What should I do?

S

Squiner

New Member
Without changing my video card, what change in hardware should I make to improve my computer for gaming? Will a new processor help a lot, more ram? Or is my computer fairly balanced and I would need an overall improvement to see appreciable gains in gaming? My comp is in the sig.

Thanks for looking
 
If you have a pretty substantial budget, I would upgrade to Core 2 Duo. But that would also require you to upgrade your motherboard and RAM.

Otherwise I think another GB of RAM would nice.
 
If I were to change the CPU I was just thinking I would go to dual core so I could keep the MB I have now but I wasn't sure if it would be woth it. I'm not sure what Core 2 duo is so I need to go look that up. Also, I was thinking about another gig of RAM like you said bigsaucybob.
 
The only worthwhile upgrade is another 1GB of memory. You really only want to upgrade the CPU or GPU when your computer can't handle what you want it to do (and defrags + adware/virus scans dont help).
 
Have you tried overclocking anything? Things I look at to maximize performance: Check for the latest bios versions for the M.B. Newest drivers for the video card? Keep the hard drive defragmented. Keep all spyware off of the computer using Lava-soft Ad-aware or similar. Close things I don't need running in the background in the system tray. Increase the amount of RAM. Increase cooling capacity. Keept the dust blown out of the case and off of the heat sinks. Get faster hard drive. I recommend W.D. 10,000 R.P.M Raptors in Striped RAID. Which is the same as saying RAID 0. Also I still think AMD is better for gaming. I basically had what you have before I upgraded recently. It ran BF2 pretty well with things set almost all on high with a few down to medium. Would occasionally get a chop here or there at the worst possible time. The new rig is awesome by the way. Unbelievable difference when playing BF2. No hiccups whatsoever with all settings maxed out. Super fast map loads. Also something I didn't really expect that improved my game playing. When I pan now (look around) while moving etc. everything is much smoother allowing greater vision of whats going on. Being able to spot things faster. Its GREAT!! Its like getting a new pair of glasses.
 
Last edited:
I have not tried to overclock anything but the video card. I probably should OC the CPU some but I have been nervous about doing that. I think I will end up getting another gig of ram and OC the CPU a bit. I was really trying to determine if I had a weak link in my system so I could upgrade that component. Sounds like I have a moderate system that can be tweaked. I guess it's what I expected because I only spent about $600 on it about a year ago.

Thanks everyone
 
Putting a dual core CPU in it won't help that much. You can look for a very modest increase, but nothing you'll get excited about. A lot of games aren't going to use the dual core anyways. Some do for sure though (Quake 4 comes to mind). It's more of a benefit for multitasking and what not.

RAM I'm not convinced of either. Especially not with XP. There are a couple of games that will soak it up if you have it, but not too many. Start with the overclocking. It's free. See what happens from there.
 
Squiner said:
Without changing my video card, what change in hardware should I make to improve my computer for gaming? Will a new processor help a lot, more ram? Or is my computer fairly balanced and I would need an overall improvement to see appreciable gains in gaming? My comp is in the sig.

Thanks for looking
Click to expand...

You limited yourself right from the start by saying "without changing the video card" Thats about the only thing thats gonna give you real noticeable gains with your current rig . The 7900 GT has about double the memory bandwith that the 7600 GT has.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top