I'm afraid that, which ever one you buy, this will still leave your system
with a signicant bottleneck for playing games. That being said, I guess
that normally I would say get the video card first, since we are talking
about a 3D rendered game, but I'm not sure if this is at the root of your
getting disconnected. Is your hard drive really busy at the times that you
"lag out" and get disconnected (ie, is the hard drive light light glowing
almost steadily)? If so, it may be that your system is so dependent on
using the windows page file, which is inherently much slower than physical
RAM, that your computer can't keep up with everything it needs to be doing
on the fly. If this is the case, adding more RAM, first, might be your
better choice. With your low end video card, you'll still get very low fps
(more RAM won't help this), especially when there is a lot going on, but
hopefully, you'll at least stay connected. You can also set your video
settings to the game's minimums, which will help somewhat, while there's not
much you can do to have the game require less memory space to run.
For a decent game video card that isn't hugely expensive, I'd be looking at
Nvidia's 6600GT (though this usually is only a 128MB card), 6800XT, or 6800
(plain, no letters after the number). I'm not sure exactly how these cards
stack up against each other, but I think they are pretty close. It may also
depend on how a particular manufacturer has choosen to set the clock speeds
for their version of one of these cards. It looks like, for now at least,
Nvidia has stopped introducing much in the way of new AGP cards, except for
their top end 7800GS; so, the above mentioned cards are about all you can
find from Nvidia, now.
From ATI, it looks like their real game cards start with their X1600Pro.
The older X800GTO might be a small step up, depending on clock speeds.
I don't think that you'll need a 550w power supply to handle your system,
even with 2GB of RAM and one of the video cards mentioned above, but if you
have a kind of cheappo, 300w or less, power supply that came with a case, I
agree that a power supply upgrade is worthwhile. I like Antec power
supplies when I'm looking for power supply and case, together; otherwise, I
prefer the Enermax power supplies (but they are more expensive). Although I
haven't made much use of them, Fortron or FPS power supplies seem to be
good, no frills units. Although your system may not require it, may as well
make sure that your new power supply is a ATX 2.0 (or newer) version. By
now, chances are that's all you'll see.
Good luck.
John Sproule
----- Original Message -----
From: "Laura" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 2:36 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Performance improvement ram or video card
After a successful first build of my pc, I realized I cheaped out where I=
shouldnt have. Namely on the video card and on RAM. I have a 3.0g inte=
l, an asus mobo, abysmally low 512 mb ram, and a joke of a 128/64 Radeon =
9550 video card. See where I cheaped out? My question is as follows.
I play world of warcraft and experience severe lag in high graphics inten=
se encounters. To the point where I disconnect from their servers. I ru=
n on a cable connection so I highly doubt this connectivity issue is dire=
ctly related to my internet connection. I do believe it is hardware rela=
ted. Should I go for 2g of ram or an NVIDIA 256/256 graphics card first.=
Cost is somewhat of a factor as I will have to run my upgrade in 2 step=
s. The RAM I found is within my budger (CORSAIR 2x 1g ddr400 pc3200) at =
$170 and the video card I selected (which will require a new Antec 550W p=
ower supply to drive it) is $160 and the power supply is $90.
Which should I get first that will produce the most noticable performance=
increase? (for the video card fans, I cannot use PCI express unfortunat=
ely due to mobo not supporting it)
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