When switching to new pc and graphic card help

[Snark]

Ok, I haven't played EQ2 for over 2 years, but burned out on WoW and Lotrol really isn't my cup of tea.  I still had EQ2 on my hard drive,so I resubscribed and updated the game (about 10 hrs worth of download time)  My question is, I am getting a new pc, nothing great but a dual core AMD with 3 gig of ram and it will be an improvement over my current 5 year old machine.  I really want to save my characters and such, even though I haven't played for a long time, they still have some plats I worked hard for longer ago.  The new machine will have Vista on it, (xp on old 1) but I was wondering if when I re-install the game, will my characters be saved to Sony's site or are they on my hard drive?  The game has changed sooooo much and my old pc just can't seem to chug along fast enough.  Also, the new pc has onboard graphics, ati 256, but I realize that I probably will need to upgrade to better graphics card.  What is a good card in 100 to 160 dollar price range?  New pc has pci expressx16 slot (whatever that is)  Also says it has pc1x1 slot.  I really can't afford any more expensive card than around $160, (would really like 1 around $100-125.  Thanks for any help you can give me>

[Pon]

<blockquote>The new machine will have Vista on it, (xp on old 1) but I was wondering if when I re-install the game, will my characters be saved to Sony's site or are they on my hard drive?  </blockquote><p>Yes your toons and everything about them are saved server side. The only thing you will loose will be any custom ui's and/or UI configurations like window placements, opacities, etc. </p>

[StormCinder]

<p>You may get better advice on this thread, or on the tech help forum, but I've heard that when switching machines you can just copy the EQ2 directory to the new harddrive, in order to avoid downloading all of the updates again.  </p><p>Not sure if that works with your O/S change or not.  Maybe you do the disk install, then before logging in/downloading updates, you copy the files over?</p><p>SC</p>

[Killerbee3000]

you d/l the patcher, run it to the point where it starts patching, abort, then copy files into directory, then re run patcher and play

[xOnaton1]

Tom's Hardware has a guide for the best video cards in each price range. It's updated every month. Here's the November guide.<a href="http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/06/best_graphics_card/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11..._graphics_card/</a>Othesus - Dirge - Lucan DLereVaspar - Fury - Lucan DLere

[Despak]

<p>It depends, if you want to have EQ2 appear in the Vista Game Directory and your program files; then you will need to install (from disk) at least the original game.  From there you can just copy the EQ2 directory from your old pc into the new one.</p><p>Otherwise you can copy the directory straight accross to a folder and find and run Everquest2.exe (or maybe EQ2.exe) (I can never remember which one is the EQ2 launcher) and it will download the patcher files it needs and run.</p>