Hey folks, so my girlfriend has this Acer Aspire..
Acer Aspire AX3300 AMD Athlon II 215 X2, 2GB RAM 320GB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce 9200, DVDRW, with 19-inch X-Series TFT Monitor (Windows 7 Home Premium): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories
and I was wondering if anyone knows any low-profile & low power GPU's that would be compatible with this thing? She wants to play sims city 5 when it comes out and I have a feeling this thing won't be able to at all, though in fairness I don't know how demanding the game is. She also complained about it being a bit slow doing certain things, though she didn't seem to be able to give me a specific example.
So I was thinking of two things..
1) Not sure what likely no-name RAM inside it is, but I was thinking of just buying 4-8GB of some decent stuff, not sure if the board supports anything faster than 1333mhz.
2) Getting a GPU, right now it has some integrated chip, but I don't know if the power supply could support anything? I've read similar discussions and some have recommended low power cards such as the HD5450, though on some sites in the specs it says that card requires a 400w PSU, despite not requiring any more power than what the PCI slot can provide it, pulling 19w apparently.
Obviously I don't know how good these very budget cards are over integrated graphics? One reviewer seems to say that with the 2GB version of the card he can play Crysis on high settings..I find that a little unlikely but then the res, like with my girlfriends monitor, is probably 1280x1024.
any advice on if it's possible to give this little PC a bit of oomph?
Acer Aspire AX3300 AMD Athlon II 215 X2, 2GB RAM 320GB HDD, NVIDIA GeForce 9200, DVDRW, with 19-inch X-Series TFT Monitor (Windows 7 Home Premium): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories
and I was wondering if anyone knows any low-profile & low power GPU's that would be compatible with this thing? She wants to play sims city 5 when it comes out and I have a feeling this thing won't be able to at all, though in fairness I don't know how demanding the game is. She also complained about it being a bit slow doing certain things, though she didn't seem to be able to give me a specific example.
So I was thinking of two things..
1) Not sure what likely no-name RAM inside it is, but I was thinking of just buying 4-8GB of some decent stuff, not sure if the board supports anything faster than 1333mhz.
2) Getting a GPU, right now it has some integrated chip, but I don't know if the power supply could support anything? I've read similar discussions and some have recommended low power cards such as the HD5450, though on some sites in the specs it says that card requires a 400w PSU, despite not requiring any more power than what the PCI slot can provide it, pulling 19w apparently.
Obviously I don't know how good these very budget cards are over integrated graphics? One reviewer seems to say that with the 2GB version of the card he can play Crysis on high settings..I find that a little unlikely but then the res, like with my girlfriends monitor, is probably 1280x1024.
any advice on if it's possible to give this little PC a bit of oomph?