(anyone who saw my temporary test message - that's just because I wasn't sure if I remembered my password and didn't want to type a long post)
Basically, I'm looking for help optimizing my PC. It's about four years old, has a 350 MHz Pentium II processor, 128MB of RAM, and a 16MB Voodoo Banshee (I think - I had a lot of trouble reinstalling the drivers when I formatted my hard disk last year). Lately, it's been running games (game demos more so than full games) which require similar, or slightly lower, stats poorly or not at all. And now I hear tales of people running NWN smoothly on low-end machines - what am I doing wrong?

[This message has been edited by Ironbeard (edited June 25, 2002).]

1. You hear stories of people who manage to run NWN on machines with CPUs lower than recommended - and that's about it. Sure, running the game is possible, but crawling would be a batter term. You can run a game on a CPU lower than recommended, but it'll keep slowing down in larger areas and sometimes freezing completely, especially if any large battles happen.

2. With a Voodoo card you won't be able to run practically any new games, since the Voodoo cards have been abandoned years ago, no new drivers for them are being made and no gaming companies bother to include support for them today, since they know Voodoo is DEAD.

3. Buy a faster CPU (Durons are very cheap, but good), extra 128MB RAM and any GeForce card from GeForce 2 MX up any you'll be able to run any games on the market today. (You'll also need a new motherboard for this, though.)

And the game suddenly became a bit more expensive :D.

This isn't a lot of help but might give you some food for thought. By the time you've added a new motherboard, memory, graphic card and processor, it is often as cheap or cheaper to buy a new PC. That way you can also be sure it will (should) work together and you get a better gurantee. If I remember correctly though, you're studying at the moment so money will be very tight. The food for thought is that sometimes your Univeristy computer department might have a deal for cheaper PCs from a major supplier so ask them what's available. Also in a few months time the Master Students will be finishing and heading home. If you are at a place where there is a high number of foriegn students, they sell their PCs cheap as they can't take them with them.

Alternatively you could always do what I did and win a new PC in a competiton :rolling:

If you want to get an idea of prices, take a look here:
http://www.dabs.com/home.asp for components and some systems
http://www.insight.com/uk/index.php ditto
http://www.meshplc.co.uk/ for systems
http://www.evesham.com/ ditto
http://www.pcworld.co.uk for convinience

To get the most out of your old PC you could also uninstall all the rubbish you don't use now and reformat it if you haven't for a while.

Or you could just tweak your little puter. Worked fine for me --> www.tweak3d.net (http://www.tweak3d.net)

Here is a great site for finding computer parts for as little as possible. www.pricewatch.com (http://www.pricewatch.com)

1. CPU - buy whatever you want as long as it's new and in your nearby store. In not-online stores you won't find old chips. One thing, if you choose to buy AMD's CPU, do buy additional cooler. These things are faster and cheaper than Intel's, but are overheating.

2. GFX card - I advise you to go for at least GeForce 3 (recommended for Sea Dogs 2 this very year, logically it tends to be minimum next year).

3. RAM - if you're running Win98, no need to upgrade that, believe me. WinME and later will definetly need 128Mb more, as Tal said.

4. Sound - if you don't plan to make your home a music studio, I don't see why would you buy that. Use on-board chip from your motherboard. This thing is totally cheap, but you surely won't have problems with it. Oh, one thing, on-board soundchips don't have EAX. But then again, Bioware's engines are not very friendly with EAX.

5. Other - loadsa, loadsa new games. The true value of your "upgraded" PC will be how many hours you'll sit in front of it, right? ;)

Just wanted to add one thing Extremist

Whenever you buy a new CPU, espescially if it's been a long time since you changed your computer, you will have to buy a new mainboard that supports your CPU manufacturer and it's speed.

Also don't think that you shouldn't get an AMD CPU because they tend to generate more heat than Intel's, because they are made to withstand more heat than the Intel CPU's.

Just make sure you buy a heatsink and a cooler that is specially made for your CPU and you shouldn't have a problem. If you do get problems with heat just buy a cabinet fan and you should be good to go.

I recomend the AMD's because they give good performance for less money than Intel. They tend to be sligthly less stable than Intel, but it's no problem....(I use an AMD and run games like Morrowind on the best settings with no problems with overheating or any other problems, good cooling is the key)

On your new mainboard you'll have DDR RAM probably, so 256 should keep you in the clear for a long time.