Help Me My Sony Vaio Graphics Are REALLY BAD Okay. Please help Me. I have a Sony Vaio. Its about 2 and a half years old. Its the one that was made with a DVD-RW so i dobt think its that old. But anyways to my problem. The sims 2 is really slow on my Computer, And the graphics are really bad. I mean when ure in the neighborhood veiw. The water only has one color. and no reflection. And the graphics of the grass are REALLY BAD (like Mario 64 Bad) Even worse. The frame Rate is Terrible. And ive tried ajusting it too a higher level. But it doesnt help. The Objects look like crap. No detail at ALL. and the loading times are ridiculous. Please help me. Do i need a new graphics card? or... WHat do i do???? If you need my computer specs. Ill give them to you. Just tell me how to get them. Please Help Me!!!!!! oh and if i need a new graphics card. Please recomend one for me. And also. My computer is fast. I mean i just rebooted it 2 days ago. thanks Adam
First you ought to understand that rebooting your computer doesn't really make it faster, it just kind of clears the RAM of some of what it had so it will seem faster for a short time. As for whether you need a new graphics card, we need more information. System specs are necessary... Go to Start>Run and type "dxdiag" and strike enter. Two-thirds of the way down the window that appears, on the left side, will be "Processor" and "Memory." Tell us what is to the right of those two categories. After you are done with that, up at the top with all the tabs, there will be a "Display" category. Click that. On the left, in the upper left-hand corner will be "Device." In there, there will be stuff like Name, Manufacturer, etc. Please post the Name, Manufacturer, and chip type. Merry Christmas,
Processer - Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz, ~1.8GHz Memory - 512MB RAM Name - NVIDIA RIVA TNT Model 64 (Sony) Manufacurer - NVIDIA Chip Type - RIVA TNT2 Model 64 thats it. And also i read some posts about people upgrading their Video Cards? Do i need that too? Thanks Plz Rply ASAP
All right, that's the problem. Your video card is not that great... Yes, you ought to upgrade. However, seeing that I don't know whether your motherboard has PCI slots or AGP slots, I have no idea which one to recommend. If you only have PCI slots, the Radeon 9200 (for PCI) and nVidia GeForce 5200 (for PCI) are the best you can do, I believe. There's one higher for nVidia, I believe, but I think that one is difficult to find. If you have AGP slots, then the sky's almost the limit. But whichever you have, get the highest amount of video ram possible. As for how you discover which one you have... to be honest, I don't have the slightest idea. Sorry :( Good luck in your quest for better graphics. Hope you find something that works for you
I really have no idea how to find out whether you have AGP or not. Really, I'm certain that you have PCI slots in there, but you want to find out if you have an AGP slot. If you do have one, the AGP video cards really are better.... if not, the cards I mentioned are the only ones that are available to you. Sorry I could help more, good luck,
Comp.. a laptop? Is your Vaio a laptop (the only Vaio's I've seen are laptops)? If so it may be hard to upgrade. Laptops have severe issues with ventilation / heat and adding abeefier card without proper ventilation can burn out the card and your laptop. If it's a desktop get your manual out. Find where it talks about the current video card. If it says its AGP x (2,4,8, one of those) then you have AGP. It says the video is PCI or doesn't say then check the documentation on the motherboard. Look in the Upgrade Slots section, see if it lists a certain number of PCI slots and an AGP slot. If you did not get such documentation contact Vaio by phone and find out if there is an online manual or if they can tell you the specs over the phone. Sometime the manufacturer has such info online. If Vaio can tell you who made the motherboard you might be able to look up your product specs online. Finally, if your comp is a laptop upgrading it is no simple matter. You want an expereinced person to do it. The inside of a laptopn is cramped and can befuddle a desktop upgrade pro. What is a small slip up in the construction of a desktop machine can doom a laptop.
Holey mother, a TNT2! I used that card about 5 years ago. By early 2002, it was really showing its age and giving me single-digit framerates across the board, so I had to upgrade... I can't believe someone is still using the thing AGP or PCI: You probably have AGP, since your CPU looks to be relatively mid-high-end for its age, which implies at least a half-competent motherboard, and anything above the worst will have AGP. I myself had never heard of any recent AGP-less motherboards until these forums. They are very uncommon, in my experience.
Vaio makes desktops as well as notebooks. (See Vaio homepage: http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INT...tandalone.isml&page=static/lc/vaio/index.isml) If you do have a notebook, it's unlikely you will be able to upgrade the video card. Very few laptops/notebooks have that capability. It's one of the compromises on keeping them small and light weight: they use as many integrated components as possible. If you have a manual with the computer it may tell you. But if not and you have a desktop and it isn't still under warranty (unlikely with a TNT2), then you can use this website to figure out whether you have an AGP slot or not: http://www.crucial.com/kb/answer.asp?qid=3994 (Color of slot isn't as important as length. They say brown, but I've also seen them in black and my current computer's AGP slot is red.) As John said, the top available cards are the PCI Fx5200 and the PCI Radeon 9200. However, if you have an AGP slot then try for one which is Geforce FX 5600 or better, or Radeon 9600 or better. You also need to check to see how much power your power supply has. That's written in Watts (W). If you don't have at least a 350W (preferably above 400W) power supply, then you may be restricted on which cards you want to get too. The higher the number, the more likely it is to require more power. It will say on the video card box what the recommended wattage is for it. (You can tell from looking at the picture of the video card too. Basically if it has a built in fan, it's going to require a larger power supply.) Ah, the joys of computer upgrade.
The 5200 is a decent card, not the latest but... is it at least 128mb of ram? this game needs a supercomputer, and winXP is a ram hog just sitting at your desktop. people who play this are not generally PC gaming gurus who know how to get those fast framerates. You need to turn off all the crap running in the background of WinXP. I looked at one of my friends pc's and he had 59 proggys running in the background eating up his memory resources!! You need alot of ram, at least a gig. That 1.8 is getting a lil dated also. next time build a pc from newegg.com-just the basics=case with power supply, motherboard, ram, and a vid card, and use your old hard drive, and cd-rom. what manufacturers call minimum requirements is a joke. and what sony an them sell you is underpowered "pretty crap" no video card, very lil ram. you could also upgrade your ram (buy some more), that helps stave off a major upgrade too. its a stick goes in like the video card..very easy. just be sure to get the same kind. ie: ddr 333 ddr 400...whatever, and as many megabytes as you can, like a 512 stick-maybe 80 bucks
Fugitive, you don't seem to know that he wanted to upgrade his Sony Vaio. We gave him the advice appropriate for his specific needs (which was for a PCI card, not "the latest" which would be a PCI express or at least an AGP card, neither of which he could use.) TS2 doesn't really require a "super computer." It requires a midrange computer. I'm sure that when this person gets the funds for a new computer, he/she will research it and get one which is more upgradable. However, until then, they will be making do with what they have. Also, it's not a good idea to make comments on posts which are as old as this one was. It's now nearly half way through February and this thread is from early January.
