-Beep beep boop-

[abbie_chan]

So basically, this computer is too old to fix, and I need either a new tower, or a whole new computer. Blah. This one is pretty old (I got it for 8th grade graduation) and it only has 256mb of RAM. So basically even if I tried to get more RAM and spruce up this computer it would end up costing me more than buying a new one would

Comments

[nameless_cricke]

Yeah they do, ours monitors are VGA and DVI. Although I did mix up a vga port a minute ago with the parallel port that was on my old computer. >_> I just remembered the huge ass port. Concrete memory, I has none. She was asking if she could use her old monitor, I had assumed that since her rig was older that it had a VGA connector.
My card has the two DVI ports, we do not have the DVI cables, we have the VGA cables and a DVI-VGA converter(I got confused on how we had all this hooked up, it's been so long ;-;). Whether or not the actual Tower she finds has VGA depends on what end of the price spectrum she ends at, a lot of them do still have vga with their crappy integrated graphics. A trip out with my buddy shopping for prebuilts on a lower end price range attests to that. Now anything with an actual graphics card, you are absolutely right, anything newer with a real card would have dvi. Something that had two dvi on an integrated card would probably be out of her price range though. Unless you have awesome links, in which case I want in on. My two year old Dell came with VGA, although 2 years can make a big difference.

As for integrated graphics being better then most people think, this is true. What I was using before I got this card was integrated and it worked awesomely for what it was(although no shaders). I didn't have issues for two years until I had to upgrade to play fallout 3. Then Sims 2 was gorgeous after that. I do know however, that when someone comes into one of my communities with graphics issues(especially the Sims 3) it's usually because the non-card just isn't up to stuff. It's just safer to go with an actual card. Then to have it not meet what you were going for.

You seem like you are more in the know with the hard wares though, so I'll shut up. :P I'm more on the software, and virus removal spectrum. I never got into building pcs, only upgrading what I had.

[tenmei]

Oh my god I remember parallel ports. My original scanner used one. Memories!

I understand your point about VGA, with the older monitor, but even my old shitty nonbrand monitor that got a hotpixel (lol) and I retired had a DVI cable/input built into it. I didn't really consider that there were still monitors with only VGA in, since that's been nonstandard for almost a decade.

Even with the integrated GPUs, it looks like most have at least 1 DVI out. The VGA port seems quite legacy to me, kind of like the machines that still had AGP ports 4 years ago. It's there, but it's like, why. D:

Anyway, yeah, for older games a lot of the integrated graphic cards will do, but as I was saying above, for even Sims 3 I would have to recommend a separate card even in the lower price range. So I'm with you in that opinion.

I am a hardware geek, although admittedly I usually work on the higher end spectrum. Seeing "VGA" kind of breaks my brain when I'm used to building power gaming machines. Lol. I didn't mean to try and trump what you were saying or anything, so sorry for my bad manners. D8