All you need to know, for a wizz PC

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/jan/30/build-a-gaming-pc-2013

here's how you do it, got the Mastercard ready????

Well, I'll just go and knock one up before I go to bed.............!

I think rather I'll just go to bed and knock one up LOL

PCPartPicker makes life easier, and /r/buildapc is a good resource for information.

Also, NEVER, EVER get a low quality/cheap power supply. It can destroy the rest of your expensive parts, and the savings of a low quality power supply are instantly offset by you having to buy a new system.

Are there any sites like these but in the U.S.? I'm looking to upgrade my laptop's RAM from 4GB to 8GB. And im also looking into upgrading the motherboard because I wanted to upgrade my graphics card but I found out that in order to do that, I would have to get a different motherboard.

buckysam wrote:Are there any sites like these but in the U.S.? I'm looking to upgrade my laptop's RAM from 4GB to 8GB. And im also looking into upgrading the motherboard because I wanted to upgrade my graphics card but I found out that in order to do that, I would have to get a different motherboard.

Main PCPartPicker, /r/buildapc is worldwide, Tom's Hardware's Buyer Guides. Also, you can't upgrade your laptop. Well, you can swap out the RAM and hard drive, but that's basically where it ends. Your graphics chip is soldered to your motherboard, laptop motherboards aren't sold seperately. AKA: build a desktop.

(yes, I am slowly becoming the hardware expert here)

Drag0nflamez wrote:

buckysam wrote:Are there any sites like these but in the U.S.? I'm looking to upgrade my laptop's RAM from 4GB to 8GB. And im also looking into upgrading the motherboard because I wanted to upgrade my graphics card but I found out that in order to do that, I would have to get a different motherboard.

Main PCPartPicker, /r/buildapc is worldwide, Tom's Hardware's Buyer Guides. Also, you can't upgrade your laptop. Well, you can swap out the RAM and hard drive, but that's basically where it ends. Your graphics chip is soldered to your motherboard, laptop motherboards aren't sold seperately. AKA: build a desktop.

(yes, I am slowly becoming the hardware expert here)

Well, when I originally wanted to upgrade my graphics card, I contacted HP and asked them what graphics cards would work with my laptop and they told me that if I wanted a new graphics card, I would have to get a new motherboard. They also said doing that would void my warranty, so if i upgrade it, i'm waiting until march when my laptop's warranty expires.

Laptops are notoriously difficult and costly to upgrade and it is often cheaper to replace the machine than to alter it. Unless there is a compelling reason why you have to have a laptop you are better off with a desk/tower machine as they are way more flexible to configure. That said, I have a Medion laptop which performs well with openBVE even though the performance rating figure (see post "How's Your PC?") is only half the rating of my HP dc7800. BVE framerates on either machine I find are broadly the same.

graymac wrote:Laptops are notoriously difficult and costly to upgrade and it is often cheaper to replace the machine than to alter it. Unless there is a compelling reason why you have to have a laptop you are better off with a desk/tower machine as they are way more flexible to configure. That said, I have a Medion laptop which performs well with openBVE even though the performance rating figure (see post "How's Your PC?") is only half the rating of my HP dc7800. BVE framerates on either machine I find are broadly the same.

Sorry this is really long, but please read all of it.

I really only have a laptop cause it was a birthday present, plus I wanted one, but one with much higher specs. The reason I'm wanting to upgrade my graphics card actually has nothing to do with openBVE. It runs perfectly fine. The reason is so I can play other games, specifically GTA 4, Train Simulator 2013, and several others, that I can only run at low to medium low settings and at that I can barley run them. But then there are other games that are about the same or much more CPU/GPU intensive and I can run those few games at medium high to high (FSX is a example, after I updated to SP1, my frame rates on it just shot up from around 15 to 40+. Everything is set around medium high to high settings with some thing set to custom.). It just seems like with some games, my computer is crappy, but then with other games, my computer is perfect. It still baffles me as to how this can be, although I might have a slight idea. I think one reason is some games use more dedicated graphics memory (GTA 4 is a good example), which my card has 512MB, i think. And some use more RAM instead of dedicated graphics memory. The thing is I wish there was a way to increase the dedicated graphics memory. It's not that my graphics card itself doesn't have a whole lot of memory, because it really does have quite a bit, 3GB of graphics memory, combined with 4GB (3.86GB usable) of RAM and two (count them) AMD A4 duel core processors. I think this should be plenty enough to run all games at medium high to high at least. If only there was a way to like force the system to pull either additional memory from the graphics card or to pull memory from RAM, my computer would be perfect. I'm not at home at the moment but when I get home and get the chance, I'll post my specs if anyone wants to see.

The AMD A4 is fairly low end, and has an HD6480 on the chip. I'm not sure how the whole APU thing works. (I should, a lot of people have this thing called Intel HD Graphics which effectively makes the processor an APU), my CPU is actually an APU (Intel Core i5-3450) which my chipset doesn't like.

The reason why HP mentioned replacing your mobo has nothing to do with PCI Express slots. It likely has something to do with the fact that your motherboard is designed for something in the direction of socket FM1/FM2, which may or may not have been soldered(!) to your motherboard. Also, notebook CPU's. Large OEM's tend to screw over the customer. (this doesn't happen in the corporate market, so in case anyone wants to buy a decent laptop for not-so-intensive work, get a corporate one, they are way more decent, only thing that tends to be less good is the GPU, which is sort of obvious). So the preferred solution is to build a desktop yourself, it's not that hard, it's like a big box of Lego, the only difference is that it's slightly more expensive stuff. (more benefits include quality control, large OEM's on the customer side also tend to use very el cheapo parts while selling it for a ripoff price). Not that expensive to build one though, I can even select the parts for you if you provide me with a budget.

Drag0nflamez wrote:The AMD A4 is fairly low end, and has an HD6480 on the chip. I'm not sure how the whole APU thing works. (I should, a lot of people have this thing called Intel HD Graphics which effectively makes the processor an APU), my CPU is actually an APU (Intel Core i5-3450) which my chipset doesn't like.

The reason why HP mentioned replacing your mobo has nothing to do with PCI Express slots. It likely has something to do with the fact that your motherboard is designed for something in the direction of socket FM1/FM2, which may or may not have been soldered(!) to your motherboard. Also, notebook CPU's. Large OEM's tend to screw over the customer. (this doesn't happen in the corporate market, so in case anyone wants to buy a decent laptop for not-so-intensive work, get a corporate one, they are way more decent, only thing that tends to be less good is the GPU, which is sort of obvious). So the preferred solution is to build a desktop yourself, it's not that hard, it's like a big box of Lego, the only difference is that it's slightly more expensive stuff. (more benefits include quality control, large OEM's on the customer side also tend to use very el cheapo parts while selling it for a ripoff price). Not that expensive to build one though, I can even select the parts for you if you provide me with a budget.

Well, that's the thing. I have no money. But I happen to have access to an old Dell desktop machine with XP, but you can't use it for games because it's just a piece of crap. It's only good for playing solitaire. But, it makes a great paperweight! I have actually thought of getting it and just taking out the old parts and replacing them for new parts, such as new RAM, new graphics card and processor, new motherboard (depends on the condition of the original), new power supply, new fan and cooling unit, new front cover (cause the original is taped on), windows 7/8 os to install, and whatever else needs to be replaced. But one thing's certain, I will defiantly not be doing this any time soon, seeing as I have no job, no money, no car (of my own),and I need money for a car and a PS3 (for GTA5) and a code to buy Minecraft (I own it but I don't exactly own it if you know what I mean) and RAM (and possibly a new motherboard) for my laptop, and whatever else. So i ain't doin it anytime in the next possibly 5 years or so. Hopefully less, but I defiantly ain't counting on it for sure.

buckysam wrote:...and I need money for a car...

Oh thanks heavens I live in the Old World... Don't even have a driver's license and don't really know what I'd need one for
*SCNR*

Laptop graphics are very often behaving in a seemingly irrational way. It's perfectly normal however: Laptop GPUs don't implement the whole OpenGL and the whole DirectX specifications, they only implement the most used functions in the most common versions. That's why games based on old DirectX run decently on a 15 years old desktop while stuttering on a current standard laptop; and that's also why on one and the same GPU some current games can run very decently why others don't at all although they seem to have similarily sophisticated graphics and run similarily smooth on desktops.

Laptop graphics... driver hell, especially with AMD (AMD trusts laptop manufacturers to update their drivers, which in reality doesn't happen at all requiring people to get either a full version or a hacked version of the drivers...

Quork wrote:

buckysam wrote:...and I need money for a car...

Oh thanks heavens I live in the Old World... Don't even have a driver's license and don't really know what I'd need one for
*SCNR*

Laptop graphics are very often behaving in a seemingly irrational way. It's perfectly normal however: Laptop GPUs don't implement the whole OpenGL and the whole DirectX specifications, they only implement the most used functions in the most common versions. That's why games based on old DirectX run decently on a 15 years old desktop while stuttering on a current standard laptop; and that's also why on one and the same GPU some current games can run very decently why others don't at all although they seem to have similarily sophisticated graphics and run similarily smooth on desktops.

Ok. i sort of understand.

Drag0nflamez wrote:Laptop graphics... driver hell, especially with AMD (AMD trusts laptop manufacturers to update their drivers, which in reality doesn't happen at all requiring people to get either a full version or a hacked version of the drivers...

Now I don't understand.

Dex, that's not an issue of the processor, which has rather very good ratings. That's an issue of the software. It's the software's job to distribute load evenly, that's not even automatically done with multithreading, it's taking multithreading a step further. And it's the OS's job to distribute whole processes evenly. Sometimes an OS will force a process to be divided onto several cores although it isn't design to - you'll notice that in Process Explorer (or any other sufficiently advanced task manager) by seeing that while the process produces load on all CPU cores, it still won't get higher than 50% (25%) of sum CPU load on a dual core (quad core) CPU, because it won't do things simultaneously - they are done one after the other, even if on different CPU cores.

Dexter wrote:

Hm, as for Quad-core CPU, I definitely would NOT recommend Intel i5. Forgive for being honest, but that processor is a piece of crap - I have it at work, and my home core2Duo handles comparably at significantly lower price... the thing is core i5 has really weird load distribution - at work core no. 4 works like crazy and the other three are going at 5%.

Also, C2D's are available, but nowadays not worth the money. The i7 is only useful when you do things like raytracing or use some form of CAD software (although with CAD you'd tend to move towards Xeons)

EDIT: must make clear that they are still available, but only if you manage to find a store which hasn't sold them all yet. Some even sell the Pentium 4 Prescott, notoriously known as The Heater.