Upgrade Advice Needed

[jg4064]

Ok. I am lookin to upgrade the system below a piece at a time and was wondering where to start. More ram and a better video card are tops on the list but I need more ideas of what should be after those and how I could possibly squeeze more juice out of what I have now.

P4 2.0a 400 fsb
Intel D845BG mobo
512mb ram 266mhz
100gb 7200rpm hd
geforce fx 5200 128mb
soundblaster 5.1
Win xp home (os)

All of this is running at stock speed

Thought I had a decent system until I ran Far Cry on it and struggled on the Medium settings. This machine must be ready and willing for Doom 3/half life 2. Also, the maker of my pc says that i can only upgrade to 1 gig of ram but i've read elsewhere that it can go to two......what is it.

Thanks

 

[CrucialLabs]

Hello,

The memory max for the motherboard is 2gigs. Looking at all your system specs I would upgrade the memory to 1024MBs, your system maybe bottlenecking in the memory area and this will cause you to get lag and slow game play.

Now when you say the game was struggling on the medium setting, what medium setting? Graphics or level?

If it is graphics then I would look at turning off all background images(desktops) and any programs running other than the game.

Hope this helps.

 

[The Merlin]

Ok. I am lookin to upgrade the system below a piece at a time and was wondering where to start. More ram and a better video card are tops on the list but I need more ideas of what should be after those and how I could possibly squeeze more juice out of what I have now.

P4 2.0a 400 fsb
Intel D845BG mobo
512mb ram 266mhz
100gb 7200rpm hd
geforce fx 5200 128mb
soundblaster 5.1
Win xp home (os)

All of this is running at stock speed

Thought I had a decent system until I ran Far Cry on it and struggled on the Medium settings. This machine must be ready and willing for Doom 3/half life 2. Also, the maker of my pc says that i can only upgrade to 1 gig of ram but i've read elsewhere that it can go to two......what is it.

Thanks

How much are you looking at spending??

If your on a rather tight budget you could get a 2.8ghz HT 800fsb P4 for like $150 or so...

A nice i865 chipset mobo for around a $100...

Atleast 512mb of DDR400 for $100 or so....

And a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro for $200 bucks

Depends really on how much your willing to spend

 

[whatisgoingon]

You should upgrade the 3d graphics card to a better one. The others look fine for now. Doom 3 and half-life 2 will probably have system recommend requirements similar to your computer specifications.

 

[jg4064]

Thanks for the advice guys. Merlin, you mentioned a processor upgrade to a 2.8 ht. I doubt that my mobo supports that but could I put in maybe a 2.4 w/ 533 fsb and if I did would i see a drastic improvement.

Much luv for the fellow techies

 

[Jorsoft]

Upgrading your processor and especially your graphics card will give you the best performance. Memory helps, but not so much. Grab a Radeon 9800 from www.newegg.com and then measure your performance.

 

[The Merlin]

Thanks for the advice guys. Merlin, you mentioned a processor upgrade to a 2.8 ht. I doubt that my mobo supports that but could I put in maybe a 2.4 w/ 533 fsb and if I did would i see a drastic improvement.

Much luv for the fellow techies

Hmm, well your gonna have to see then what the highest FSB you mobo can hold.....


If it goes up to 533fsb then you could probably get up to a 3.06ghz P4.....I think, not entirely sure, but you should be able to find a non-HT 533fsb P4 close to 3ghz

 

[cheerios]

omg u need a 9800XT to run hl2? thats sick, maybe 9600 can do just fine and its soo much more cheaper

 

[jg4064]

Ok, merlin.... me sees the 3.06 gig 533 you speak of and me likes the idea of 1600 mhz for $212. So I was wondering if replacing the chip was just like putting in a nintendo cartridge.....(lol) or would I have to put some paste on it or anything. Also would the bios of the mobo autodetect the new chip or would I have to manually configure the settings.


--------->I Buy Intel Because........Image Is Everthing

 

[The Merlin]

Ok, merlin.... me sees the 3.06 gig 533 you speak of and me likes the idea of 1600 mhz for $212. So I was wondering if replacing the chip was just like putting in a nintendo cartridge.....(lol) or would I have to put some paste on it or anything. Also would the bios of the mobo autodetect the new chip or would I have to manually configure the settings.


--------->I Buy Intel Because........Image Is Everthing

Dunno never actually installed one

Aslong as you have the latest BIOS than it should autodetect the new CPU yes