Update on Insane's Status

I just got back from AU so I missed that you were missing.

Well, progress has been made!

I installed UT on the wifes computer and she is learning the ropes. In fact she just called and said she just completed a second map flawlessly. She is starting at the lowest level and she is still learning the controls and such. Her system is a wee underpowered in the graphics dept. For christmas she got a 512MB upgrade on the RAM. That helped everyday opperations, but the graphics has to go. I logged her on to DC over the weekend as Monkey_Lover

She collects monkeys and me being who I am...well, you get the idea.
So, until she gets good enough to take on the DC waves of baddies, she will be in training.

That's good to hear, can't wait to meet her!

u could alway get her a really nice game pad and see if that helps.

No, I want her to use what she has, tho she hates her mouse with how it works with this. I'm looking into video cards for her, that will solve a lot of her ploblems with the game on how it moves and feels. Right now she is only using 16MB of her onboard memory as VID MEM and it really bites. So she is playing at 640 x 480 with most things turned down to normal/low with no extras turned on and its just playable on small maps. Anything else just beats the frame rates to nothing.

well what about a gaming mouse? That might make it easier.
(or harder)

Harder I think. More buttons in a confined space. I know I would even hit the wrong thing way too often.

Flak Monkey wrote:

No, I want her to use what she has, tho she hates her mouse with how it works with this. I'm looking into video cards for her, that will solve a lot of her ploblems with the game on how it moves and feels. Right now she is only using 16MB of her onboard memory as VID MEM and it really bites. So she is playing at 640 x 480 with most things turned down to normal/low with no extras turned on and its just playable on small maps. Anything else just beats the frame rates to nothing.

You can get a decent 128 MB AGP/PCI-E video card for around $50.00 or so.

I browsed NewEgg for a while and I think I will get a GeForce 7600GS based AGP card with 256MB for $120. She has an older Gateway machine with an AMD 1.2 GHz proc. Because of the age/maker...the AGP is only a 4X, so these are reletively cheap, even with last years GPUs

The trick was to find out what X value the AGP was. Gateway offered no technical data on her machine beyond some very basics. I stumbled onto a forum which mentioned a bit of software called EVEREST. It diagnoses your system and tells you some very intricate details of the entire machine. And it gave me the X value of the AGP slot so I knew what my limitations were when shopping for the Vid Card. I would love to build her a new rig, but its not in the cards this year.

Everest is good, but cpuz is better--you can go th this website and download it onto her pc.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/CPU-Z_d425.html

Thanks. Cant have enough diag software, even being retired out f the biz, it's still nice to have these things.