Sims 2 even kills my machine.
Home XP
AMD 3800
1 gig Ram
Geforce 6800 ultra

With the big Lots and some great Addons I have seen it drop to 14FPS.
But the more memory you can get the faster the game will load it takes just about 15 secounds to load on mine.

Guys, this thread is starting to run rather wild with various people posting their specs and basically comparing their gameplay - this isn't really necessary.

urkydj - you asked the original question. What point are you at now?
P.S. Vsync is a method of syncronising the graphic card output to the monitor's refresh rate... it helps smoothness and sometimes improves performance but sometimes makes it worse.

bairy... My orginal question was wether getting 512mb ram extra would improve game performance... and wether my computer would handle it without problems in-game. Also wether getting a new graphixs card would speed up the sims 2 and give better graphixs or slow it down because of my specs. it has drifted and i kind of stopped posting because i got confused with all the specs... what the hec is " P4 2.8 GHz 800 Mhz FSB with a 5200 gfx card with uncapped/hacked drivers."

Okay yes the dell dimensions are rather problematic when upgrading.

Basically do you want to keep your existing one and try and upgrade it, or would you be willing to get a new pc?

i only got it less than a year ago, so i want to upgrade it and keep it untill there is some sort of 'break through' with new pcs. i am going to add 512 meg RAM and i dont know what problems i might face, a mate of mine said that i need to get the right type of RAM. Also i might upgrade graphics but i dont know what i can get that is cheap and still worth getting... also i dont know wether i can replace my card... Dell says i officially cannot...

By officially, Dell mean they won't warranty it, but you can do.

The thing with Dimension systems is they are very stupidly designed - they are to be profitable to Dell should you want to upgrade so they use their own parts.
That doesn't mean you can't upgrade at all, it just means you're limited.

For info, the celeron is a cutdown version of the P4. It's not really that good so yeah it's kinda between p3 and p4 for performance.

According to the dimension 2400 stock specs, you can upgrade your ram, hopefully by 512mb ram, and you can upgrade the graphics card, but only to a PCI one. Which basically means the nvidia fx5200 PCI or there's a ati one too but I can't remember which. They aren't really different in speed.

You should know that once you upgrade your graphics card, you'll get 64mb system memory back too, giving you the full 256 rather than the 192 you currently have.

The memory type you want is PC2700, and the graphics card you'll want is called the nVidia GeForce FX 5200 PCI - 128mb or 256mb -- whichever you can find cheaper

Whoa! Thanks! Your post just told me the answer to my question better than the last 55 posts put together!

£86.99 is the cheapest i could find "nVidia GeForce FX 5200 PCI - 128mb" video card.

£70 is the cheapest i could find PC2700 512mb RAM and it was... "Kingston Value RAM 512MB 333MHz DDR ECC" but the 333MHz worrid me... does it replace my 2.4 GHz at the moment?

in the description it said: "ShoppersChoice.com: MODEL- KVR333X72C25/512 VENDOR- KINGSTON VALUE RAM FEATURES- 512 MB PC2700 DDR DRAM 184-pin DDR Double Data Rate " is it any good?

My machine was running slower and the community lots were jerky and slow. Then, I opened up my case and noticed that I had a layer of dust over the CPU's heatsink. I cleaned it up, and thngs are running much smoother now. My point? Before spending money on improvements, make sure what you have is operating properly.

Good advice, but my computer was rubbish from the start!

Graphics card:
http://froogle.google.co.uk/froogle...=Search+Froogle

RAM. Yes it's 333mhz, that's the memory speed which is seperate from the cpu speed, so yeah it's the right type.
So long as it's 184 pin, PC2700 (aka 166mhzDDR aka 333mhz) it's fine

Just a note:
You would have been better off buying a 9600XT or pro because the 9800SE only has 4 open piplinesand so do the 9600XT and pro. The 9800pro or XT has 8 open out of 8.

In simple terms, the 9800SE is the same speed as the 9600XT (in some instances, the 9600XT is a bit faster).

(This for the person who brought that 9800SE)

For me, my problem is The Sims 2 ends up freezing and crashing my computer even though the spped and download time is fast as hell. It's probly because my graphics accelerator isn't campatible with direct X. I have an -Intel Media graphics accelerator driver- and it would really suck for me to by a new graphic accelerator because they cost alot of money.

bairy... is the "Xpertvision GeForce FX5200 128MB DDR DDR TV 8x" graphics card any good? it was only £28.99... would it work on my computer?

Celerons in my opinion are horriable for any 3d game. As for your situation, adding another stick of memory should help, but only a little bit

According to dell, the Dimension 2400 doesnt have a agp port. Basically, your limited to graphic cards. (THis computer only has PCI ports, it is NOT AGP compatiable)
Link to this Discovery: http://support.dell.com/support/edo...=en&cs=19&s=dhs

The fastest card you could by that works with your computer would be a Geoforce FX5700LE (IT MUST BE A PCI VERISON).
here's an example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16814139166

urkydj - so long as it's PCI, yes.

roged is correct too, you can get the 5700LE if you wish, more expensive but more powerful.
However because your pc only has a small power supply (250W), I would recommend sticking to the 5200.

Guys could you stop hijacking this thread please. If you want to talk about graphics cards and it isn't directly relevant to urkydj's question, could you do it in this forum over at our sister site.

Sowwy

urkydj,
you can get Geforce 5200 off Ebay just type in Pci graphics cards and loads come up and they are alot cheaper to buy off there than from shops if you dont mind having it 2nd hand.

ok. i dont by really expensive stuff of ebay, cause someone i know lost £1000 on ebay when buying a computer!

Whoever lost £1000 shoulda used escrow

the 5200 is really cheap on ebay, I think I sold mine for £40 a year ago, you'll get it for 25-30 now