I found cheap pc on ebay, is this good to play FF XI on?Follow

Here are the system requirements of this cheap pc I found at ebay which is 125 dollars, that includes shipping. It is buy it now, so I don't have to bid. Did I find a deal and is this going to work when I play FF XI, because the pc I am on now is slow with 512 ram, and is a Dell.

Ebay pc: This seems fast to me. But I want to know when I play FF xI on this if I will lag because with my Dell I have now I lag a lot.

Here the requirements for the PC I found on ebay. If this sounds as good as I think it does I will buy this PC. I have to go cheap for now.

HP COMPAQ DC7100 SFF DESKTOP PC

FAST INTEL HYPER-THREADING P4 HT 3.2GHZ PROCESSOR WITH 800 MHZ FSB

1GB DDR400 PC RAM MEMORY INSTALLED

160GB SATA HARD DISK SPACE

8 X USB 2.0 PORTS

BUILT IN CD/DVD DRIVE FOR WATCHING DVD'S

NETWORKING 10/100 ETHERNET PORT

SOUND IN/OUT PORTS

PARALLEL PORT

PS/2 PORTS FOR MOUSE AND KEYBOARD

VGA OUT DISPLAY PORT

INSTALLED WITH WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL SP3

Edited, May 11th 2010 3:41pm by pettygil

Ok thanks for letting me know. I do have a dell and I can only upgrade to 1GB, that is what the man told me who fixed my computer. I have 512 ram. So If I get 1Gb would that stop some of the lag? I have 1.50 GHZ, whatever that means. Is that processing speed?

When I play FF XI I get some lag and in some spots it's bad, depends if people are near by, or not. I can't tell them to leave because my lag is bad. LOL. I was just woundering if 1GB would make some difference? I do have a good graphics card. I can't upgrade past 1GB.

I don't have a lot of money right now, so if 1GB which would cost me 40 dollars, would be worth it, if does not make the game not lag as much. I am not sure if it will make that much difference, or not. Though it would have to help some, as I am pretty slow right now and I am a cable modem.

I also bought this pc on ebay for 100 dollars. It's kind of old. I thought at the time it was a great deal. I think not so much anymore, not for gaming anyways. I don't know a lot about gaming computers but the guy who fixed my pc said it is not a gaming computer, though I play FF XI on it.


Edited, May 11th 2010 4:07pm by pettygil

512MB isn't crippling for FFXI. It may depend on what else you're running at the same time. I played on a Pentium 4 2Ghz with 512MB for several years, which worked fine. I did have reasonably decent video cards in it, first a GeForce Ti4400, then a 6800. While FFXI doesn't utilize the video card to the same extent that many PC titles do, it's still relatively important.

As a general statement, more RAM would be better. For FFXI in particular, I can say from experience that it's not necessary.

Lag is hard to say. FFXI suffers some because of network traffic limits. Even a shiny new gaming PC can still get lag with lots of people on-screen. It's not because the computer can't process it, it's because the server isn't feeding it enough data.
There are also things you can try turning off. Weather effects, particularly, can impact performance dramatically. On an older machine, you probably want to turn them off. Shadows, environmental animations, and so on are other possibilities.

The long and short of FFXI on PC is that it's a relatively bad port that the PC makes up for with power.



The main thing that's going to set a "gaming" PC apart from a more general purpose home or office computer is more robust video hardware, and the ability to support it. Mid/high level graphics cards use a lot of power, which means you tend to need a bigger power supply. Some cases may not allow better cards to fit. That sort of thing.
There may be better picks for exactly what CPU to use, and more enthusiast oriented performance tweaks/parts, but, predominately, the video hardware is what will determine if the PC runs games well or not.

If you know people that are more into computers, ask if they have old parts or are planning to upgrade soon. I've given plenty of hardware to friends over the years. Given the vintage of the stuff you're looking at someone just might have some extra RAM in their old P4 they'd give you.
Another route might be to go to a PC shop and ask. The machine you listed is likely a refurb or off-corporate-lease machine. I know the shop near me buys up surplus machines from the university and sells them at similar prices to what you've mentioned. A place like that might be able to toss in an old video card or something for a good price.

If you do want to get a system that's a bit more capable for gaming though, then you're better off just saving your money until you can get something a little better to start with. While not stellar, there have been decent builds in the $500-600 range that are able to play any game on the shelf today pretty well. Or if you don't really play much, you can get a brand-new Dell starting at $269 or so that'd do alright with FFXI.

Edited, May 11th 2010 5:24pm by Isiolia

depending on exactly what motherboard is in there, you may be able to drop in a nice AGP card on the cheap, but FFXI isn't as dependant on the video hardware compared to typical games. What it really hammers is the CPU, and a little bit on the RAM. You're limited on the memory capacity and speed, but you can upgrade that CPU.

Most of the rendering is done on the CPU and then shuffled off to the video card to finish it off. You might find yourself running at lower resolutions for smoother gameplay in congested areas on a 1.5GHz CPU. If you want/need higher resolution, I think that system is capable of going up to around 2.2 or 2.4GHz processors, but must definately it should do 2.0. You could poke around on the Dell site to see what your options are, then check ebay or somewhere like pricewatch.com to see if you can find a deal on a better CPU if you have a hardware guy that can drop it in for you (want to make sure the heatsink/fan is installed right to keep things cool).

In all honesty though, as prices have been dropping on mid-range PC's...may be better off trying to save up some cash to get a new system. Just make sure you get one that has either Nvidia or ATI branded graphics and not the Intel integrated graphics. They are fine for general office use and such, but not so hot for heavy gaming. Even simple browser based games can sometimes tend to run slower on Intel graphics.

Raist

Edit:
hehe...looks like we were posting about the same time. That 5500 series card should be decent enough for FFXI. It's sweet spot is probably 800X600 or 1024 X 768 resolution. It may be struggling with the background resolution because of the 1.5GHz CPU. You might try manually setting the resolution in the registry to match what your overlay resolution is (http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Graphics). Setting them both to 800 X 600 should keep a decent level of quality while giving your CPU a little more breathing room. Raist

Edited, May 12th 2010 5:21am by BDHERTZER

CPU is your processor, measured in Gigahertz (GHz), memory and hard drive are in gigabytes (GB). :)

Running from an external drive shouldn't be too bad, just may cause some slow load times when you zone or a new wave of campaign mobs or something comes in. Might want to check with your hardware guy to see if that drive can't be mounted internally as a second drive. I don't know if your external drive was a conversion kit (an internal drive installed in an external kit), or a standalone USB drive (basically, a sealed drive). Hard drives are another component that's gotten really cheap these days too. But I hate to see you spending a lot of money on this box when you could spend it on a newer, faster package deal instead. You can sometimes find a good barebones type of system locally (no monitor or printer included--just the main computer, maybe a mouse and keyboard with it) for $300 or less.

Raist