Help with memory/system upgrade

[Brenno]

Hello

I hope this is posted in the correct forum.
Would anyone be able to give me some advise on what memory upgrade would be the right choice if any?

I have a media pc that I built in 2009 using a mATX motherboard.

I recently acquired a GTX660 gpu to upgrade the graphics and a Phenom II 965BE as I wanted to play some current games but couldn't afford a whole new system and a 660 seemed like it could handle most current games at medium to high settings.

The problem is that it is still struggling with some of the games I have tried namely -

Need for speed rivals
Assassins Creed 3
Tomb Raider 2013

I suspect that I have a bottleneck and I am guessing that my RAM is the most likely culprit (please tell me if i'm wrong!).

So my question is, if it is my RAM that is holding me back significantly should I upgrade to -

- 4 more GB of DDR2 if I can find a matching kit giving me 8gb DDR2
- or wait and save up a bit more for a new motherboard that supports ddr3 and buy 8gb of ddr3 ram

Also could anyone confirm if adding more ram ddr2/ddr3 would make a noticeable increase in gaming performance or am I barking up the wrong tree so to speak?

If i'm incorrect about the RAM what other upgrade options would anyone here recommend to achieve a better gaming performance?

(I have overclocked the CPU to 3.9ghz and a minor tweak of my current ram timings but that is all)

Thankyou for your help and much appreciated


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The spec is as follows -

AMD Phenom II X4 965 - 3.4 GHz Quad-Core (HDZ965FBGMBOX)
ASUS M3N78-VM - Motherboard - micro ATX
Gigabyte NVIDIA GTX660 2GB DDR5 Graphics Card
Corsair 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Kit CL5 1.9V
Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache

 

[David Bisset]

You can try monitoring usage to work out if lack of ram is an issue though I doubt that is the problem. What kind of resolution are you playing at, with what level of settings, on what OS etc etc.

 

[Brenno]

thanks david for you quick response,

os is win 7 64bit and I'm playing at 1080,

i'll try monitoring usage as you suggested and do some more testing, just wanted to know if RAM was holding me back before I went any further

 

[David Bisset]

I've no clear answer for you - I've only played one of those games and while it was on 4GB RAM it was DDR3 so a fair bit faster.

Tomb Raider ran fine for me on 4GB, which is why I doubt RAM quantity is your problem, but I can't remember frame rates or anything (and with different CPU & GPU it'd maybe not be the most meaningful anyway)

 

[4T5]

You need to find out why it's choking before you spend any money.
Is it backing off because of high temps ?
Are your drivers current ?
Monitor to check RAM usage.