I recently bought a new desktop, and it's not quite functioning the way I'd hoped. League of Legends, for example, slows down drastically if I so much as turn on shadows. Everything else I can crank up, but shadows are a no.
Other processes slow down if WoW has its graphics above halfway.TF2 also gets a little choppy at times.Here are the specs:1 TB Hard Disk Space6 GB RAMAMD Phenom 6-core, 3.2 GHzWindows 7 Home Premium 6-bitVideo: ATI Radeon HD 5450The processor and RAM are great, so I'm going to assume the problem is in the video card. I can't seem to find the amount of video RAM, but this plays almost as bad as an onboard card. Any recommendations for decent video cards? Cost isn't much of an issue right now. The only thing I don't want is Crossfire/SLI, just because they aren't necessary.Oh, here's another thing. I'm trying to set up a virtual machine to play an older game called Creatures 2. Microsoft VirtualPC is free, but doesn't support Windows 7 Home Premium, just versions above it. I'm trying VMWare Player now (have to find an XP installation now), but if anyone knows anything regarding it, feel free to share.Thanks in advance.
Not sure. I know when I run it, there's some stuff about Adobe AIR, but I'm not really sure what that does, let alone if League of Legends runs on it. Still, the problem isn't with LoL alone.
EDIT: I think this video card has 512 MB of video RAM.DOUBLEEDIT: Just discovered that this is one of the lower-end graphics cards of its type. Still open to suggestions.Yeah, that's to be expected with the 5450, it's just not a gaming card.
What sort of PSU do you have? If this is a prebuilt it probably doesn't have much headroom, but if you bought a decent PSU you should have plenty of room for expansion. My GTS 450 was very cheap and performs well enough for my needs (And if your needs are LoL, WoW, and TF2, then it'll more than do you), if you want to play recent games at 1920x1200 you'll probably want the card above - the 460. If you want to max out metro 2033 in 3D, well, the GTX 590 is coming out in a few days, if you have far more money than sense and have a small planet you need to raise above freezing.As for your VM issue, both VMWare and VirtualBox do, I believe, support graphics hardware acceleration for windows clients, so either or.The 5450 is just not a gaming card. You'd want a 5770 or better, in terms of AMD cards, or as PY suggested an nVidia GTS450.
At under $150, both of those are fairly cheap cards, I'd say. But I forget. Would sticking with an AMD card be wiser, since the processor is also AMD? Or does it really matter between video cards and processors?
"have a small planet you need to raise above freezing."
That's an interesting approach to terraforming.I still double-take every time somebody mentions AMD graphics cards.
In any case, there's no advantage or disadvantage to using a particular brand of processor with your card, so either will do. Just take a look at some benchmarks, see what prices you can get, and then figure out what's best value - but do make absolutely certain your PSU can pull in enough power.I understand AMD graphics cards aren't the best, but they are cheap. Though I did say cost wouldn't be too much of an issue. Maybe NVidia would be a good investment.
I actually like AMD graphics. ATI is dead now right?
AMD cards are fine, sometimes they have the edge, sometimes nVidia have the edge. nVidia is the way to go if you want GPU-powered physics, and they currently offer the best 3D, but at midrange neither of those are going to be serious concerns. Basically, though, any gaming card from the last few generations should have more than enough power for you.
You mean the option for Nvidia PhysX right? I don't think it's worth paying extra for. And very few games make complete use of it.