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HP ZX5078cl : won't play my games. Replace?

post #1 of 14
10/8/04 at 9:47am
Thread Starter 
It has a 3 gig processor, and I bought another gig of ram thinking that was my trouble, (now at 1.25g) but it still wont let me play Silent Hunter 2.

I also have trouble with Enigma:Rising tide, and Flight Simulator 2004. Total lockups.

Radeon 9200? Celeron processor? What is the trouble?

I reformatted, no dice.

Got at Costco, can return if I move fast...I've been fussing with it for too long and am ready to give up.

What can I get for around $1200 that will run some games; I can turn the graphics down, but I need a little stability...

Help,

fishhead (first post)
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post #2 of 14
10/8/04 at 11:08am
I just traded in my emachines for an HP, which was a lil over your 1200 limit. I do still suggest emachines though. It ran great. I think I just got jinxed with bad laptops (cracked hinges and dead pixals), but from the sounds of it not a lot of people have all the problems I did, or at least not as many times as I have. This model I owned and it ran all the games I tried on it (City of Heroes, Ravenshield, Thief 3)

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....&skuId=6249703

and it's only 1299 before the 150$ rebate. I was surprised how fast emachines sent the rebate as well.
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post #3 of 14
10/8/04 at 11:10am
Oh, you might want to try updating your video drivers as well. I know when I played City of Heroes with the old drivers it was a bit janky, but when I searched for the latest Omega catalyst drivers it ran good after that. (at least until their last patch, which had nothing to do with the laptop, but more with their bug they have to fix)
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post #4 of 14
10/8/04 at 11:15am
You wouldn't be running Service Pack 2 would ya'?
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post #5 of 14
10/8/04 at 12:10pm
Thread Starter 
Yes, got thte new Omegas. Takes longer to crash. Better I guess, but not stable.

SP2 yes, got it.

How about something I can use the 1gb stick of 2700 in? The emachines is 512 only, not expandable, but has a better vid card and 1mb cache...

thanks
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post #6 of 14
10/8/04 at 2:05pm
The emachines come with 2 sticks of 256. One is in a slot you can't get to without ripping apart your laptop, the other is in the slot that is accessible to users. You can pull out that 256 and swap it for a 1 gig. I have heard kingsmax or kingston (can't remember which) does not work well with the emachines laptop, but the others should. I actually had plans to pick up a 1 gig from newegg when my hinge cracked, so that's why I decided to trade it in for an HP with 1 gig already installed.

I know you can have at least 1.2 gig in the emachines (1 gig + 256 meg chips). I also heard you can take and put a gig in each slot, but I guess when you open up the laptop it voids the warrenty. If you have the bestbuy techs do it, and have the warrenty through them, they it will not void their warrenty. Someone wrote more detail about it on the gateway/emachines section of the forum.
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post #7 of 14
10/8/04 at 2:14pm
As far as games went on the emachines, I found that it worked well with what I tried. I played thief 3 on 1280x800 on low-mid settings and it ran where it was pretty playable. Ravenshield has an issue when playing online in that it kept rebooting the macine randomly. It was only online. I think it was either just my machine (it didn't do it for the other laptops) or the patch. I didn't start happening until I installed their latest patch. City of Heroes used to run great on it, but since their latest patch, I think they made the graphics way more hardware intensive. I installed/tweaked/patched everything I could think of and I finally made it where it was playable to my liking (with hardly any slowdown). I had to use a program to tweak it found from a post on their forums though. Other then that, I didn't play many other games on the pc. I didn't try doom 3 because I don't care for doom's single player, but I heard it ran in a playable state on the emachines laptop from reading posts about it on the forums.
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post #8 of 14
10/8/04 at 3:34pm
Thread Starter 
So is the emachines generally agreed to be the way to go at this price?

On the link, they said no expansion of memory was possible. Odd.


fish
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post #9 of 14
10/8/04 at 5:10pm
Thread Starter 
What about the dell 9100? This must run games ok, and I could use my gig o fram....where is a good place to buy it, from Dell?
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post #10 of 14
10/9/04 at 9:36am
I picked up an HP zd7000
in that price range....

3.2GHZ P4 H/T Processor 800mhz FSB
768MB RAM
17" WSXGA (1680 x 1050) Widescreen (Glossy)
Nvidia Geforce FX 5700 card 128MB DDR
60GB Hard drive
Ect....

Killer DEAL!

U.N.inspector
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post #11 of 14
10/9/04 at 11:50am
Thread Starter 
What a coincidence: I am considering this very machine from Costco. Only 64 ram video.

Do you like the graphics?
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post #12 of 14
10/9/04 at 12:29pm
I am extremely happy with this laptop..
The combination of the 17" widescreen and Nvidia 5700 is perfect.
Of course it's no Radeon 9800 but it scores 12K on 3Dmark2001 which is
alright for me....

U.N.inspector
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post #13 of 14
10/9/04 at 8:16pm
Thread Starter 
Good to hear.

Just got it with the FX5600 and 64 vid ram, but my hopes are high anyways.

Got a stick of 1gig to pop in from the old HP. Good idea?

Ok not to have matched ram sticks? It has ports for two underneath (256 x 2 were supplied stock.)

Mild overclock using powerstrip?

Now to start installing.....
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post #14 of 14
10/10/04 at 6:31am
Sounds like you'll be okay.
The extra RAM always helps....Good Luck!

U.N.inspector
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