Shepherd Wrote:jpub Wrote:I'm not going to get into the 'replace your OS and still use your old PC' argument. You said you wanted to play SCII, let's work on that.Hi. Still looking to upgrade my computer. Would the HP Pavillion p6650z ($449.99) meet my requirements? (www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/com ... 50z_series)
Okay, here's what you need for SCII:
•Windows Vista®/Windows® 7
•Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
•2 GB RAM
•512 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better
•12 GB available HD space
•DVD-ROM drive
•Broadband Internet connection
•1024X720 minimum display resolution
If we assume you have a monitor(can we?), we can just worry about the box. The discrete video card is important, as Intel GMAs will not handle the game. Also, you'll want 4GB of RAM. 2GB might be enough for XP, not for Vista and definitely not 7.
The processor and memory seem sufficient, but I'm uncertain if the Integrated ATI Radeon HD 4200 [VGA, DVI] graphics meet the recommended requirements, since I have trouble differentiating between the relative power of various graphics cards or the difference between integrated and seperate cards.
Hmm, that's pretty decent for a BN system I'd select either of the video cards with 1GB of ram, although the ATi 5450 is probably the best choice at the moment. As for the difference between integrated & dedicated video, well the integrated is dependent on your system RAM for it's temp storage taking resources from the CPU & other bit of the system. Something which everyone agrees is a bad thing for gaming or heavy processing tasks.
Dedicated has it's own completely separate ram pool for its usage and lately has been of a faster type than what's currently being used for system ram (DDR5 v DDR3).
--Rod.H
