You Computer...

[Almeidaboo]

I do not own a computer. Seriously. All the internet acess I do is at work, as I´m doing right now.

[Tomi]

Almeidaboo wins.

[aboutasoandthis]

The computer I have now was built from the ground up by my dad. Great...

At least we have XP. We got it for free, and now it's registered. He has a lot of knowledge of computers, but I don't. Just so you know, he's 46 so it kind of shocks him to see PC games with extremely high demands.

If I had to have one question answered, what exactly is memory and why is it important? I though memory was RAM, and that it just saved information like a memory card or something. I thought processing speed was the most important factor for playing high end games?

For the record, is there a site that teaches the basics about computers out there? I'm a n00b. Remember that.

[DragonBlaze]

Your hard drive stores stuff such as data. RAM/memory (names are interchangable) is basically your computers 'work space'.

Imagine opening up paint and you want to edit a picture. The data is moved from your hard drive (storage) to the RAM (workspace) and thus you can work on it. It works the same way with games. The more RAM you have, the more your computer has to work with. I can't really explain it all that well, but RAM is basically your computers workspace, if you dont have enough ram, games and such will lag and slow down.

Processing speed is very important, but that alone won't run a good game. The CPU (processor) basically dertermain the speed at which your computer can process data. So that IS a very important factor, but the gfx card is equally important when it comes to games. While the cpu handles the data, the gfx card handles how well and how fast the computer can display stuff. So you could have some super CPU, but if your gfx card can't render the graphics of a new game or can't handle the amount of graphics needed for the display, the game will lag a lot.

[aboutasoandthis]

 Originally Posted by DragonBlaze
 

Your hard drive stores stuff such as data. RAM* DragonBlaze mory (names are interchangable) is basically your computers 'work space'.

Imagine opening up paint and you want to edit a picture. The data is moved from your hard drive (storage) to the RAM (workspace) and thus you can work on it. It works the same way with games. The more RAM you have, the more your computer has to work with. I can't really explain it all that well, but RAM is basically your computers workspace, if you dont have enough ram, games and such will lag and slow down.

Processing speed is very important, but that alone won't run a good game. The CPU (processor) basically dertermain the speed at which your computer can process data. So that IS a very important factor, but the gfx card is equally important when it comes to games. While the cpu handles the data, the gfx card handles how well and how fast the computer can display stuff. So you could have some super CPU, but if your gfx card can't render the graphics of a new game or can't handle the amount of graphics needed for the display, the game will lag a lot.

I comepletely understood that. Thanks. Consider teaching. :p

Oh, and I think we bought a new graphics card at some point that is better than this new computer. My dad said he was going to replace it after we bought the new one. He's mostly after the processor.

Still, are there good graphics cards out there that won't break the bank? No more than $120 or so. Anything less than that and we're good.

[DragonBlaze]

Yeah, there are a lot of good gfx cards for under $120. However, you won't find them really in stores. Stores only sell name brand graphics cards, and they are really expensive compared to the same gfx card but made by an offbrand. Go to newegg.com, its a very reliable site with computer parts, if you need a new gfx card, I'd search there for one. Before actually buying and new parts though, test out your computer first. If your stuff runs fine with what you got, don't worry about upgrading. Its best to wait until you 'need' the part before you buy it. Parts go down in price rather fast, so the longer you wait, the cheaper they'll get.

I think I bought a sapphire radeon x1300 for $80 or $90, An ATI radeon X1300 cost $160 or $170 in the stores at that time. The name brand probably runs a bit better than my offbrand, but it doesn't run so much better where its worth spending all that extra money for it.

[aboutasoandthis]

I think I'll get a job to pay for this stuff. In case we really need it. Thanks DragonBlaze.  

Did you notice gamerman4 hasn't really posted but we posted a lot in this topic?

BTW, I'm reading some reviews on the site. Very helpfull. There aren't that many 5 star ratings, and the ones that do still have problems (MMOs lag, some high-end games lag).

Edit:
How's this one?

MSI RX800-TD128E Radeon X800 128MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

Chipset Manufacturer: ATI
Core clock: 392MHz
D-SUB: 1
DirectX: DirectX 9
DVI: 1
Memory Clock: 700MHz
Memory Interface: 256-bit
OpenGL: OpenGL 2.0
PixelPipelines: 12
TV-Out: HDTV/S-Video Out

Model #: RX800-TD128E
Item #: N82E16814127176
In Stock
$6.13 Three Day Shipping

I think it was $83

If not that, what about this one?

MSI RX1300Pro-TD256E Radeon X1300PRO 256MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

Chipset Manufacturer: ATI
Core clock: 600MHz
D-SUB: 1
DirectX: DirectX 9
DVI: 1
Memory Clock: 800MHz
Memory Interface: 128-bit
OpenGL: OpenGL 2.0
PixelPipelines: 4
TV-Out: S-Video Out

Model #: RX1300Pro-TD256E
Item #: N82E16814127193
In Stock
$5.64 Three Day Shipping
[6 Reviews]
Move To Wish List
 $76.99  

I'm looking at the price first, reviews second. The first had more complaints than the second. Then again, the first had 73 reviews.

[gamerman4]

Linkizcool: lmao

Dragonblaze: the reason Oblivion plays choppy on ur comp is because the X1300 is a cheapo card. The A64 3000 is plenty to play it (though consider Overclocking it).

aboutasoandthis: under $120 will get you a real nice card. All i need to know is if your comp uses PCI-Express or AGP.... based on the two you pciked i hope you know that both are PCI-Express

RAM is pretty easy to explain....

First of all...
Your hard drive is the main thing that stores all the information on your computer but its probably the slowest component on any computer.
Your RAM stores whatever is running at the time and it is FAST.
Think of your hard drive as a one-lane-dirt road compared to your RAM being a 20-lane super highway. The average bandwidth of the fastest HDD you can buy is about 140MB/s. RAM is about.......500x that fast. My RAM bandwidth is 7GB/s (I overclock though). One reason things lag is that when you dont have enoguh RAM, it has to use your hard drive as "virtual" RAM which is obviously MUCH slower, this can cause lag in games and lag in a whole bunch of stuff (Photoshop is a RAM hogging demon).
The reason hard drives arent made out of the same tech as RAM is that RAM is what is considered "volatile"...and its just really expensive in large amounts (2GB of RAM can cost more than a 200GB HDD). The instance power is lost from the machine everything on your RAM is lost. This is why its considered memory.....short-term memory hehe.

[Linkizcool]

@Aso: The graphics cards in there are good, but the clock speed isn't nearly enough to run games. Think of it this way:

8 bits equal a byte
1007 bytes equal a kilobyte
1007 kilobytes equal a megabyte
1007 megabytes equal a gigabyte
so on and so forth...

"Hz" and the end of the clock speed shows how many vibrations (in this case, the positive/negative charges) per second.

The CPU runs on something called "Transistor Transistor Logic", aka TTL, aka Binary. TTL's work by sending and reading positive and negative charges. What all this fits in with games is this:

Here is an example code in C++:

 
#include

using namespace std;

int main()
{
  cout<<"HEY, you, I'm alive! Oh, and Hello World!n";
  cin.get();
}


In binary it would look something like this:

0010000000001101000010100010001101
1010010110111001100011011011000111
0101011001000110010100100000001111
0001101001011011110111001101110100
0111001001100101011000010110110100
1111100000110100001010000011010000
1010011101010111001101101001011011
1001100111001000000110111001100001
0110110101100101011100110111000001
1000010110001101100101001000000111
0011011101000110010000111011000011
0100001010000011010000101001101001
0110111001110100001000000110110101
1000010110100101101110001010000010
1001000011010000101001111011000011
0100001010001000000010000001100011
0110111101110101011101000011110000
1111000010001001001000010001010101
1001001011000010000001111001011011
1101110101001011000010000001001001
0010011101101101001000000110000101
1011000110100101110110011001010010
0001001000000100111101101000001011
0000100000011000010110111001100100
0010000001001000011001010110110001
1011000110111100100000010101110110
1111011100100110110001100100001000
0101011100011011100010001000111011
0000110100001010001000000010000001
1000110110100101101110001011100110
0111011001010111010000101000001010
0100111011000011010000101001111101

Each 0 or 1 is one positive or negative charge in the TTL "gate", or the part of the CPU which interprets and sends out the binary. There are millions of transistors and gates in your CPU, which can fit in your palm.

Hertz basically measure how many 0's or 1's the TTL gates can process at once. As you can see, the coding alone takes a lot of processing. To play a game, the coding is about 100-1000 times this size for a simple game. Plus, the CPU needs to send out additional positive and negative charges to the sound card, which sends the output to your peaker, and it needs to interpret the input from you mouse and keyboards, interpret it according to the game code, and relay iot to the graphics card which displays it on the monitor.

MHz is Hertz 10 to the power of 6 800 MHz is about 800000000 Hertz, which in turn is 1600000000 positive/negative vibrations per second.

Now imagine 3 GHz

3000000000 Hertz, 6000000000 vibrations per second. Obviously, this can process a lot more data.

The PC you want to buy could send out about 800000000 positive charges (1's) and 800000000 negative charges (0's). Not enough, amazingly, for a high-end game.

In short words, the compys you want cannot send out enough 0's and 1's per second to play the games you want.

[DragonBlaze]

 

Dragonblaze: the reason Oblivion plays choppy on ur comp is because the X1300 is a cheapo card.

I figured as much, Oblivion is the only new game I have, the next newest one is morrowind, the next newest one is worms armagetton... Those are the only 3 computer games I own. I play a lot of playstation games on my computer though too. Anyway, I didn't want to spend lots of $$$ for a namebrand card when I only really need it for one game. A lot of times its not even an issue, so I'm happy.

[gamerman4]

Link....where'd you get that info?

8 bits= 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 Kilobyte
1024 KB = 1MB
etc....

Also, the graphics card is not dependant on the CPU to relay information. In most gaming PCs the graphics card is held back actually by the CPU because even at the new 64bit CPU standard, graphics card use a 256 bit interface, some even 512bit. Also, in most cases, with a decent sound card, it processes sound information by itself.
Your information would only be correct in the event that they had integrated graphics and sound cards since it would all rely mainly on the CPU because there are no true dedicated cards.


Also 1 Mhz is 10^6 Hz which is 1,000,000 Hz
3 Ghz would be (10^9)*3.... 3,000,000,000 Hz
In computing, most CPUs are labeled in terms of their clock speed expressed in megahertz or gigahertz (10^9 hertz)). The number of megahertz refers to the frequency of the CPU's master clock signal ("clock speed"). This signal is simply an electrical voltage which changes from low to high and back again at regular intervals.

To explain why AMD CPus can keep u with Intel CPus even though they are at a lower clock speed...
The greatest advantage that AMD has is their integrated memory controller, meaning (in lay terms) that the cpu has more direct control over memory bandwidth resulting in better bandwidth and better performance in bandwidth demanding tasks such as gaming. Technically speaking all this means is that, the CPU doesn't have to "go anywhere" to get access to the memory (Intel systems, for the time bearing, have to communicate with the Northbridge to access memory). Pentium 4s have to go through the Northbridge before communicating with he components. This results in a much less efficient use of CPU speed.

[Almeidaboo]

Originally posted by Tomi
Almeidaboo wins.

Unfortunately, yeas...

[Archem]

Originally posted by Almeidaboo

quote:

Originally posted by Tomi Almeidaboo wins.

Unfortunately, yeas...

*sad*

[Linkizcool]

Gamerman, okay, I was off by 17. Most people just say 1,000 = 1, anyway.

Originally posted by gamerman4

3 Ghz would be (10^9)*3.... 3,000,000,000 Hz
I

Thats what I wrote, except with no commas.

...3000000000 Hertz...

If you count the zeros, theres nine in there.

 

[aboutasoandthis]

After I last posted, nothing made sense...at all.

He does not like internet shopping, but maybe  he can look at the site and pick something.

You're explanations left me looking like this:   Do not consider teaching. Thanks for the help anyway.