I recently updated my gaming system from 512mb of memory to 1 gig. I was hoping that this would increase performance a good amount, but I only got a couple FPS improvement.

I'm using a radeon 9200 128mb video card. It sucks balls. I was looking into buying a newer fancy shmancy card. I have an AGP slot, but the slot on my particular motherboard is agp 2, not agp 3. I saw a good deal on a radeon 1650 pro (512mb agp, runs at 4X and 8X). I understand that with my current MB, I will be stuck running it at 4X. However, will I still get a significant increase in performance, or will the throttling from my MB make the upgrade insignificant?

Alas, I can't afford a new PC, so I'm stuck with the one I have for now. I've maxxed out the memory, so I assume the only place I can increase performance is with a new video card.

Anyway, if anyone can explain how the agp2 vs. agp3 thing works and how it will effect me, I would appreciate it.

What game are you trying to squeeze more fps out of?

Make sure that your power supply in the computer has more than the minimum required wattage for what ever graphics card you get. Other wise, it'll short and fry your computer.

just get a 9800pro. they're still decent cards and you can pick one up for 50 bucks or so.

dude why is 128 mb not enough? what fucking game are you running? im mean yea it could get better but i cant imagine 128 sucking balls. even the on board shared ram video cards are not horrendous nowadays 128 should be sweet...

ps. is pci express faster than agp at this point? someone clarify

other ideas for speeding that shit up
1- defrag(if ur on winblows) and clean up your ram maybe switch old chips with new ones and run tests on them
2- get one of those raptor drive thatare like 10000rpm put the system and game on that
3- if ur running the game off a cd/dvd get a faster drive
4- use one of those overclocking programs on your current card supposedly its really hard to fry them and doesnt matter if u dont care about the card
5- that power supply shit is a good idea above
6- clean your computer with compressed air and make sure everything is seated nice- this can help alot believe it or not.
7- clean install
8- eat a bag of dix
9- spend less time on games

PCI express is the next big thing so that you can push 8GB around. I don't know for sure, but I think the fastest AGP does is 2GB.

but comparing PCI-e and AGP is like saying "what's faster, USB of VGA?"
AGP is just for video and PCI-e can do anything. I'm betting they are going to run them at 10GB for 10GBps cards

just think like 10 years ago the fastest pc on the market couldnt even do 1gigaflop now a graphics card can do like 10 times that... kinda nuts

um... a GPU can't do 10gigaflops.... wait a second I'm going to google

*comes back*
HOLY SHIT, A TNT CARD CAN DO 200 GIGAFLOPS? WTF! I never knew.

the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX can do 520 gigaflops. damn.. I've been left behind...

I get 300 fps in cs:source.
About 90-99 in BF2.
The only game I cant run full blast is MSFSIMX.

More system memory in the computer will defintely help. 1GB is ideal for most computer shit, but for higher end gaming, 2GB is definitely better and you will see a difference. Just match it up to the memory that you currently have in your PC that is written on the memory chip on a sticker.

I worked on my computer all day yesterday, and tracked down the serial numbers of most of the components. From what I see, it's not really the throttling at the video card that's killing me. With the video, soundcard, and other peripherals I'm running, my powersource does not cut it at 180W. After that, the motherboard I have is also choking the crap out of things. I have maxxed out at 1G of memory, which coupled with the 128mb video should at least render well in a crap graphics game like WoW with medium settings, but I'm even getting 4-5 fps in there. I want to start playing more FPS games, and what I've got for a box won't cut it. I'd need a new powersource, new motherboard, new memory to match it, and probably a soundcard upgrade. For what that will cost me, I might be better off just buying a newer PC.

Menstrual, as for what games the only game I have installed now that I can't run is Doom3. However, I'm looking to try a slew of first person shooters and other online cames. I like knowing that when I kill someone, it's really pissing them off. I've heard doom3 was one of the more video intensive games, so I installed that first. Also gonna check out supreme commander, but it doesn't look like I need much to run that.

ArrowHead NLI said:

I meant video card

I remember back a couple years ago people were bitching that they'd have to upgrade to play doom3 and that it was a hog. Now there's dozens of games out there that use twice as much resources as doom3 and don't produce anywhere near the eye candy. doom3 was really great for squeezing eyecandy out of mediocre hardware. That Carmack knows his shit.

I have a 9800 pro redeon for the past 3 years. Doom 3 runs great even at really high resolutions. I noticed with Fear with how much the newer games take up way more resources than Doom 3. Prey looks incredible.

Exactly. FEAR is a fucking hog and it doesn't look any better than doom3.

Even if your PC is a couple years old, you should be able to kick it up to 2GB of RAM with 2 x 1GB sticks. What kind of memory does it take?

pc100

oh man i have tons and tons of pc100 sticks lying around with no computer that uses pc100 RAM. They're all like 8 and 16MB and maybe a few 32MB and every once in a while i dream up some scheme where i can somehow built some type or RAM array to somehow use all my PC100 RAM but then i start thinking about other things......

anonymous said:

doom 3 had incredibly low polygon counts and iffy texture qualities. the entire game relied on ambiance and shading to make it look the way it did. all these newer games have 10 times the polygons and fucking mile long skins for everything, plus have the computer doing hundreds of advanced calculations for all these useless physics shits at any given time.

GG, LOL.

Forgot to leave my name the last time. Fear did nothing for me. It was all special forces types crashing through ceilings, a cool horror story intersparsed with the Japanese little girl black hair creepy syndrome. But that's just me.

Fear was one of the games I was looking to get into. Right now, I am looking towards Fear, Oblivion (elder scrolls), and some counter strike style fps as my next gaming purchases. However, I'm not going to be dropping money on any games until I can get a system together that runs them.

As for the memory question someone asked, my computer runs PC2100, but I currently have 2 512 sticks of PC2700 in there. (I believe that it still runs at the level of PC2100 though, right?). My motherboard maxes out at 1 gig, 2X512. As I said previously, My processor is decent, but I think I won't be able to go much further with the gaming until I get a whole new PC. I've been weighing the option of upgrading my power supply and seeing what happens, but I think with my shit motherboard and memory, it'll be cheaper in the long run to get a new PC.

My question is, if I GET a new PC with one of those new dual processors and more room for memory, Will the power supply still need to be beefed up to handle a new videocard, soundcard, and other peripherals? I wan't to go as cheap as I can, but at the same time I HATE lag, low FPS, and not being able to see targets in the distance when I play a game. I don't really give a shit about running dual GPU's so I can see the hair on a snipers eyebrows. I just want to see the guy I'm going to kill before he sees me.

I recently got a Razer Copperhead mouse for a sweet deal. ($80, PLUS a $15 mail in rebate). It really showed me for the first time how much the actual hardware effects response time/gameplay. 1000Hz polling, and switchable laser that can be set on the fly from 400 all the way to 2000 dpi. I was freehand drawing circles in photoshop, the thing is so damned smooth and responsive.

With a new computer, they mostly come with 250 watt power supplies and only have PCI Express expansion slots for graphics. That is definitely better than AGP, but you won't be able to use your old graphics card.

As far as getting a dual core processor (AMD 64x2, or AMD 64 live which is like the 64x2 or better, or Intel VIIV), those are defintely the way to go. I prefer the AMD chips over Intel, but there are other schools of thought out there.

Almost all new PCs come with Windows Vista which runs slower than XP (thank Microshaft.)

You have a few options.....

If you want to stay with your current computer, you can kick it up to 2 GB of memory by getting these:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...etails.asp?EdpNo=1558792&CatId=1353

Other wise, if you get a new PC, get one that has a dual core processor (I recommend an AMD) with 2 GB of RAM and be aware that the built in graphics card might not cut it and you may need to buy both a new graphics card (PCI Express) and larger power supply to power it.

You have a few options, just giving you a heads up.

Oh my god. I tried to update my video drivers last night, because the ones I had were about a year old. Followed the instructions on the ATI website verbatim. Deleted the old ATI from the add/remove menu, restart, CRAP. Nothing but a flashing message from my monitor saying "Input not supported". Yeah, I thought it was sketchy that the ATI site wanted me to uninstall the drivers before installing new ones. My computer has not onboard video, so since the monitor has to run off the video card I have no monitor without it.

Anyway, after a fun night of swapping drives between computers I finally realized that I could so a safe mode startup and select "use last working configuration" to get it to boot up in 1024X768. (seems it was the high resolution my computer was set to was the "unsupported" part that was keeping my monitor down.) Fun Fun. Oh yeah, all that to find out that I could not install the new catalyst controls because I do not have the .net 2.0 framework on my computer. So, after staying up til 7:00 am fixing this fucker, I got the newer driver but lost my control software. JOY!

Is there any way possible to get the .net for windows xp SP1? I have a not so kosher OS, so I cannot upgrade to SP2 the normal way, or my whole system will just be shut down. Either that, or is there anyplace doing some decent blowout sales on Windows XP pro now that vista is out? Best Buy fucked me years ago when I got this computer, and after 1.5 years of fighting with them to honor their warranty on it the replaced it for me, only to not include my OS recovery disk. Therefore, the first time I reformatted I was stuck having to use a pirated XP copy. BEST BUY IS TEH GAY!

it doesn't have a built-in recovery when you boot it and hit f12 or f8?

No. There was a little recovery partition on the original harddrive, but I've swapped it out several times since then and wiped it clean. The HP's best buy were selling at the time all came with a restore disk. However when I got mine they either forgot it or intentionally left it out. It was a bit hectic as the police were there and I had recently dumped over an entire display aisle. Like I said, it took over 1.5 years just to get those fuckers to honor their 3 year at home warranty I paid an extra few hundred dollars for.

Fuck bestbuy

powerkok said:

kok, get on xfire sometime, I'll play BF 2 with you. I quit CS:Source

DreamingInExile said:

Whats your xfire names?

read through this thread and i just wanted to mention before ya run out to buy it, i'm thinking about upgrading my computer to play supreme commander too...because it's supposed to need an INSANE amount of power to get it running right, otherwise on a big map with a couple players it'll completely bog down