New PC and FFXI

[setzer]

A friend at work has been playing FFXI on his 360 for awhile now and finally got fed up with all the "cannot read media" and reinstall issues he's been getting, so he went out and bought a PC at Best Buy this week. You can view the PC here:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+E...&skuId=9699016

He's pretty much a computer noob and just went out and bought it. I told him I'd look at it and get everything setup for him so I took it home last night and installed Playonline/FFXI from my discs. I updated everything and installed Windower, FireFox, No-script, AVG, etc. I finally logged in after all the FFXI updates were done and everything seemed good but right before I shut it down I was looking around and noticed it only has a "Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X4500".

Do you guys think this is going to big problem?

I was only logged in for a short time but I was running 1920x1080 on his 23" monitor and I tweaked the FFXI resolution to 2048x2048, or whatever it is I can't remember, to make it sharp and didn't really notice a problem in Upper Jeuno.

[Pikarya]

Umm, it might "run". But by any means a Video card will always be > Integrated for XI. Test his settings in aery between windows, or Whitegate AH.

[Jonny]

defienitly get a graphics card anything 8800(nvidia) or up will be better then an integrated one.

[setzer]

Any recommendations on a cheap graphics card that will fit this thing? I did some googling and I read I might have to upgrade the power supply too which is something I've never never done and really didn't want to do.

[Jonny]

evga nvidia 9500
450w cooler master

and that stuff is cheap dirt cheap

[Pikarya]

Price range? Also a PSU will not be needed for more "simpler" video cards. Especially for XI.

[Iconoclasm]

Meh I think it will run fine becouse FFXI is more cpu intensive in my opinion.

I Fold@Home alot and I'm able to do 10mil units while running FFXI @ the same time but I'm on a AMD phenom II x 4 with 8 gig of ram and 2 gigs of video cards, but I mainly have this set up becouse I do FPS as well.

My niece on the other hand is on my old, old computer its Athlon first gen with a 9800 Radeon and it doesnt have any issues in dynamis with 2 + alliances killing shit non stop.

I suggest doing an event and seeing how it goes then deciding on a video card.

~Ico.

[setzer]

I think that's in his price range. He said he's okay with spending another $100 on something like what Trojin's suggested. I think I might have him order those exact ones this weekend unless anyone has some better suggestions.

I've never done anything inside my PC except changing RAM and installing a graphics card though so I'm kinda worried about doing this for him. How hard is this going to be?

[Jonny]

the psu install is easy just plug everything back in, the gpu will be tricky since there is an onboard you just need to disable it in the bios