Wow. Thanks again, guys. You are all really helpfull. I so appreciate this.
I forwarded the website and directions to her, and she says that crucial.com tells her she already has maxed out her RAM, but she does have a PCI-E slot.
So, basically she's going to be stuck with 512MB RAM if that is a concern for this, and I'm not sure she'll be comfortable with replacing the CPU if either of those will bottleneck performance.
Given that, should I go with the 7300 GT, 7600 GS, or 7900 GT? I guess I can't really tell the difference beyond price, but I do want her to be able to just play the games how they were intended....thanks again for this final answer, I will just go with whichever of these you all think is best. :)
Thanks for all the advice, guys. I really appreciate this help.
It seems the most popular recommendation is the 7600 GS or 7900 GT, which both seem ok in price. I was basically hoping to be under $200.
I really don't know about the RAM. It is a Sony VAIO computer that she says has "PCV 7732" on the back, although looking that up on the web doesn't seem to yield many results. I'm not sure if it will be able to take more than the 512MBs it has?
I also do not really understand what PCI-E is...how would she go about finding this out? All of the links I could find involve opening up the computer, and even then I don't quite understand what people are saying to look for...is there an easier way? I would need it to be in very simple terms that could be communicated over a phone line or email to someone who is very computer illiterate..(ie - I had to explain to her how to find the "info" tab to see what kind of processor/RAM she had in the first place).
My...all of this stuff is very overwhelming.
Oh, and both my sister and I are in the US. Online stores are all fine too.
My sister really wants a video card to play some computer games for her birthday, but I've been a console gamer for so long that I really can't make heads or tails out of any of the things I try to read. There's just too many different cards, and I have no idea what's really good because I can't even understand the feature lists...
I asked her what types of games she is interested in playing, and she named The Sims2 and Half-Life 2, which I know aren't exactly new games, but aren't exactly ancient either.
Anyways, what I am looking for is something that will let her run these two games nicely, but is also somewhat affordable. In other words, I don't really need the bleeding-edge of technology if I can avoid it, but I would like for her to be able to use "high" settings and everything when she plays.
Any help is very much appreciated, and I'm sorry that the topic probably seems so rudimentary to most of you.
Her computer has a 1.79Ghz Pentium 4 processor with 512 MB of Ram, btw. That should be enough, right?
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