Help getting my new PC up to snuff

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PrinceJonathan
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Posts: 390
Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2013 10:27 pm
ES Games: Oblivion
Platform: PS3, PC
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Help getting my new PC up to snuff

Post by PrinceJonathan »

The PC I normally used to play Oblivion died on me. When I try to turn it on, all it does is beep at me.

I bought a refurbished PC at a thrift store for $100. Seemed cheaper than putting the old one in a repair shop.

When I try to play Oblivion on the new PC though, an error message pops up.
Failed to initialize render.
NiXAdapterDesc::GetDeviceCaps() failed.
I'm not sure what the problem is. I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to PCs.

According to the Dxdiag thing:
The OS is Windows 7 Professional 32-bit (6.1, Build 7601)
The Processor is Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz, ~3.2GHz
The Memory is 2048 RAM
The Video Card is Standard VGA Graphics Adapter

Everything seems to be up to specs except the Video Card. How much would a new one be and what should I be looking for? Where would I go to buy one? I have no idea what I am doing here.

If the RAM isn't enough, can I take the RAM out of the old PC and shove it into the new one?
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ParanoidAndroid
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Joined: Mon May 09, 2011 7:00 pm
ES Games: Oblivion, Skyrim
Platform: PC

Re: Help getting my new PC up to snuff

Post by ParanoidAndroid »

Seems like you don't have a compatible video card (GPU). The other system specs seem to be good enough to run Oblivion at fairly good performance.

You could buy a cheap second hand video card and install it. Upgrading a video card is one of the easier upgrades you can do. However, you need to know what connection it has and if it's compatible with your motherboard. Same goes with the RAM you can't just add it from the old system to the new one, except if it has the same type of RAM, which is unlikely but possible.
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