Requesting Gaming System Platform Advice

[Chrome]

Hi all!

To preface, I'm not very ?tech? oriented, so I need a little advice and direction please.


Here's what I have:

Dell Dimension 4600
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim4600/en/4600i/sm/specs.htm

If I remember correctly, the Dell is about six years old.  I have been running the machine pretty much stock with a 4+ year old Radeon X1300 PRO 256M video card.  Standard Dell memory was 512, and the power supply is 250w.  When I first started Entropia a couple years ago, this seemed to work OK... not great, but OK.

A couple weeks ago I finally uploaded the V10 as I had been out of the game for several months.  In order to meet the ?new? minimum game requirements, I had to purchase two 1G memory cards to upgrade the available onboard memory.  Again, Entropia worked OK with no loss of graphic images on ?medium? setting. (in fact, my coat looked SWEET!!!) 

Unfortunately, after the last patch everything has ?grayed out?, with complete loss of clothing, weapon,  tool, and furniture detail.  I have no idea why my video card was able to work a few weeks ago and not now (it works fine on another game), but I started to look into a video card upgrade as my card is obviously older.  I think the X1300 PRO card runs somewhere around 12GB/s, here is the ATI comparison chart:
http://www.techarp.com/article/Desktop_GPU_Comparison/ati_4_big.png

The challenge is that according to my computer specs, I don't have a PCI Express slot, which means I would have to upgrade to an AGP card.  The only AGP card available at my local BestBuy is a Radeon HD 3650, which would ?only? double my rate to about 25GB/s.  According to the Entropia system recommendations, for high end performance I should be around the 80-100 GB/s range?!?!?

Anyways, upgrading to another AGP card and new power system to handle the new card will run a couple hundred dollars, I'm wondering if it would just be better to put that money toward a completely brand new platform with PCIE capabilities.

Any recommendations for a reasonably priced total gaming platform (no monitor or speakers, just a tower with an operating system) that will last me 3-6 years down the road?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

[admin]

If you have an operating system that you can install yourself, look for a barebones kit on tigerdirect.com or newegg.com or a similar site. It is usually cheapest to build them yourself. You already have the RAM, mouse, keyboard, monitor, etc. so all you really would need is a case, motherboard, CPU, power supply, and gfx card. (The case may also be optional if you can get a motherboard and power supply to fit your current case.)

They also have AGP cards available on those sites, you may be able to find a better card for a better price there. I really would recommend going ahead with the upgrade though, they aren't really building mainboards with AGP slots too much anymore, and I fear it won't be too much longer before the cards become really difficult to find.

Either way you go though, you're going to need a more powerful PS than the one you have for a machine capable of running EU. 250w is not much juice. Things tend to run a little hot when you don't have enough juice, and all it takes is a little heat to kill components in your machine.

If you want a new system and don't have an OS, that will be another thing needed. If you really can't afford an OS, there are actually free ones out there, although you have to take the time to learn to run them (a bit different from Windows.) A somewhat easy one you can try to play with is Ubuntu. It can be downloaded and you can burn the image onto a CD to create an installation disk here: http://www.ubuntu.com/ If you don't like Ubuntu, there is also Fedora: http://fedoraproject.org/ and if you run a google search, there are many more out there. 

[Chrome]

Well, some GOOD news about my graphics issues...
Seems MA was to blame.

With a little help from "Rotrap" on Entropia Forum, I was able to replace two corrupt files downloaded directly by MA during the last patch on the client loader.  One of them was a texture file (no wonder I wasn;t able to see textures), and now things seem to be significantly better... although I am still having a strange glitch where I am unable to see some textures and colors on certain items on auction.

My old, antiquated graphics card is once again able to handle the graphics in Entropia on a nice, moderate setting.   

[admin]

Which files were they?

[Chrome]

Which files were they?

CRC mismatch bin32\stlport.5.1.dll (1564710019)
CRC mismatch data\client\shared\item\textures.pak (2320405019)

[kedarwarriner]

EU will run on Ubuntu???
I didn't know that!  I have a box running Ubuntu. 
Maybe I should try it out...

[admin]

You'll probably have to do a bit of finaggling to get it to run, but just about anything can be run on linux systems.

[kedarwarriner]

I'm not sure if this is the right thread or not, but i have a graphics issue.  Everything seems to be normal and run quite smoothly when I have things on low.  Medium is a bit much but low is acceptable for me.  However, the one thing that bugs me is that all my items are shown as a red X.  I'll attach a screenshot when I log in. 

My entire inventory is just a series of red X's and I have to hover my mouse over each one to see what it is.  Also when I equip a weapon, it shows the ammo icon as a red X.   The only time I don't see a red X is when I click on Item Info and it shows a rotating image of the item.

I've tried playing with all the various graphics settings and thing improve and slow down as I up the settings, but my items are always red Xs.  Makes trading a bitch!  Any suggestions? 

HELP!

[kedarwarriner]

Here's a screenie so you can see what I mean

[Chrome]

I'd suggest running the client check, it will repair any corrupt files you may have received during a recent update download.

It is in the top left corner of the client loader login screen, click "FILE", and click "Repair Installation" in the dropdown menu.

Let me know if that works.

[kedarwarriner]

Thanks, I'm not used to that feature yet.  It actually went a little further than last time I used it.
It found unexpected files, which it removed.  It also fount a texture file with a bad CRC and it
offered to update it.  I logged in, but I still get exactly the same thing.  Maybe my graphics card?

[Chrome]

Hmmm... do you have the ingame settings cranked up all the way?

Mine are all on low with the exception of draw distance (high) and textures (medium).

[kedarwarriner]

Cranked up??  Are you kidding??

No,l I've got everything on low except for avatar quality and texture (I think) which are on medium.

[admin]

Heh, that happened to me before too, but it fixed itself. It looks like it can't find the graphics files that it is searching for... or perhaps it just can't find them fast enough. If it keeps up, I'd just try a re-install.

[kedarwarriner]

Woo Hoo!  Re-installing worked.  Go figure!