Can I (Competently) Run Mass Effect?

[ike9934]

I have wanted to play Mass Effect for quite some time now and I lost my 360 to the infamous red ring. One can now acquire it fairly cheap for the PC (and I have been told that it is better for the PC), but what I want to know is if it would be worth it for me. I'm looking to upgrade my PC sometime soon but car and school take precedence. What should I do?



Here is what I have:


MSI K8N Motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHZ

NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS (courtesy of EVGA)

2 gigs RAM

an older AudioBlaster Soundcard (not worried about that)

Windows XP SP 3



Here is what the system reqs. are:



Operating System:
Windows XP or Vista

Processor:
2.4+GHZ Intel or 2.0+GHZ AMD

Memory:
1 Gigabyte Ram (XP)
2 Gigabyte Ram (Vista)

Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 6 series(6800GT or better)
ATI 1300XT or better (X1550, X1600 Pro and HD2400 are below minimum system requirements)

Hard Drive Space:
12 Gigabytes

Sound Card:
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers
----------

Recommended System Requirements for Mass Effect on the PC

Operating System:
Windows XP or Vista

Processor:
2.6+GHZ Intel or 2.4+GHZ AMD

Memory:
2 Gigabyte Ram

Video Card:
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or higher.
ATI X1800 XL series or higher

Hard Drive Space:
12 Gigabytes

Sound Card:
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers – 5.1 sound card recommended



Thanks for your time!



Kenney

[MikeP]

Go to this website and click on Mass Effect and it will tell you if you can run the game.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

[saphalline]

OMG!! :eek: You have a first-generation 939 system!


Mass Effect sys req's (http://masseffect.bioware.com/gameinfo/system_requirements_pc.html)


I'm afraid there's no hope of playing Mass Effect on your PC. The hardware is already 5 years old and that's too long to sit on a gaming system and expect it to still play modern games.

But...

If you really wanted to do it with your current system... the CPU and RAM are adequate for the game. In which case, if you actually wanted to buy a new AGP vid card (I guess you have no choice since you've ignored PCIe since 2004) that would do the trick. It would be more like a crutch than an actual solution to the problem of your ancient system, but since gaming performance is 70% dependent on the vid card these days, you could run Mass Effect just fine. All you need is $110 USD for one of these:

Radeon HD 3850 AGP (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102730)


I would still recommend a complete overhaul of your system, which at this point would mean an entirely new system (possibly your optical drive and case could stay the same), but with your tight budget I would actually say you should buy a new 360 before building a new rig! (It would be far cheaper, you see.) As it is, take the HD 3850 for now and keep your nose buried in those books! You'll need a decent job after school in order to afford a new gaming system. ;)

[spiral08]

Go to this website and click on Mass Effect and it will tell you if you can run the game.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

yup i recommend this as well :)

@saphalline
and i thought mine was an old system lol

[ike9934]

Thanks for your response Saphalline; you are probably right about the "ancient" part and definitely right about the studying to get a job to buy new hardware part... but my graphics card IS a PCIe, and the motherboard I have (therefore) supports dual graphics cards. So I guess I should take a trip to the local "hardware" store (Best Buy or New Egg) and upgrade.

[Angie1313]

yup i recommend this as well :)

@saphalline
and i thought mine was an old system lol

Same here...worked great for me too. Awesome find!

[rond36]

ike9934, how about giving us the rest of the model of your motherboard. MSI has made 17 different K8N motherboards. Some K8N boards were even socket 754 like the K8NGM-V