Vista - Halo 2 on Vista Home premium system help

have I have a Compaq model 2180NX with 250 G HD and 3.3 DRAM with > 2 Ghz
which I installed Halo 2 on. I have not installed a graphics card yet. The
Vista system experience lowest rating is 3.0 on memory (video?) and the game
will not work. I assume I need a graphics card. I have never used a graphics
card. My system has 3 PCI & 1 PCIe slots empty. I have seen the notes about
using a nvidia 6100 or ATI 700 or higher card on the game site. I have been
looking for these cards on line and in store but been too suceessful. Are
these card numbers old or there newer numbers? What should I look for?
Lokking to spend under $200-$250. Looking on the Nividia & ATI sites do not
give any understandable road maps. Any help or leads would be helpful.

"DIGITALGOST20" <DIGITALGOST20@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:684F8D37-1870-4AEF-ABA6-8AFE8722FA66@xxxxxxThe nVidia 6100 and the ATi x700 aren't too recent, anything recent should
be more than adiquate to run Halo 2.

Thank GOD you listed your computer model, THANK YOU!

According to:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...s=2093&lang=en

Your system has 1 Gig of RAM running at DDR2/333Mhz or PC2-4200 speed
Your motherboard uses the Intel 80945 chipset with integrated graphics.
250gb hard drive, dvd burner, etc.

This system, as is, should be able to run Halo 2.

Your system is scoring a 3.0 because of Gaming Graphics rating. My Dell at
the office gets the same rating. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because
your CPU, RAM, HD, and basic GRAPHICS speeds are fast enough to run teh
haloz.

If you still want to get a new graphics card, I would look into getting an
NVidia 8600, or 8800 if you can afford it. If you want to buy an ATi Card,
the ATi Radeon HD 2600 or HD 2900 is what you might want to look into.

If you want to spend less, and don't care about DirectX 10 functions (Halo 2
does NOT use DirectX 10), the nVidia 7800 or 7900 cards are getting
affordable, and are fast cards. The ATi x1650, x1800, x1900, or x1950 are
all good choices. It all comes down to price. How much do you want to spend
just to play Halo.

I would not go any lower than that, your Intel Graphics card, as I said
earlier, will run Halo 2! It will run slow, but it'll work. If Halo 2 is not
running on your system, you should fix it before you go installing a new
video card into your computer.

-A.

Halo2 on Integrated Intel Graphics?

If it even works (which 90% certain it won't, I'm a system builder) it will
give you around 3-5 Frames Per Second.
You need at least 30 frames per second to have any sort of smoothness to the
game at all.

I would honestly recommend getting at least the Radeon X1900, however I
doubt your current PC could handle the HD2900 due to the heave power
requirements.

"Andy [YaYa]" <android8675@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:645793E4-5DDC-4CEB-8418-6F7AB67F81D7@xxxxxx