TRON.dll Wrote:Alright, I checked out Microcenter's website and found some systems. Please tell me if the pricing is fair on each of them and weather or not it can play Portal out of the box: ThinkCentre A61 9120-AAU OS: XP Professional Processor: 2.3 GHz RAM: 1024 MB Hard Drive: 160 GB Video: ATi Radeon X1250 Video Chipset Price: $530

Much better than what you've got..

TRON.dll Wrote: Aspire AM1640-U1401A OS: Vista Home Premium Processor: 1.8 GHz RAM: 1024 MB Hard Drive: 260GB Video: NVIDIA GeForce 7050 Video Chipset Price: $300

this could be problematic. See if the ppl in the store will check the ram for compatibility. I'm not sure this is a good Idea, this video chipset was blacked out on nvidia's site. Before you buy this make the company open the machine and inspect the RAM to see if it's compatible, and maybe figure out why there is missing information on nvidia's site for this youself, I'd get a big hammer too, so you can save yourself some trouble.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/mcp_intel_memory.htmlhttp://www.nvidia.com/page/technology_vista_home.html
Integrated graphics are trash IMO. make sure the MOBO comes w/ a PCI slot, buy an upgrade and disable it when you have an opportunity. Integrated graphics use system RAM in most instances. I'd be hesitant... but it's fine if it will get you by for a while.

Yey. Posting from my new Acer Aspire PC. So this is what it's like to post from a working computer.

Time to think with portals!

Qix77 Wrote:Awesome.... I hope you have a good time with it. Must be a wild experience for you switching from a 500+mhz machine to what you have now..

Yeah, I'm still getting used to it, lol.

-I keep thinking the computer's off because I can't hear it (it's really quiet).
-Internet Explorer actually starts when I click the icon.
-The Black (vista) taskbar is quite different than the blue one.

Tommorow, I'm gonna try DEFCON and TRON 2.0. I'm really crossing my fingers with TRON 2.0, as I did get the 64 bit version of Vista (with Service Pack 1). I actually haven't had any errors yet, and if TRON 2.0 does work, I won't have any reason to switch to XP. The employee at the store told me that Service Pack 1 did fix almost all of the problems with 64 bit Vista.

Also, Portal runs marvolously on default settings.

"The enrichment center is required to alert test subjects of dangerous life-threatening situations. For example, the floor here will kill you, try to stay away from it."

Many thanks to all who helped me out!