This is a tough question to answer without knowing more about your computer
other than that it has a FX5200 video card.  Speaking generally, it is not
often the case that there is just one bottleneck to performance that is so
significant that lifting it will greatly improve game play.  More often, a
system with one bottleneck has others that are waiting to make their
presence known, once the first is addressed.  This is because systems,
especially pre-built systems from the big name integrators, tend to keep all
the parts that they use roughly in balance with each other.  Therefore,
improving one part only reveals the limitations of the next part.

My fear is that a system with a FX5200 video card just really never was
intended to be particularly strong at playing computer games, and you'll
probably better be able to get what you want, which is a computer that plays
games well, by looking for or assemblying a system that is intended for
games.  This isn't to say that you have to go buy a high end Alienware game
system, for example.  But, focusing on video cards, again, many computer
games need fairly powerful video card these days, and these video cards, in
turn, need the support of other components that match their capabilities
well.

Having said that, there are some things that you can do to try and isolate
the effects of certain components on performance.  With regard to whether
you have enough RAM or not, you should pay attention to whether your system
is making use of the page file during game play.  The easiest way to do this
is to pay attention to the hard drive light.  If the hard drive light is
frequently coming on, especially during times that it seems like your game
play is deteriorating, chances are that you don't have enough RAM.

You can try to sort out the effects of the CPU versus the video card, to
some extent, by trying the game at different resolutions.  The idea is that
at lower resolutions, the CPU is more likely to be the limiting factor and
at higher resolutions the video card should become the limiting factor.  So,
if running the game at the lowest resolutions seems to significantly improve
things, the video card may be what is holding things back.  If lowering the
resolution doesn't seem to help at all, it could be the CPU that is the
problem.

If you really wanted to get experimental about it, you could also try
underclocking the CPU by running your system at much lower front side bus
speed (but stick with the multiples of 33MHz, if you have the option of
varying the frontside bus by smaller increments) in order to see if this
aggravates the problems you are seeing.  Likewise, you could even use a 3rd
party utility, like Powerstrip, or the hidden clock frequency capability in
the nvidia drivers, enabled with the "Coolbits" registry hack, to slow down
the speed of your video card to see how this affects things.

Hope this helps some.

John Sproule

----- Original Message -----
From: justin shim
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 10:25 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] upgrade RAM vs. video card



I noticed yesterday that lots of moving polygons (specifically tanks in C&C
Generals) really slows down my computer.  I'm wondering, if I wanted to fix
this, which would help more: RAM or a better video card?  I have a Geforce
FX 5200, so pretty much everything should be better.

              The NOSPIN Group is now offering Free PC Tech
                     support at our newest website:
                          http://freepctech.com