbers? What should I look for?
Lokking to spend under $200-$250. Looking on the Nividia & ATI sites do
not
give any understandable road maps. Any help or leads would be helpful.

The nVidia 6100 and the ATi x700 aren't too recent, anything recent should
be more than adiquate to run Halo 2.

Thank GOD you listed your computer model, THANK YOU!

According to:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3339276&os=2093&lang=en

Your system has 1 Gig of RAM running at DDR2/333Mhz or PC2-4200 speed
Your motherboard uses the Intel 80945 chipset with integrated graphics.
250gb hard drive, dvd burner, etc.

This system, as is, should be able to run Halo 2.

Your system is scoring a 3.0 because of Gaming Graphics rating. My Dell at
the office gets the same rating. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because
your CPU, RAM, HD, and basic GRAPHICS speeds are fast enough to run teh
haloz.

If you still want to get a new graphics card, I would look into getting an
NVidia 8600, or 8800 if you can afford it. If you want to buy an ATi Card,
the ATi Radeon HD 2600 or HD 2900 is what you might want to look into.

If you want to spend less, and don't care about DirectX 10 functions (Halo 2
does NOT use DirectX 10), the nVidia 7800 or 7900 cards are getting
affordable, and are fast cards. The ATi x1650, x1800, x1900, or x1950 are
all good choices. It all comes down to price. How much do you want to spend
just to play Halo.

I would not go any lower than that, your Intel Graphics card, as I said
earlier, will run Halo 2! It will run slow, but it'll work. If Halo 2 is not
running on your system, you should fix it before you go installing a new
video card into your computer.

-A.

 

[Shane Nokes]

Halo2 on Integrated Intel Graphics?

If it even works (which 90% certain it won't, I'm a system builder) it will
give you around 3-5 Frames Per Second.
You need at least 30 frames per second to have any sort of smoothness to the
game at all.

I would honestly recommend getting at least the Radeon X1900, however I
doubt your current PC could handle the HD2900 due to the heave power
requirements.

 

[Andy [YaYa]]

I posted a huge response, but I don't think it took for some reason, maybe I
responded to you Shane, but here's my response again, and I added some
stuff...

Halo2 on Integrated Intel Graphics?

If it even works (which 90% certain it won't, I'm a system builder) it
will give you around 3-5 Frames Per Second.
You need at least 30 frames per second to have any sort of smoothness to
the game at all.

I would honestly recommend getting at least the Radeon X1900, however I
doubt your current PC could handle the HD2900 due to the heave power
requirements.

Holy crap an x1900 for HALO 2?!

Whatever dude, if you need 60+ frames per second and you have $250 to spend
on a video card you certainly could do worse than a x1900, but if you just
want to play the game, what you have "WILL" work, and if it DOES NOT work,
it may not be the video card you're having problems with.

Just saying, it's not going to be a stellar experience, but it WILL run. I
have TF2, HalfLife2 and Halo 2 running on a notebook with a x1200 mobile
card. Like I said NOT STELLAR, but it works (Vista Ultimate).

I've been in game development (Mostly QA, management, etc.) on and off since
97, I got my start in support getting DOS games to run in Windows 95
enviornments, don't wave your "system builder" flag at me like I don't know
what I'm talking about. Now a days that's like saying you're a private in
the army. I'm not trying to say you don't know your shit, but I hope you
understand what I'm trying to say here.

If I didn't state my point of view clearly enough in my first post then I
apologize, but NOTHING gets my Internet Flame on then when people say you
need a really high end piece of hardware, when an "OK" piece of hardware
will do the job.

Lets break it down...

Great gaming experience:
ATi HD 2900 Dx10
nVidia 8800 GTX Dx10
ATi x1900 or x1950 Dx9
nVidia 7900 Dx9

Good Gaming:
nVidia 8600 Dx10
ATi HD 2600 Dx10
nVidia 7900 or 7800 Dx9
ATi x1700 or x1800 Dx9

OK Gaming:
nVidia 7600 Dx9
ATi x1600 or x1650 Dx9

Poor Gaming (But it'll work):
Just about any integrated chipset made in the last year.
nVidia 7300, ATi x1300

Some of the new Intel graphic chipsets are supposed to surpass similar stand
alone cards and cost hundreds less, so while they may not be uber, if you're
on a budget they won't kill ya.
--
ADDITIONAL.

BBPS.com just posted the official Epic recommended specs for UT3, thought
you might get a chuckle...
--snip--
Midway and (those guys Silicon Knights hate) Epic have revealed the PC
specifications for the upcoming first-person shooter, Unreal Tournament 3
and even typing the minimum requirements on my current box is experiencing
slowdown.

Minimum System Requirements
Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
2.0+ GHZ Single Core Processor
512 Mbytes of System RAM
NVIDIA 6200+ or ATI Radeon 9600+ Video Card
8 GB of Free Hard Drive Space

Recommended System Requirements
2.4+ GHZ Dual Core Processor
1 GBytes of System RAM
NVIDIA 7800GTX+ or ATI x1300+ Video Card
8 GB of Free Hard Drive Space

Okay, while they aren’t nearly as hefty as other upcoming titles (Sup,
Crysis?), the seemingly annual leaps of technology from one video card to
the next reminds me why most gamers have flocked toward the accessibility of
consoles rather than PCs.
--snip--
wow, min specs is a 5 year old video card from ATi, cpu requirements are up
there though.

ATi, as I've been told, designs all their graphic chipsets around DirectX
specs, and nVidia makes their own specs and uses drivers to adapt them for
DirectX. I remember early dev of certain games and we had to swap out nvidia
cards for ATi, just so the game would run. Odd.

512 ram in vista, wonder what that's gonna be like?


-A.