Pixel Shader 2.0

hello all,
and thank you for looking at my thread,
ive just recently baught the Sims 3, and as far as i know ive met all of the requirements to play the game... except, that my video card does NOT support Pixel Shader 2.0.

i dont have alot of money as of right now, but could someone please help me out on finding a fairly cheap video card that will work with the Sims 3? (support Pixel Shader 2.0)

it would have to meat or surpass this
128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0

Thanks in advance!

oh, and if you can list a few newegg.com links as well, that would be greatly appreciated! thanks!

Ancient his card has to have been out before the Radeon 9xxx series or the Geforce 5xxx line. I sincerely doubt he has PCI-E. If the rest of the system is similarly aged circa '01-02 it's not going to be worth upgrading.


Time for a new computer M8.

nope. doesn't help me much. it doesn't really matter what model it is if u can give us some general pc specs

Control Panel > System > Hardware Tab > Device Manager

Post what is listed under Display Adapters, Cpus, and how much RAM you have.
We would need to know the wattage and such from your power supply but you have to open up your computer to find that out.

That is an office comp, meant for solitaire only.

Hence the inability to actually play games

That won't even have a AGP slot I think and so it'd require a low profile PCI card. With some elbow grease and about $100 you could probably get it to play WoW. However, imo not worth it.

Probably not. They'll need to know what motherboard, & power supply you have. However, more than likely everything we said to the other guy will apply to you as well.

At a minimum you'll need a card + 1.25gb of ram but we won't know what type of ram or card without the mobo/psu.

If it's a brand name computer then the model # should suffice, basically somebody will have to hunt it down on google. Alternatively if you can do a google image search for a PCI-Express slot as well as an AGP slot , open your case and determine if you have either & which you have then that will suffice. eta: on second thought we don't know whether you have DDR ram, DDR2 or how much your mobo will permit so we still need to know what motherboard you have.

The power supply unit is where the cord plugs in to the back of the case. There is a sticker on the side of it with a bunch of numbers +5v +3.3v +12v ... and a few numbers underneath like 30a 25a 16a we need those numbers. You will probably have to open the case to see the side of the power supply unit.

If this is it then you need to look for a PCI card

http://www.dealtime.com/xPF-Compaq [...] D-R-Compaq


Mactronix

Well i went to Newegg, dont know where you are but as an example it will do.
I browsed to video cards section and selected PCI from the choices.
This card will be able to power Sims 3 and it comes with the addaptors for lowlevel and standard cases.
As such it would be a good option for both you and the op

Mactronix

Methinks it's time for everyone to purchase new computers.

The bigger problem is having a pci-e slot. Otherwise any card today can run PS2.0 just fine. probably Sims 4 or 5 will run just as well.

The 9400GT & 9500GT are good through SM 4.0 ie DirectX 10.

Mixing old hardware with new becomes progressively risky as time goes on. Can't say they'd work, and I will say performance won't be good. IMO waste of money, but if somebody has $70 and just absolutely doesn't want to buy a new box...

*** *** *** ers *** them. I paid for nothing. My computer apparently is to old to play it since it's a 2003 computer.

i Have a question of my own if i just buy a new computer will it be able to run the pixel shader and i won't have to worry about any of this stuff

you could check wikipedia and get the answer...

yeah intel's igps are terrible. Cs:s at 640x480 with everything turned down wouldnt work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_shader#Hardware

Anything Nvidia 5 series and up, Anything ATI 9000 series and up.

ok thank you