Best upgrade direction?

Helium_Junkie · 23 Aug 2006 at 12:26

Greets all

Not kept up to speed with recent chips/boards and the like and now I could use a little advice.

I have an AMD Barton 2500 in a NF7 board, with 1GB (2x512) of Corsair XMS 3200, which I guess is a bit old now :S

It isn't overclocked any more, since my favourite game would regularly crash, no matter how long Prime95 ran, or how far I upped the RAM voltage etc etc.

The graphics card is a nVidia 6800 GT (I forget the brand!) with 256MB.

Now I think my graphics card is fine, it should be quite happy running World of Warcraft and BF2, imo, at high settings.

However this is not the case, I have to tone down all the settings - and this makes me sad :/

So what could be the reasons, from a Hardware PoV. I do tend to have a lot on in the background of my PC, could simply adding another 512 stick improve the performance? How would you alleviate this issue (in as simple a step as possible, I don't want a whole new machine

).

Thanks for any input

robertgilbert86 · 23 Aug 2006 at 13:09

BF2 needs 2gb of RAM really, the 6800GT should run it fine.

You should consider an AMD 939 setup if you're on a budget, get a £40 mobo, a 3700+ for £65ish and 2GB of value ram for about £125

Total=£240ish

But, is the 6800GT AGP? If so, you might want to hang on a while untill it's fully obsolete

Helium_Junkie · 23 Aug 2006 at 14:01

Yarr, AGP.
939 boards have no AGP slots? :/

As my ram is 2x512, and there are only 3 slots... shall I go for 3 512? or add a 1GB stick to the twin pair.

Zefan · 23 Aug 2006 at 14:06

Helium_Junkie said:
939 boards have no AGP slots? :/

Some do.

The Asrock Dual thingamy has both PCI-E and AGP and is damn cheap. It's also exandable to AM2 and DDR2.

Get this board, a cheap cpu (3700 is bargain) and a gb of ram (doesn't matter whether it's 1gb stick or 2x512's, it wont run in dual channel either way).

Oh you also might need a new PSU.

Tetras · 23 Aug 2006 at 14:13

I'd say that is your problem too, the CPU and RAM, an extra 1GB will be great for BF2 and a 64 3700+ to boost/smooth out performance generally.

Helium_Junkie · 23 Aug 2006 at 14:33

3700 San Diego £64

Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 (Socket 939 & Upgradable to AM2) AGP & PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-002-AK) £42

And my current TwinX 2x512 Corsair 3200llpt, another 512 of same stuff pinched from second pc = 1.5GB. Perhaps by another 512 also...

Problem there is the need for a new sound card as well. Mine's PCI.

Is that the general idea?

Zefan · 23 Aug 2006 at 14:34

Helium_Junkie said:
Problem there is the need for a new sound card as well. Mine's PCI.

Eh?

PCI-E motherboards come with standard PCI slots aswell.

Helium_Junkie · 23 Aug 2006 at 14:43

Oh?
The one in question says:

- PCI Express x16 slot
- PCI Express x1 slot

Zefan · 23 Aug 2006 at 14:45

All boards have about 3 PCI slots, you can see them in the picture too.

Helium_Junkie · 23 Aug 2006 at 14:50

So I can!

Thanks Zefan

So disregarding that part, is the rest of that ok?