Why do games not run on Celerons?

[Pim]

Can anyone maybe tell me why games like unreal tournament 2003 and unreal 2 and all games of that kind won't work on a celeron?
I'm thinking about upgrading it with an old pentium 4 or a pentium 3 or maybe
buy a AMD motherboard and cpu.
Maybe someone can help me selecting the right parts.

ps:I'm 15 and havent got that much money.

Thanks

[STP72]

Because it is lacking a math processor

The AMD's are designed for running fast application for a fraction of the price of a Intel chip.

Please don't double post. Use the edit button - Daniweb Mods

[Coconut Monkey]

It should run them fine, provided you don't have some sub-1Ghz model (then you're just lacking general grunt - it would be a similar story for any other CPU in that range). STP72, maths co-processors being sold separately went out in the days of the 486! ;)

What computer do you have exactly? Specifications please!

[belama]

Also dont forget that it is not only the cpu that is important for games. You need a good amount of RAM, I wouldnt recommend less than 512mb but the most important thing is the Video Card. Like coconut said, you should tell us what your PC has as hardware (video card, CPU, RAM, and motherboard).

[Pim]

Well i've got a 2ghz celeron (128kb cache). An ASRock M266A motherboard
with socket 478. 1x 265mb memory module. 40 gb i think 7200 rpm harddisk (ata 133 i've got no idea what this means. A AOpen MX440 Geforce 4 with 64 mb's of DDR Ram
and a 250 mhz GPU.(The video card provides AGP 8x but my motherboard only
supports 4x).

And thats about it. But the strange thing is GTA 3 and Vice City work fine.
Only in high detail and high resolutions they start swapping and that sort of thing.

[Catweazle]

2 things you could add to that system to make it a bit better Pim. A better display card for starters. Another 256Mb of RAM to follow up. That should improve your gaming quite a bit. It won't make your system a great one for gaming, but it can certainly be better.

[belama]

Yep the video card is extremely far from being acceptable for gaming. Horrible!!! For less than 50$ you could get a better card than this.

[Pim]

Well i've just formatted my harddisk and installed ME because win98 was complaining quite a bit about the wireless internet connection..
so guess thats not it. But i found that Command and Conquer:Generals didn't
work very well either.

maybe buy new motherboard+processor? (AMD)

[Pim]

Well the minimum video card required for UT 2003 needs at least 16mb's of ram so with 64 i'd expect acceptable performance with 4x that...

[belama]

Command and Conquer:Generals doesnt run very well with a radeon 9000 128mb so there is no surprise the MX440 wont run it well. Dont expect too much out of your video card. If you think of getting an upgrade, tell us your budget and what you would change, if you can build it yourself that is. You could get a reasonably capable system by purchasing a barebone kit and video card both for about 500$us (a barebone has the case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, RAM, sometimes keyboard and mouse. You then add you own hard drive, cd roms etc).

edit:

Well the minimum video card required for UT 2003 needs at least 16mb's of ram so with 64 i'd expect acceptable performance with 4x that...

:!: You cant base a card performance just on the RAM. It has multiple other things to take in consideration.

[Catweazle]

The amount of RAM on the card means very little. It's the power of the graphics processor on the card that makes the difference.

[Pim]

K thanks for the advice. I would like to trie if there is nothing that doesn't work as it should in my system. Do you know any program which tests CPU
RAM video and motherboard? I mean a program which really tortures it.
(by the way i live in europe so PC's and components are a bit more expensive here)

[Coconut Monkey]

I call a halt to this thread!

Regardless of all the upgrade advice, the fact is that games that should run fine are not actually working. At all. We should be troubleshooting that first. ;)

Pim, what happens exactly when you try to run, say, UT2003 or Unreal 2?

[belama]

Where in Europe? Do you use Euros as currency or do you live in UK?

And maybe he should tell us how high he set the graphics properties.

[Pim]

Well when i start it it works fine, ok it takes a bit long to load but it works.
then i check settings which automaticly are set to give resonable performance (at least they should) but i turn them down. like res set to 640x480 and 16 bit
detail low ect. Then i run botmatch with 4 bots on dm-antalus (its not the largest map in the game). When i walk around it works a bit laggy and when
some action happens, it gets difficult to get a good aim.

i live in Holland and i pay with Euro's.

[belama]

Hmm... The card's frequencies are low (270mhz core/400mhz memory). While I think it is normal to experience some lag, at low graphics you shouldn't get too much lag. I am personnally not sure how to stop the lagging without an upgrade. You already formatted your hard drive so your system should be clean. Just make sure your card's drivers are installed.

[Pim]

Well this is about what you can get for 50 euro's here.

AOpen
Type : Aeolus FX5200-DV128
Brand chipset : NVIDIA
Graphical engine : GeForce FX 5200
Memory: 128 MB
Engine speed : 250 MHz
Memory speed: 333 MHz
RAMDAC : 350 MHz
AGP 8X

or can i get this kind of stuff a lot cheaper from america? (with free shipping)

[Catweazle]

Not much better than the GF4MX, to tell the truth.

Have you any background programs running while you're trying to run games? Has the hard drive been cleaned of temporary files and defragged? Is youe windows installation in good order? Have the display drivers been updated?

Like Coconut Monkey has said, that system does not seem to be running as well as it should be.

[belama]

In US dollars the card I would suggest would be around 150$ to 200$ which is worth about 125euros to 165euros. So no wonder 50euros gets you nowhere!!!!!!

And by the way, did you format your pc or just installed windows right over your other installation like an uograde or something?

[Pim]

No first format C: with boot floppy and then clean install ME.

I've put in a heavy dutie video card (took it from another pc).
AGP 8x
265mb of ddr ram@378 mhz
GPU 400 mhz
Creative ATI Radion 9600

It has better performance now but i think combo of motherboard and cpu is
the problem of this.

I've run a benchmark program on it as well
with the old video card it crashed with 3d tests
with new one it works.

I've put the old one in another pc and on that one the benchmark runs so
i really think something's wrong with my motherboard.

I'm thinking about buying an upgrade set:
- AMD Sempron 2500+
- Asrock K7S41GX
- 512 MB DDR-SDRAM

for 159 euro's
but does a sempron run games?