Martacus
World's Greatest Warrior
Well, my recent purchase of Pirates! has brought me to a decision that I have been dreading for some time: that I will have to upgrade my computer. 
My current rig:
AMD Athlon 1800 (1.5GHz)
Abit K7 something motherboard
Creative Soundblaster Live
ATI Radeon 9000
256 MB DDR 2100 RAM
2 Seagate 40MB Hard drives (I really don't use a lot of space); RAID 1 array
Zip 250 drive
3.5" floppy drive
CD-ROM drive
CD-RW drive
Plus a 19" monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard, scanner, printer--basic peripherals. Running Windows 98SE, this rig has served me well and almost flawlessly from the day I put it together (the few minor problems I have encountered were all easily fixed), for all tasks I have demanded of it. And no, there is no modem or network card, as I don't have any access or need thereof at home.
But Pirates!, and doubtless Civ 4 when it is released, seems to be giving me problems which I think is likely beyond the help of a simple patch or driver download. It plays the intro movie just fine, but as soon as that ends and the game begins proper, it locks up my computer. I get sound, but no video, controls or anything; my keyboard and mouse soon start clicking over the PC speaker and I have to do a hard reset. My suspicion is that my video card does not support DirectX 9.0c; I could be wrong, though.
But in ny event, this situation has brought to mind the need for me to upgrade or even replace my current system. The problem is, I haven't kept up with developments in hardware since I finsihed my computer. My Internet experience is pretty well limited to message boards and E-mail; all stuff I can do from a library. I don't really know about IEEE 1394, or even if I'd use it if I did know, or about a myriad of other new terms which confuse and frighten this poor caveman. I wish to keep modems/networking out of my system if possible; keep it simple in other words. I just want to be able to play my games and do my work.
So anyways, I must be going, but I would like to ask what sort of stuff to look for. I plan on keeping my monitor, speakers, case, and the like, but I would like to know what's out there in terms of necessary hardware nowadays, and how much I can expect to pay for it. And whether I should upgrade to XP or wait for whatever Macrosoft has waiting in the pipeline to replace it(though I can get XP cheaply enough, being a student at a major university)--most of my games are older and I know that XP has some issues with a lot of older games.
My current rig:
AMD Athlon 1800 (1.5GHz)
Abit K7 something motherboard
Creative Soundblaster Live
ATI Radeon 9000
256 MB DDR 2100 RAM
2 Seagate 40MB Hard drives (I really don't use a lot of space); RAID 1 array
Zip 250 drive
3.5" floppy drive
CD-ROM drive
CD-RW drive
Plus a 19" monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard, scanner, printer--basic peripherals. Running Windows 98SE, this rig has served me well and almost flawlessly from the day I put it together (the few minor problems I have encountered were all easily fixed), for all tasks I have demanded of it. And no, there is no modem or network card, as I don't have any access or need thereof at home.
But Pirates!, and doubtless Civ 4 when it is released, seems to be giving me problems which I think is likely beyond the help of a simple patch or driver download. It plays the intro movie just fine, but as soon as that ends and the game begins proper, it locks up my computer. I get sound, but no video, controls or anything; my keyboard and mouse soon start clicking over the PC speaker and I have to do a hard reset. My suspicion is that my video card does not support DirectX 9.0c; I could be wrong, though.
But in ny event, this situation has brought to mind the need for me to upgrade or even replace my current system. The problem is, I haven't kept up with developments in hardware since I finsihed my computer. My Internet experience is pretty well limited to message boards and E-mail; all stuff I can do from a library. I don't really know about IEEE 1394, or even if I'd use it if I did know, or about a myriad of other new terms which confuse and frighten this poor caveman. I wish to keep modems/networking out of my system if possible; keep it simple in other words. I just want to be able to play my games and do my work.
So anyways, I must be going, but I would like to ask what sort of stuff to look for. I plan on keeping my monitor, speakers, case, and the like, but I would like to know what's out there in terms of necessary hardware nowadays, and how much I can expect to pay for it. And whether I should upgrade to XP or wait for whatever Macrosoft has waiting in the pipeline to replace it(though I can get XP cheaply enough, being a student at a major university)--most of my games are older and I know that XP has some issues with a lot of older games.
