I want to play Minecraft...

[Camerinthus]

But I can't.

There's a few reasons adding on one basic reason:

My graphics card sucks.

As a back story, my computer that I use was bought for family use 8 and a half years ago. 2 years ago, it was upgraded form 1g of RAM to 2g of RAM. Nothing else has changed. Still runs XP, etc. So, after downloading the "newest" versions of the graphics card driver (from 2006), Minecraft ran fine. Until Mojang decided to add some multi-texturing aspect to 1.0, which is what is crashing Minecraft now every few minutes after I open it. (That was the resolution to my crashing thread for anyone who cares)

So the solution is simple, right? Get a new graphics card! I even have a buddy who said he'd give me his old 9500 GT, which isn't bad and should definitely run Minecraft. However, it requires a PSU of at least 350W from what I got online, and guess what? The computer I have comes with a 250W PSU! Hooray! So, having no money, (although my job starts in February/March) I am now stuck. My main possibilities are mooching off my parents (not likely...) or digging into my iPod Touch fund.

This may sound like a really little thing, which it is in the scheme of things, but hey: I'm 16 and I can whine for a bit if I want to.

[BigShinyToys]

So the solution is simple, right? Get a new graphics card! I even have a buddy who said he'd give me his old 9500 GT, which isn't bad and should definitely run Minecraft. However, it requires a PSU of at least 350W from what I got online, and guess what? The computer I have comes with a 250W PSU! Hooray! So, having no money, (although my job starts in February/March) I am now stuck. My main possibilities are mooching off my parents (not likely...) or digging into my iPod Touch fund.

While this is a BAD IDEA and I recommend you DONT do it it is possible to run the graphics card from a separate power supply. it is INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS and I will NOT be held liable for you breaking your computer or your self.

from personal experience I ounce ran a computer from a car battery charger. ( as such make up your own mid as to weather you want to take advice from this mad man.
On second thought DONT do anything above ^^

[whitechaos35]

If he could afford a second power supply, better to just replace whatever is running his system. You can find used power supplies at thrift stores and such (Goodwill, etc.). Occasionally there will be a Computer Works (or some such) Goodwill which is dedicated to used electronics. I often find parts for projects there.

[morvelaira]

If he could afford a second power supply, better to just replace whatever is running his system. You can find used power supplies at thrift stores and such (Goodwill, etc.). Occasionally there will be a Computer Works (or some such) Goodwill which is dedicated to used electronics. I often find parts for projects there.

I can't stress this as a good solution enough. The size of power supply that you need for that video card is pretty darned cheap these days... $20 or so in some places.

[Haidaes]

If he could afford a second power supply, better to just replace whatever is running his system. You can find used power supplies at thrift stores and such (Goodwill, etc.). Occasionally there will be a Computer Works (or some such) Goodwill which is dedicated to used electronics. I often find parts for projects there.

I can't stress this as a good solution enough. The size of power supply that you need for that video card is pretty darned cheap these days... $20 or so in some places.

Thats depending on what kind of power supply you want to buy and if you can stand the side effects of the very cheap ones (noise, power usage and so on) you could find some for 20 bucks thats true. I'm not saying all cheap ones are bad, there are good ones among them every once in a while. Though if you already have to invest in a new one i wouldn't recomend buying one which just barely comes with the desired power output.

Going with a used one might not be a bad idea though, as they usually either work or they don't - so not that much of a risk there . Just make sure they don't rip you off and charge more than 10-15 bucks. Well there is always the third option, which involves the op just scraping the idea of buying useless apple junk and investing in some proper hardware instead, 2 gb ram isn't exacly the standart these days as well.

[Camerinthus]

I wasn't planning on running 2 PSUs at the same time, that's just stupid. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear.

I just meant I need to replace both the GPU and the PSU, and the motherboard is on its way too. Windows takes about... 20 minutes from cold boot to opening Firefox.


Also, I live in a pretty remote area. We just got a Wal-Mart less than 30 minutes away last year. The closest computer store is Newegg or Tigerdirect.

[Mbossa]

Have you tried installing the Optifine mod? When I was staying with Mum for a couple of weeks over Christmas, I tried to get my Minecraft fix on her somewhat crappy laptop, but it was unplayably slow. But then on a whim I decided to give Optifine a try with its lowest settings, and I was blown away by how much faster it made Minecraft.

I don't know if it will fix your particular problem, but since it gives you so much more control over your graphics settings it's definitely worth a try.

[Camerinthus]

Have you tried installing the Optifine mod? When I was staying with Mum for a couple of weeks over Christmas, I tried to get my Minecraft fix on her somewhat crappy laptop, but it was unplayably slow. But then on a whim I decided to give Optifine a try with its lowest settings, and I was blown away by how much faster it made Minecraft.

I don't know if it will fix your particular problem, but since it gives you so much more control over your graphics settings it's definitely worth a try.

That won't work, unfortunately. I did, and it still crashes. Even worse, it would crash more often before I was able to get into the options menu and disable dynamic water, since apparently that's on default, cause my computer couldn't handle it.

Might as well try again, though. Who knows.

[Thalmane]

update to 1.1 and create a flat map. less visible blocks to load and no water so hopefully should give you enough time to change the settings

[Camerinthus]

Well, (amazingly) before I crashed this time I put everything to the fastest setting, and it hasn't crashed in the last 20 minutes! So hopefully I might not have to go through this whole issue...

[MoRmEnGiL]

or digging into my iPod Touch fund.

You young whipper-snappers. :P

Screw those overpriced players and get a a psu and a car with that money :P

But seriously, will that ipod be worth you not being able to use your computer for that much longer?

[Slev]

To go back to the PSU part of this. Running the card with a less than minimum PSU isn't necessarily dangerous (though it could cause a short somewhere.) The recommended power is also not the amount it actually uses. Recommended takes in to account the average power it's assuming your other components are using as well. So if he's running a... Pentium IV for instance, with very sparse hardware, the 250W could touch on being good enough to power the system. However, we also have to look at the voltage on the rails. Which, I assume is likely not up to the standard that a 9 series card needs.

Note: I'm in no way recommending trying to get everything to run off a 250W unless you under clock your main power using components. You'd also be better off getting a 200 series, the 9 series is notoriously glitchy. (My 9800 GTX died in three days. Switched to a 260 and never looked back.)

[DaveYanakov]

If there's a university nearby you might look into their salvage operations. Many campuses have a store where they sell off their used equipment dirt cheap so it's likely you could find the PSU you need or even a computer four years newer within your price range.

iPod touch is a nifty gadget, yes. I still prefer to do everything on my desktop that relates to actual work.

[Camerinthus]

To go back to the PSU part of this. Running the card with a less than minimum PSU isn't necessarily dangerous (though it could cause a short somewhere.) The recommended power is also not the amount it actually uses. Recommended takes in to account the average power it's assuming your other components are using as well. So if he's running a... Pentium IV for instance, with very sparse hardware, the 250W could touch on being good enough to power the system. However, we also have to look at the voltage on the rails. Which, I assume is likely not up to the standard that a 9 series card needs.

Note: I'm in no way recommending trying to get everything to run off a 250W unless you under clock your main power using components. You'd also be better off getting a 200 series, the 9 series is notoriously glitchy. (My 9800 GTX died in three days. Switched to a 260 and never looked back.)

Well the 9500 GT is from a friend (eg free), so that's why I was going to use it. I believe the cpu is a Pentium IV, not sure though.

If there's a university nearby you might look into their salvage operations. Many campuses have a store where they sell off their used equipment dirt cheap so it's likely you could find the PSU you need or even a computer four years newer within your price range.

iPod touch is a nifty gadget, yes. I still prefer to do everything on my desktop that relates to actual work.

We do have 4 colleges in a 15 minute (driving) area, so that's a distinct possibility. I've snagged some of the monitors they've thrown out before, perfectly good LCDs that are just 4 years old.

[Slev]

Considering how old the motherboard is, it's very hard to recommend parts. Assuming minecraft is the most intensive pc gaming you do, in many cases you'd be better off saving your money and purchasing an inexpensive (<$450) pre-build Dell or some other similar prefab computer.

However, assuming this just isn't possible, this power supply is relatively inexpensive, made by a trustworthy company, and will provide more than enough power for what you have.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817171042

(The DOA comments are likely flukes, but this seemed to be the best option for the price, however, you may want to check the other 350-400W PSUs on newegg, or another website, you never know.)

[Camerinthus]

Considering how old the motherboard is, it's very hard to recommend parts. Assuming minecraft is the most intensive pc gaming you do, in many cases you'd be better off saving your money and purchasing an inexpensive (<$450) pre-build Dell or some other similar prefab computer.

However, assuming this just isn't possible, this power supply is relatively inexpensive, made by a trustworthy company, and will provide more than enough power for what you have.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817171042

(The DOA comments are likely flukes, but this seemed to be the best option for the price, however, you may want to check the other 350-400W PSUs on newegg, or another website, you never know.)

Currently it is, but I'm saving up for a decent ($800-$900) gaming computer that I've picked out the parts for on Amazon. (560 GTX, i5, 230g HDD, 60g SSD (for boot drive), etc) Buying a new PSU for the 9500 GT card would just be a temporary solution for another few months.

[redrew89]

I'm in a similar situation, my young padawan. I built my current system when I was about your age. Here's what I started with:

Intel Celeron D 2.26GHz
512MB DDR 400 (PC 3200) RAM
Integrated S3/VIA Unichrome Graphics

And here's where I'm at now:

Intel Pentium 2.6GHz w/ HT
1GB DDR 400 (PC 3200) RAM
GeForce 6200 w/ 512MB VRAM

I had been using an older GeForce 6200 for quite some time, but it finally gave up on life and started spewing random pixels on my screen within 5 minutes after booting up. I was forced to fall back to a GeForce 2 MX 200 card for the past month, until I was able to get the replacement 6200 this past week.

Surprisingly enough, Minecraft doesn't really need a very powerful video card to operate. The GeForce 2 was able to run Minecraft + Optifine at a decent 20FPS, if I closed all other unneeded processes and Windows services. As long as it supports a recent version of OpenGL, you can usually at least get it to run. As far as your situation is concerned, I'm willing to bet that the 9500 GT will work, certainly, but the other bottle-necks in your system will continue to hold you back. CPU primarily, as Java is very processor dependent.

My advice, work with what you have, and start saving up for a new rig. I'm planning on doing the same, but I'll likely double the memory in my current system one more time, as a stop-gap measure. (2GB is the max supported amount for my motherboard)

[Camerinthus]

I'm in a similar situation, my young padawan. I built my current system when I was about your age. Here's what I started with:

Intel Celeron D 2.26GHz
512MB DDR 400 (PC 3200) RAM
Integrated S3/VIA Unichrome Graphics

And here's where I'm at now:

Intel Pentium 2.6GHz w/ HT
1GB DDR 400 (PC 3200) RAM
GeForce 6200 w/ 512MB VRAM

I had been using an older GeForce 6200 for quite some time, but it finally gave up on life and started spewing random pixels on my screen within 5 minutes after booting up. I was forced to fall back to a GeForce 2 MX 200 card for the past month, until I was able to get the replacement 6200 this past week.

Surprisingly enough, Minecraft doesn't really need a very powerful video card to operate. The GeForce 2 was able to run Minecraft + Optifine at a decent 20FPS, if I closed all other unneeded processes and Windows services. As long as it supports a recent version of OpenGL, you can usually at least get it to run. As far as your situation is concerned, I'm willing to bet that the 9500 GT will work, certainly, but the other bottle-necks in your system will continue to hold you back. CPU primarily, as Java is very processor dependent.

My advice, work with what you have, and start saving up for a new rig. I'm planning on doing the same, but I'll likely double the memory in my current system one more time, as a stop-gap measure. (2GB is the max supported amount for my motherboard)

That's what I think I'm going to do. This is what I (currently) plan to get, and will revise when I actually have enough money to buy it:

Intel i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz
4GB DDR3 (PC3 12800) RAM
ASUS GeForce GTX 560 1GB

Etc.