Making my graphics better

[Krustis]

Hi there, i am relatively new to computing and have a HP t461 pc. I have purchased a nvidia 6600GT and am runing on 1g RAM. I Play battlefield 2 and would like to play many new high end games such as the forthcomin battlefield 2142 . I can only run battlefield 2 quite smoothly on medium settings though, and i have a crackling in the backgroudn only wen i play that game. I am considering upgrading to 2g RAM, though im not sure if it will make any difference. Is there an yway of boosting the power of my current card? Is there any way i can improve the graphical output without splashing out on a new graphics card? I know thats a lot to answer but i hope you guys could help me out please, thanks a lot.

 

[cyrax]

You could overclock your 6600GT. 2GB would be good for BF2, it runs best on 2GB.

 

[Krustis]

Ok, thanks, so how go i go about overclocking and what does it do?

 

[Trifid]

Ignore the overclocking bit for now, especially as you will not be able to do it on a HP.

The problem with BF2, is the draw distance requires more than 128mb of ram to have it on high settings and the furthest draw distance. - not well said.

There is not really alot of difference in the image quality of BF2 on high settings compared to medium, so I would leave it as it is.

 

[Krustis]

Thanks guys, so how would me going from running at 1g RAM to 2g make a difference? would it be quicker to load, and could i apply higher settings without the lag? Would the crackling sound issue be sorted out?

 

[Trifid]

BF2, if let lose will use over 1gb of ram (uses 1.25GB's on my system on high settings.) but as I said it also needs more than 128mb's of VRAM to go onto the highest settings.

I don't know what the crackling is, I treat it as part of the atmosphere (loud explosions and going slightly deaf )

 

[aaronkupen]

From my experience, you can overclock gpu's on any system as long as it isn't onborad graphics.

 

[Nubius]

Ignore the overclocking bit for now, especially as you will not be able to do it on a HP

What aaron said. It's the graphics card. They can overclock that. You just can't OC the CPU because the pre-made machines will lack the BIOS options. Dont OC a GPU in the BIOS.

 

[Trifid]

My bad, missed the graphics card bit and just read overclocking. I would still stand by the leaveing it for now, until you know exactly what you do (read guides online if you are interested.)

 

[Krustis]

So upgrading form 1g to 2g, what differences would this make to my gaming?