kileak said:
I have a compaq presario with 512mb of ram upgrading to 1024mb. will more ram make games run better, or will the graphics card always limit the speed games run at. the graphics card is an ATI radeon 4x agp with 64mb of shared memory. Thanks.
Well, it really depends on what games you are playing, and what type of lag you are talking about.
If you are playing high-tech games such as FarCry and such which require a lot of video memory to play, it is more likely the video card that is altering your performance.
Here are some descriptions on what type of lag you are talking about:
MEMORY LAG - If you do not have enough memory in your system, sometimes games will "stutter" or "pause" for a few seconds, and then "unpause" and start moving again. This generally means that a RAM upgrade will help. If this isnt the case, read the next description.
VIDEO LAG - "Video lag" is caused by a fault in video cards. Since video cards not only help the graphics look a little better, but also help games run "smoothe", this can also cause problems if your video card is not powerful enough. A sign of "video lag" is when the game does not run smooth, and when using the mouse to look around, if trying to look around is very jerky or non-smoothe, it is likely video lag. Also, if your video card is not powerful enough, sometimes the game will stutter and the ground will look as if it is moving back and forth.
Hopefully these descriptions will help.
Good luck!