video card/memory question...

[suniel]

If I am constrained to get either more memory or a new video card, which change would give the biggest improvement in graphics performance?

[BurnerD]

What do you currently have for both?

Normally the video card would provide the best benefit, but if you are already running a decent video card and only have 512MB of system RAM for example then you might be better off with a RAM upgrade first.

RAM is dirt cheap so 2GB would be a good place to be for this game.

I just saw a 8800GT 512MB video card for 150 bucks....

[suniel]

I am using an old computer, a 2 GHz P4 with 768 MB of SDRAM and a GeForce 5500 (256 MB RAM)...

[suniel]

oops.. 768 MB of PC800 RDRAM, not SDRAM....

[CaptKurt]

Get more RAM.

[Freeman]

/Agrees with BurnerD.

If you have less than 1GB of RAM, then you are better off bumping it up to a minimum of 1GB, preferably 2GB.(I was pricing RAM this morning, and you can get 2GB of good DDR2 RAM for $40, maybe even less) If you already have at least 1GB, then your video card may give you a better performance boost. Of course, it is also possible that the bottleneck may be elsewhere in your system, so you may want to post your CPU, RAM, video card, and hard drive size/speed as well.

[Freeman]

Grr, I post and miss three replies after I hit reply. Based on your specs, I wouldn't spend any money on that system. You would be better off doing a major upgrade of the motherboard, video card, processor, and RAM.(Or buying a new system if you don't know how to build one) No single component is likely to give you a major improvement, since several of your components are on the low end by today's standards.

[suniel]

Ok, here is the report generated by Everest..


Motherboard:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4, 2000 MHz (20 x 100)
Motherboard Name Dell Dimension 8200
Motherboard Chipset Intel Tehama i850(E)
System Memory 768 MB (PC800 RDRAM)
BIOS Type Phoenix (11/12/01)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port ECP Printer Port (LPT1)

Display:
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 (256 MB)
3D Accelerator nVIDIA GeForce FX 5500
Monitor Plug and Play Monitor [NoDB] (V67 50N 07238)

Multimedia:
Audio Adapter Creative SB Live! Value (CT4780) Sound Card

Storage:
IDE Controller Intel(r) 82801BA Bus Master IDE Controller
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive ST3120026A (120 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100)
Disk Drive USB 2.0 USB Flash Drive USB Device (1921 MB, USB)
Optical Drive _NEC DV-5800A (16x/48x DVD-ROM)
Optical Drive TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M
SMART Hard Disks Status OK

Partitions:
C: (NTFS) 114470 MB (69471 MB free)

[suniel]

Hmmm... I figured that might be the case.. the motherboard/CPU are about 7 years old now.. hard drive and video card are about 2 years old I think.

[Dailus]

As strange as it might sound I am playing on what looks to be the exact same rig( even the same age) except for the video card. RDRAM is way over priced so I wouldnn't go there. Two years ago I upgraded from a geforce2 MX400 64 meg card to a Geforce xfx 6200 256 meg card that I got for 45 bucks at tiger dirrect and I play the game nearly lag free on "high" setings bouncing between 20 -30 fps.

If it were me I may look for a cheap Geforce 6800. AGP cards are getting harder to find, but they are still out there and dirt cheap. Getting a better card than that will probably just be a waste. No way I'd pay 200 bucks or more for the ram upgrade and thats what its going to take. Take the vid card upgrade for 50 bucks to hold you over til you can get a new pc.

On a side note I just ordered a new pc yesterday from dell cheaper than I could build myself and you can still get XP through June 18th. Dell robs you blind on Ram, but I got a free 20 in wide screen monitor so it evened out. If the site doesn't offer it on the custom machine you build just call Dell and tell them you won't buy it unless it has XP, they will "upgrade" (lol) you to xp at no charge. I even got to keep the 3 gigs of ram they put in the machine to run vista even though I switched to xp.

-Dailus

[Strakeln]

oops.. 768 MB of PC800 RDRAM, not SDRAM....

Sounds like a... Dell 8100/8200 series?

RDRAM is not cheap like most memory - will cost you $250 or so to get up to 1GB and $700 or more to get to 2GB (since you probably only have 4 slots and they're all currently being used).

On the plus side, it's still the fastest memory around.

Edit: I honestly did not see your specs before I posted this, man am I good or what? Called the 8200 right out of the box!!!!

[suniel]

Well, I gave into the urge to buy an eVga geforce 7600GT card (512 MB) that is AGP... And it definitely shows a significant difference from the way the game looked before.. The water actually looks watery and I didn't know that death looked that way I'd say that that card was well worth the cost