“Need For Speed: Undercover” You know, I’m a big fan of street racing games. But then again, I want to explain on why we should follow the recommended system requirements even though they can play well on your PC at a low resolution or whatever…

 

Alright folks! It’s been a long time. No posting and nothing. Although I forgot why I made this blog, it’s because I wanna show you something on what I discovered. Err… Forget the PS3 and the XBOX 360. Nothing’s good on anymore since there a lotta hackers trying to take piracy in. Unfortunately, PC piracy sales are eventually decreasing since games are getting more and more secured and unhackable (err… GTA 4 Liberty City?).

Anyways, so yeah. I have this PC for 5 years. Except the videocard has been changed due to overheating. So, there are games that can run with this videocard but it gives some crappy stuff.

The videocard I will be taking example in is the GeForce FX 5500. Yeah, it has a 256 MB memory and its shader is 2.0.

If you wanted to know my computer specs, here they are:

  • Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (478 typo)
  • Intel motherboard (not going to state the kind)
  • some 2 pcs of 512 MB DDR 400 RAM (err… memory)
  • a GeForce FX 5500
  • and some hard drives (filled with all the crap you could ever imagine. No porn in it.)

With those specs, I can play games that were published from the past until 2007 or 2008. The last game I played well on it (with a few crashes) is Need For Speed Carbon.

Well, am not really much into gaming but let me share you a little intelligence on why we should follow system requirements.

A while ago, I borrowed a pirated copy of Need For Speed Undercover (yeah, just in case before buying a legitimate copy somewhere. Could be online) in order to test if the graphics were worth the dough and guess what? It sucks. Of course the specs were able to cope except the video became crappy even if the shaders and video memory were EXACTLY as stated on the system requirements. Yeah, NFS Undercover requires a 2.0 Shader card with 256MB of memory but it lags and drops (err.. crashes). Thing is, when the game draws the game’s environment… There are cases that you’ll see some “artifacts” or some pink and black little boxes on the textures of the models (especially the cars). Yeah, your PC carried but your specs sucks (same to me).

Other people who can’t afford a good cheap gaming PC build would recycle it (yeah, I am one of those people) and try to check if some miracles would happen. Unfortunately, no.

On the other hand, another game was able to play well (even if the hardware isn’t compatible). That game is Red Alert 3. I was surprised that it was able to play but when the spawning of little soldiers come… That’s the time it would crash without further notice. So, if the videocard will keep drawing a lot of models or sprites…. The GPU overheats (except to those that are in balance). Oh well, since people want realistic games than just basic little moving boxes… Better to play this way.

So yeah, aside from that… Chances are that some parts of your computer might drop too and it’s not just the videocard itself. Who knows that the BIOS of the motherboard might die (GTA IV cases happened) or perhaps the RAM might be over its capability (might break with the heat).

Anyways, if you plan to make your old PC a gaming one or just in order to play the latest games… just upgrade your video card and add in RAM. Especially change your processor to the highest speed you can attain.

As for the game, this won’t run well on a 5500 FX video card even if you think it works well for you. I recommend you to get a newer card that is a little bit higher. And oh, it’s an AGP I’m using.

Next post will be all about building gaming computers… The cheap or expensive way.

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