Upgrading with little knowledge

[IF06]

Why don't you just upgrade your video card, 512 of ram (refering to your actual ram not the memory installed in the card, 256 mb installed into the card should be fine, its a standard though) should be enough to handle a good enough amount of programs, in your case your game.

And Nvida is the preference for most of the people i know and cyberpowerpc delivers pc's built with nvidia cards mostly (they're a custom pc supplier), plus they introduced quad technology which is a step further than radeon.

 

[john3]

u should actually wait to replace the whole thing, because Oblivion is a Killer game, that needs A LOT of power, probably the most power hungry game today.

 

[Spartan]

u should actually wait to replace the whole thing, because Oblivion is a Killer game, that needs A LOT of power, probably the most power hungry game today.

Only on higher resolutions. It's not that much of a graphical showcase on 1280*1024.

 

[IfYouHaveToAsk]

Right, for £37.99 you can get a radeon 9550 graphics card delivered from amazon (cheaper than ebuyer since you have to pay more for ebuyer delivery)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0002SM5SU/026-8775177-9105218?v=glance&n=560798

I recently purchased it for a friend who has a 2.4ghz processor, 512mb ram and was previously running on integrated gforce 4 graphics which were more like gforce 2 standard.

The radeon 9550 is a tuned down 9600 pro, so all you need to do is uninstall the nvidia card through device manager, take it out, install the new one and install the drivers supplied on the cd.

Then head over to http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/ and download ati tool. This is a small overclocking application which you can use to simply increase the speed of the card from 250mhz to 400 mhz straight away - or if you prefer you can let it detect the fastest speed automatically.

After doing exactly this to my friend's pc it now runs oblivion, cod2 flawlessly at 1024 * 768 with the graphics on low for oblivion and medium for Cod 2. When i say flawlessly i mean no errors or slowdowns - and it doesnt look bad either.

A budget option that should help you a bit.

 

[aliasaid]

don't get 9550 - very weak card.


there are many different types of 6600 and 6800.. you gotta be more specific.. outof hte 6600, the 6600gt is best, 6600 is mid, and 6600LE is worst. with 6800 you have even more options... so be specific which ones your considering so we can tell you. as for x1600, i assume you mean the x1600pro, which is pretty good. out of the 6600gt and x1600pro, i'd get w/e is cheaper.

 

[IfYouHaveToAsk]

don't get 9550 - very weak card.


there are many different types of 6600 and 6800.. you gotta be more specific.. outof hte 6600, the 6600gt is best, 6600 is mid, and 6600LE is worst. with 6800 you have even more options... so be specific which ones your considering so we can tell you. as for x1600, i assume you mean the x1600pro, which is pretty good. out of the 6600gt and x1600pro, i'd get w/e is cheaper.

Good luck getting a 6600 for £30 - cheapest i could see was £60

Yes the 9550 is not the fastest card in the world but if he wants to play oblivion and not spend a huge amount then give it a go.

However if you've decided to go for a 6600 then that will be more powerful, just make sure you get AGP not PCI-E

 

[Dymond]

well you guessed right anyway lol the 6600 gt or the x1600 pro... i think the cheaper option is the 6600gt thanks for all info everyone.

EDIT @ Ifyouhavetoask - Im just gonna pay more, was a stupid budget anyway lol... should be able to pick up a 6600gt for about 55 quid.

one last thing... ive decided to go for either a nvidia 6600 (maybe 6800 depending on price) or a radeon x1600... what do you think is better?

could someone answer that for me though?

 

[Metr01973]

one last thing... ive decided to go for either a nvidia 6600 (maybe 6800 depending on price) or a radeon x1600... what do you think is better?

Again this really down to personal preference. I personally like Nvidia and will always continue to use them. I had the standard 6600 and it was able to play Oblivion on 1024x768@low-med settings and the 6600GT you're going to get is better than that. So my advise would be, stick with the 6600GT. It's a great mid priced card and Nvidia are alot easier to use and install.

 

[Dymond]

sorry im so stupid i dint mean to put that quote in there... lol
what i meant to ask was.... someone said this to me

you use 4 x 512 MB chips to max out the system RAM memory

Does that mean i cant use a 1gb stick of RAM and only use 512s?

 

[Dymond]

bump, sorry i know im being a pain
would the 1 gig i bought mean that if i combined it with 512mb wud be 1.5gig or since they are differ sizes they would work separately and only be 1gig?