What's the cheapest graphics card I can get to run StarCraft II? Doesn't have to look good, just has to run the game at some rudimentary level. My port's an AGP8X, according to CPU-Z's Graphics tab. (AGP v3.0 8x as listed on the Mainboard tab.) And will my 512MB RAM need to be upgraded?

Second question: my house has a router. My computer and occasionally an Xbox 360 connect to that router wirelessly. I need to know how to jam all connections to that router while not compromising that of my computer. (Basically, I live with a spoiled brat who's allowed to play my games on my console even after acting like, well, a spoiled brat. I want to be able to lag the hell out of her whenever I feel like it.) Untraceable and rapidly-reversible methods are preferred.

1. Your power supply is going to explode should you put anywhere near a decent GFX card in that AGP slot. No matter how much you want to be able to just drop in a card and expect your computer to be able to handle SC2, it isn't going to happen. If you do drop in an AGP card, you're going to have to play it at a rate below 30FPS on the lowest or near lowest settings or you can accept the fact that your entire PC is not up to the job, and upgrade accordingly. Should you want to experience how right I am and watch your PSU explode you can get this card here. Now keep in mind, custom maps are going to be even more stressful than what Blizzard says in the requirements. Its overpriced, power hungry, but uses your supremely outdated AGP slot.

And to top it off, your RAM and CPU are also going to limit you, further reducing any gain you'd get from adding any graphics card. Is this sinking in yet? Do you realize your GPU is not your main or only problem here?

However if you had a PCI-E x16 slot, you could spend much less and get this one. Which performs better, costs less, and consumes less power. Of course, since you have AGP, you can't use it.

2. Beat the shit out of him. You heard me, do it. I don't want to hear about what your parents are going to do. If you aren't willing to take initiative and do what needs to be done, then you deserve to put up with his shit. Grow a set pal.

Sorry ex, but I don't believe that is going to fix anything. Having him grounded from playing his own Xbox would probably just wind up hurting him more. I'd have to ask you this here: Do you have siblings?

Honestly bro, there's not much you can do to control a router that much except password protecting it and changing the password every time you dont want her to play. Either that or nothing.

1. I probably sound like a dumbass asking this, but there's no way to just kinda... Add a PCI slot?

2a. It's a her.
2b. Much as I'd like to, psychological warfare is, in situations like this, infinitely more effective and far less costly than physical violence.

EDIT: If there was a way to find the 360's IP, perhaps I could just spam garbage at it and clog up its ability to respond? Or something?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 28 2010, 9:25 pm by DavidJCobb. Reason: Possible-yet-vague idea to piggyback off

Yes, I have a little sister who trembles at the mention of my name and an older brother who knows better than to fuck with me lest I get him into more trouble than he already gets himself into. I control my household through the use of strategy and subtle suggestions. Its not hard to manipulate people as stupid as my family.

So David, I noticed I didn't give you a solution on hardware should you smarten up and say 'This computer just isn't going to cut it.', so I did a little detective work for you on Newegg and I came up with something:
For $307.30 after tax and shipping based on my zipcode, and it might be less for you because some states don't have tax like NJ does, you can have the following:
G41 mATX motherboard + E5400 dual core 2.7GHz CPU + 2GB DDR3 1066 RAM link
Its a shitty motherboard but the CPU and RAM seem decent. It'll do what you need it to, and I'm sure every PC you've owned has had a worse mobo to begin with.
The lovely PNY GT 240 I recommended link
And an Antec Basiq 350w PSU link

Like I said, for about 300$ you could have a very nice PC. Just keep all the old shit (Harddrive, CD drive, case, ect.) from your current machine, and you save a lot of money.

Edit: No, you do not need a PCI slot. You have PCI slots. You need a PCI-E X16 slot which you do not have and cannot add.

Thank you very much, Ex, I'll definitely look into those This computer's got some years on it, and the possibility of playing SCII (among other things) would make every dollar a dollar well spent.

you can deny IP adresses access in the router control panel. 3650 should run SC2, but you'll regret having such a terrible computer.

Your solution to the router problem is to work out what TCP/UDP ports the xbox 360 is using, and block them.

If she's in the middle of an xbox live game, blocking those ports for 10-15 seconds should be enough to drop her from the game and potentially all of xbox live, depending on how sensitive to packet drops xbox live/the game is.

This may or not may not be possible depending on your router - some routers need to be rebooted before you can change port forwarding, while others can update port forwards without reboots.

You could also google denial of service xbox live and see where that gets you. It's possible that other people have written tools/programs you can run that will flood the xbox with packets and/or open TCP sessions.

Another possibility is to run Windows 7 with a wireless adapter which you can turn into a wireless access point. Have the xbox live connect through your computer instead of the router, and then from your computer to the router and out to the internet. This puts you in between the xbox and the router, so you can then easily block all traffic to the xbox temporarily. This configuration would require you to have your PC on whenever you wanted to use xbox live (which could be useful in itself), but is harder to set up than just fiddling with port forwards on the router itself.

Lolwut?! You guys are silly! Go into your router, look at all connected systems and figure out what the MAC Address on any systems you want to shut off is, and then enter those addresses into the MAC Filtering section and set it to Blacklist, whenever you turn on MAC filtering, all those systems will suddenly be unable to connect to the Internet, as soon as you turn it off, they'll receive access again.

The reason why this solution works better than the previously mentioned ones is that the MAC address of an X-box 360 should never change, while an IP Address easily could, so you simply set up the disabling once, and then all you have to do is turn filtering on and off to toggle it, it even allows you to block other things, such as other computers throughout the house or wireless devices, and not all routers offer the ability to toggle off certain ports, and you don't want to have to go through the trouble of fixing port forwarding each time you want to kick your sister off.

I've done it to my own sister several times, it works wonders, enjoy