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Help for an old pc

spawner

spawner

spawner

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Joined
7 Apr 2007
Posts
180
Location
HARWICH/ESSEX
Hi ocuk :)

I have a fairly old system, upgraded my g/card ATI9600SE & pus about a year ago but it sux when playing bf2, loads of lag.

What AGP card would you recommend for a budget of around £70, dont mind what it is :) willing to try anything :) but I require it to run bf2.

Or could I overclock my 9600SE, and how would I go about it, im sry but im a newbie but able to follow instructions lol

Cheers
 
What else is in your system? It might be the money is better split into upgrading a couple of areas. If you are willing to buy secondhand then an X800series card or 6800series card in AGP form would give a good boost but it does depend on the rest of the system. :)
 
Well, its old like i said

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.0GHz
OS: XP Home SP2
Memory: 512MB RAM 2x256 PC2100 <<this i know i need to get at least 1GB
Graphics: RADEON 9600 SE AGP

What else do you need to know?
 
A new graphics card and 2Gb of ram will help, BUT will cost for not the greatest leap in performance. Time to bite the bullet, cpu, mobo ram and graphics card is what you need.
 
If you can fit more Ram onto the motherboard then I'd highly suggest a minimum of at least 1gb Ram total and a graphics card. You should be able to do both for ~£70, whether that means another 512mb and an X800 or 6800series card I don't know. Even if you got 512mb and a 9700/9800pro it would make a large difference to the existing sytem, it wouldn't matter if you had to buy PC3200 as it would just underclock to suit your system. :)

As deadeyedic30 says a full upgrade is probably best but if you can't afford it then the above options are fairly sound.
 
512MB RAM is definitely the culprit for your Battlefield 2 problems, as the game requires about 700MB for medium textures and about 1.6GB for high textures otherwise it will stutter like crazy.

The good news is that your CPU may actually be fine for Battlefield 2, and upgrading to something like a 6800GS or 7600GT along with an extra 512MB RAM might get that game flying at reasonable settings. :)

Should be a very cheap upgrade too, easily under £70 I should think. Especially if you go second-hand.
 
Cheers for info,

I have only 2 ram bays both taken up with 256mb each :( so looks like an order of 1 gb of ram :D

I assume that there is no way of o/c my grapics card then??
 
I would just sell that RAM if possible and go for a 1GB stick, that way you can add a second later if you like. :)

Overclocking your graphics card is possible, but would only yield a few extra frames per second. I think the only way you're going to get the performance you're after right now is to upgrade it, and I'd say the Geforce 7600s on AGP are a good choice. :)
 
Stupid question time

A little advice please,

I have been looking at serveral different agp cards and although I understand the higher the engine clock & memory clock the better the card is, im baffeled with the ddr ddr2 etc, I have a ati9600SE atm which is a ddr, but can I fit a card which has for example ddr3?

Cheers and sorry :D
 
yes you can. as long as its agp, any agp card can work.

ill asume the agp slot is 8x speed though....

sorry that may confuze things more
 
With the mix of the 9600 + the 512mb of RAM, bf2 wont run very well if at all.

Might as well upgrade now, cheap c2d, 2gb of RAM and an x1950pro and youll run bf2 with nearly everything on high :D
 
Megahurtz400 said:
With the mix of the 9600 + the 512mb of RAM, bf2 wont run very well if at all.

Might as well upgrade now, cheap c2d, 2gb of RAM and an x1950pro and youll run bf2 with nearly everything on high :D
Click to expand...

there are problems though with that attitude. fair enough, the cost of the components wont be too high, but you have to put the cost of VAT, delivery, a new psu, better cooling and a lot more onto that. it can quickly spiral out of control.

i personally would prefer spending 70-100 upgrading an agp set up, than over 200+ for a new set up (obviously thats just my opinion though)

but then again, if youre a keen gamer, it may be better in the long term.
 
Hmmm, well my advice is similar to most others. Upgrade your graphics card and RAM if possible. Now I know this is will go over your budget, but you could get the graphics card first

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-028-EA&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411

This card is currently in this week only and will be considerably quicker.

Then at a later stage, you could upgrade your RAM. You want 1GB minimum really for BF2, its pretty heavy on the memory.
 
ergonomics said:
there are problems though with that attitude. fair enough, the cost of the components wont be too high, but you have to put the cost of VAT, delivery, a new psu, better cooling and a lot more onto that. it can quickly spiral out of control.

i personally would prefer spending 70-100 upgrading an agp set up, than over 200+ for a new set up (obviously thats just my opinion though)

but then again, if youre a keen gamer, it may be better in the long term.
Click to expand...

I see your point.

But with the intel price cuts coming up iy might be worth saving and getting a cheap asrock mobo and a x1950pro/8800gts
 
ergonomics said:
yes you can. as long as its agp, any agp card can work.

ill asume the agp slot is 8x speed though....

sorry that may confuze things more
Click to expand...


Its 4x, does that make a difference because I thought that if I added a 8x agp card that its backward engineered so it would run at 4x.

Thanks to all whom have replied, glad to know that I can fit a gdd3 & it would work, I will be adding more ram,

I have tried playing bf2 on a server & get loads of connection probs & ping going everywhere, but pings ok if I dont do anything thats why I thought its the gpu & ram that eare at fault.
 
Hi,

BF2 relies a lot on your CPU. I upgraded my last PC from 512Mb to 1.5 GB and also added an AGP x800xl. It made almost no difference to the frame rates from my 9800pro.

Replacing the onboard sound with a cheap £15 PCI sound card made a difference to the frame rate but the main difference came when I bought a new (cheap) motherboard with a faster CPU this really increased the frame rate and could take advantage of the new 2GB of Ram and the x800xl card.

You may want to wait and save some more cash or just find a cheap motherboard and put something like a cheap AMD 3700+ in it. This will be able to take advantage of a faster graphics card and RAM.
 
So you have a 9800pro for sale then :D :D

I hear you about the processor, but wanted to do this on a budget & looks like I cant :eek: never mind.

Cheers
 
spawner said:
Well, its old like i said

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.0GHz
OS: XP Home SP2
Memory: 512MB RAM 2x256 PC2100 <<this i know i need to get at least 1GB
Graphics: RADEON 9600 SE AGP

What else do you need to know?
Click to expand...

That's actually a pretty balanced system you have right now, although the gfx is a tad week.

As mentioned upgrading the graphics card will likely just shift the bottleneck somewhere else. Needing more RAM (pricey DDR1 at that) means that the total cost spirals upwards, and then you end up being cpu limited anyway.

If it were me I'd save the pennies for a proper upgrade, perhaps keeping my eye out for a bargain secondhand AGP card (6600GT or better at under £50)
 
With the ram, I have been looking on Ebay from the fastmemoryman, he sells a lot of cheap sticks but all high density, he told me to check my mobo manufacture but im lost here lol

Mobo according to dxdiag = System Model: KM266-8235

So im currently looking if this will take high density :confused:
 
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