Re: LOTRO graphics card

Paula <pdwMT@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Would an ATI Radeon 9250 256MB 256 MB PCI be good for
LOTRO?

Thanks for the recommendations. I looked around a little and the ones
you recommended I can only find AGP, not PCI which is all her Dell 2400
can use from what I understand.

Cringe! I assume this is a "Dell Dimension 2400" then? Someone should
be burnt at a stake for manufacturing a machine without AGP or PCI-E
x16 slot :-)

That narrows down the choices a LOT, but I see there's a couple X1550
256MB PCI cards out there. Not a high-end card by any means, but at
least it's not a total loss like the 9250 (X1550 is *two* generations
newer and even when both were new it was positioned slightly higher!).
The PCI bus will limit the X1550 a bit but still.

The X1550 PCI cards I found does have a fan though which the 9250
don't, apparently there are fanless X1550 AGP/PCI-E cards so it can't
use that much power.

And get the machine up to at least 1 GB, Dell says it only handles up
to 512MB stick but the chipset and memory manufacturer says 1GB
(PC2700/PC3200) sticks will also work and they're a LOT more reliable
on this.

So if the machines only has one 512MB stick I probably would have
bought a 1GB stick (for 1.5GB), if it has 2x256MB the choice between
2x512MB, 1x1GB (plus one of the original 256MB) and 2x1GB gets a lot
harder.

Do remember running memtest86 for a few hours or a night after
adding/changing memory, and if you get failures swap slots and try
again! (A few motherboard BIOS pick "timing" from the first or last
stick, and you want it to pick the slower of the two to avoid errors).


Getting the memory up to AT LEAST 1 GB is probably more important than
the graphics card!, though usually one can get a hint on which is
important for a give game by listening on the hard disk.

It depends on the budget, the X1550 adds a bit ($40-$50) to the
upgrade. 1GB extra plus 9250 is probably better than X1550 without the
memory upgrade (and similar in price).

I can't comment on exactly how LotRO will play afterwards but it
should be a LOT better, perhaps someone who have played it on a
lower-end machine can comment. Even after the memory+X1550 upgrades
it's NOT a high-end PC, it's just as far as you can reasonably get
without replacing the machine.
.

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