Would this help a lot (old pc)

Camalot · 13 Mar 2006 at 08:40

Was thinking last night of doing a big ish upgrade to my 6yr old one and only computer. But not sure if it will really be worth the hassle.

I only really use it to play wow and browse internet and play music. The spec is this.

Amd Athlon 1GHZ
512mb SD Ram
Gforce4 MX 440 64MB
GA-7IXE4 Motherboard.

wow is ok on low settings but when going into big towns its just a complete freeze. After a day on wow my pc peaks at 600-630mb ram so its paging.

I was thinking two things.

#1 - Just spend £20 on more memory to get 640mb ram to stop paging.

#2 - Buy a cheap motherboard which supports DDR memory and buy1GB of OcUK value DDR Ram. My motherboard atm only supports AGP x2 and im pretty sure my card is AGPX8?. So what id like to know is this.

Would it be worth the hassle to find a socket A, DDR, AGPX8 motherboard or shall i just put a little more ram in it and be done with it? Would i really get that much better performance if i get my card running at AGPX8 speed instead of X2 in WOW?

I've never done anything as big as swap a motherboard and put my old CPU etc onto a new one. Im pretty confident i can do it but it i mess up it will leave me with no computer :eek:

So if you think i really wont benefit THAT much then i wont do it. But it the benefit is going to be great then ill give it a go

Cheers, Adam.

valerian · 13 Mar 2006 at 09:14

you'd probably have to swop the psu, and the card might be too old to work in a new board (voltages ?) someone else could probably shed light on this.

a decent integrated graphics board would suffice if you want to keep ball park performance (what you are used to now)
in short
new cpu
pci express board (with integrated graphics?)
new ram ddr1 or (ddr2 dependent on your processor choice)
psu

if you system is that old have you got enough h/d space.

the question is does your system perform for what you need currently, if yes dont waste your money.
if no make a new one as future proof as you are able (ha)

Camalot · 13 Mar 2006 at 09:29

Well, it plays wow ok but just going into towns, people have to wait for me :/

Im not going to build a brand new pc yet i just wondered on an upgrade for this pc atm to make towns load faster.

I dont want to buy a new CPU :/ i Dont want PCI-E graphics atm. I'll save all that for a new fresh build in the future

Guess ill try my luck on an extra 128mb memory !

GAMEfreak · 13 Mar 2006 at 09:33

hi there, just thought i'd let you know, my friend had a geforce 4 mx 440, the same as you, and had the same problem when going in towns and had to play at low setting. if you can get your hands on a geforce fx 5700 ultra ( AGP card) for £40 and a new mobo with that 1 gb OCuk ram, you should be able to play at medium detail, with no stuttering in town

< i'm sure of this as i sold my friend one>, although your cpu looks damn old too. pickup up a nice socket 754 sempron and overclock the hell out of it, you should get nice speeds easily

Bobmunkhouse · 13 Mar 2006 at 09:38

Just get more RAM if you have one 512mb stick get one more or if you have 2 x 256mb sticks then get 2 x 512mb sticks that will sort out that slow down.

Camalot · 13 Mar 2006 at 11:53

GAMEfreak said:
hi there, just thought i'd let you know, my friend had a geforce 4 mx 440, the same as you, and had the same problem when going in towns and had to play at low setting. if you can get your hands on a geforce fx 5700 ultra ( AGP card) for £40 and a new mobo with that 1 gb OCuk ram, you should be able to play at medium detail, with no stuttering in town < i'm sure of this as i sold my friend one>, although your cpu looks damn old too. pickup up a nice socket 754 sempron and overclock the hell out of it, you should get nice speeds easily

Thats going to cost over £100 tho

New mobo/cpu/ram/grfx card is just me basically building a new comp which i dont really want to do right now

I will be building a new pc later on using AMD64 3700 SD, 2gb Geil Value Ram, ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB etc.

Just wanted to do a small/cheap/quick upgrade to this current one to help loading times into towns. It runs ok everywhere else just flying into ironforge and stormwind my pc comes to a halt

I think ill try it with 640mb memory, if that doesnt help i wil just give up

Dont want to be investing in old technology.

Cheers for your input

Bobmunkhouse said:
Just get more RAM if you have one 512mb stick get one more or if you have 2 x 256mb sticks then get 2 x 512mb sticks that will sort out that slow down.

My mobo only has 3 slots supporting 256mb max in each. So my mobo will max out at 768mb memory.

Atm i have 1x256mb chip and 2x128mb chips. Think im gonna replace one of the 128mb chips with a new 256mb chip, boosting memory from 512>640.