Upgrading to Fast TST

[SilentDragon]

My one-and-a-half year old system needs upgrading to play TS2 pretty much seamlessly, with no huge gaps in the middle. Here's my specs:

Pentium 4 2.50 GHz
196 MB of DDR RAM
SiS 650 32 MB
SigmaTel Audio

I boldified the two I know need upgrading, but I figure the other two are fine, and the processor easily exceeds minimum specs. To replace the SiS 650 I thought the Radeon Pro 9800 128 mb would be a good choice:
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.aspimodule=CTV9800PRO128MB&cat=Video+Card

Does anyone have this card? Does it work well with TS2? If anyone has any other suggestions around the £150 price range I'd be grateful.

I was thinking of adding 512 MB of DDR Ram... How do you find (without internet) the model your PC is? I need to know whats compatible with my iMedia, but I have no idea what model it is.

Thanks for any help I get! :)

[KatAnubis]

My one-and-a-half year old system needs upgrading to play TS2 pretty much seamlessly, with no huge gaps in the middle. Here's my specs:

Pentium 4 2.50 GHz
196 MB of DDR RAM
SiS 650 32 MB
SigmaTel Audio

I boldified the two I know need upgrading, but I figure the other two are fine, and the processor easily exceeds minimum specs. To replace the SiS 650 I thought the Radeon Pro 9800 128 mb would be a good choice:
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.aspimodule=CTV9800PRO128MB&cat=Video+Card

Does anyone have this card? Does it work well with TS2? If anyone has any other suggestions around the £150 price range I'd be grateful.

I was thinking of adding 512 MB of DDR Ram... How do you find (without internet) the model your PC is? I need to know whats compatible with my iMedia, but I have no idea what model it is.

Thanks for any help I get! :)

You definitely need a different video card and more RAM.

If you have WinXP, then make sure you have *at least* 512mb of RAM (of the fastest RAM that you computer can handle.)

And the Radeon 9800 Pro is what Maxis was using on their machines when they were developing TS2. (Since then, better cards have come out, such as the Geforce 6800.) So, it's a pretty good card and you know that if you have any problems that Maxis will have an easy time fixing them. (But to reassure you, I've not heard of many people who have complained about their game when they had the 9800. 9600 and x-900's yes, 9800 no problems.)

[Toast]

A sweet card that I just picked up that you might want to take a peek at is a GeForce 6600 GT. It's slightly less expensive than a 9800 pro ($200 compared to $240), and packs just as much punch. I'm running the 6600 GT with an AMD Athlon 64 2800 with 1 GB of RAM, and The Sims 2 runs flawlessly.

And when you are upgrading your memory, make sure to check your current RAM configuration. As far as I know, with an Intel based motherboard, RAM will only work in pairs. So, if you want 512 MB, you have to buy two 256 MB chips, and if you want 1 GB of RAM, you need two 512 MB chips. Can anyone else confirm or deny this? I'm not too sure any more because I've been using AMD sytems for so long.

[JohnEZ]

To find the kind of Ram that your PC needs, go to http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/index.asp . They have a scanner that should be able to tell you what kind of ram you need :)

If you don't want to order it from them, take it to a local computer store or chain like Best Buy and they should be able to help you. :)

[SilentDragon]

Thanks for the help everyone!

KatAnubis, thanks for the card info, I think I'll stick with it because of the safety value. Plus I'm assuming the Maxis testers weren't complaining about lagging :D

Toast, I think it used to be that way, but with SD and DDR RAM it doesn't matter any more. That's what I got from Crucial anyways. Thanks for the card suggestion, I'll have a look in the card peformance thingy and others to see how it scores.

JohnEZ, thanks for the link, it turns out I have two RAM slots and my computer can take a max of 2GB, 24 MB of RAM. I think I will shop with CRucial, I know they can be trusted and prices are cheaper than in shops. I can't go to BestBuy anyway though, I've never seen any in the UK ;)

Here's the RAM I've decided on:
http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/PartSpecs.asp?imodule=CT6464Z40B&cat=RAM

I'm putting in two sticks and taking the old one out, which should be enough RAM. Altogether (Card & RAM) it comes too:
£211, or about $420 in the US