I have installed The Sims 2 on my computer and it runs so freaking slow that it's hard to play. what do I need to get running properly? Crime stories also runs slow, and it won't even think of running Oblivion.

Compaq Presario SR1403WM
196 MB Ram
16x CD-DVD ROM
VIDEO card says "Intragrated with 64 MB"
plenty of free space on HD
Running Windows XP

Now system requirements for game are xp, 800 mhz or faster cpu, 256 ram, 8x or faster cd drive, 3.5 GB free space, direct x 9.0 for video and sound. video card must have 32 MB or more memory and one of these T&L capable chipsets: ATI Radeon 7200 or greater, NVIDIA GeForce 2 or greater.

The only thing I see is that i am a little short on ram, my question is, is their something wrong with the video card compatability, does the shortness of ram really affect the game THAT much, what do i need to buy/install to really be able to play these games?

Thanks
Mandymy video card is an SiS 760 rev 00, is this T&L compatable?Ok first you should have the minimum RAM that is required if you want the game to run properly. Also you have onboard video. You probably need to upgrade to a video card to have the graphics run at their optimal performance.

Also your processor is a P3 and runs at 651Mhz. The minimum is 800. Now that's fine, but you are going to need to beef up your RAM to pick up the extra slack and take some of the load from your processor. That's also where upgrading and buying a video card will help as well. That way the video card will run the graphics for you. Helps the processor breathe a little if you will. Well I hope that helps you out.

And one more thing I would like to mention. If and when you get a video card installed, make sure to buy one that is AGP. Don't GO with PCI....it is way to outdated. Your motherboard has an AGP slot so you should buy AGP. To find it on the motherboard they are typically brown in color and are SHORTER than the PCI slots, which are typically white in color.If you're looking to game, you need a new computer.
There's just no way that you will be able to cost-effectively upgrade that PC to play modern games - it will work out a lot cheaper to start again.
Your processor is very old as gaming goes, you have an integrated video card which is no good for games, and you have very little RAM (I find XP is INTOLERABLY slow with 256Mb RAM, you have even less thanks to your integrated GPU).