IN A NUTSHELL: What do I upgrade to make my PC games run smoother?
My birthday is soon and I am hoping to upgrade my HP a1547c with my b-day cash. I was wondering what I should upgrade to make my games run at full 1204x768 pixels without any chopiness and with maximum detail. Should I upgrade my RAM, VRAM, or Processor, or anything else? I'm not going to give any game specifics. Don't ask why. I just need to know what I need to upgrade to make my games run smoother.
If this includes top end games like Crysis, Assassin's Creed, Supreme Commander and so on then you will need to upgrade your CPU (which means the CPU, Motherboard and RAM) but primarily you just need to upgrade the graphics - note that this will also require a better Power supply unit. Also worth noting is that you may experience cooling problems if you use the standard HP case for the system once you've upgraded it. Making a full system upgrade out of that PC won't be very cheap or very simple. For us to advise you on what parts you need, we really need a specific budget to stick to.
Thanks! Okay so I need to get game specific... How about running Gears Of War? I currently have 2.4ghz AMD (2.0 ghz minimum for game) 958 RAM (1G minimum for game) and a NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE with 256 VRAM (NVIDIA GeForce 6600 gfx card minimum for game). So what do I need to upgrade to run a game like GoW at maximum detail and res? So far it seems like the only problem is the gfx card, which is below minimum.
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And how much VRAM does a NVIDIA Geforce 6600 have? When I google it I get 256 somewhere and 512 somewhere else! And the NVIDIA page on it has specs for it but I can't understand it! The specs on the website are:
Graphics Bus - PCI Express | AGP 8X
Memory Interface - 128-bit | 128-bit
Memory Bandwidth - 16.0 GB/sec. | 14.4 GB/sec.
Fill Rate (texels/sec.) - 4.0 billion | 4.0 billion
Vertices per Second - 375 million | 375 million
Memory Data Rate - 1000 MHz | 900 MHz
Pixels per Clock (peak) - 8 | 8
RAMDACs - 400 MHz | 400 MHz
I am guessing that the VRAM is the "Memory Interface" but I'm confused because that's lower than mt 6150 LE.
The 6600 is the minimum requirement for the game, but that doesn't mean it'll run it at 1024x768 max detail, it only means it'll run it, and I can tell you know it'll run it really badly. The reason why the amount of RAM on the card is confusing is because the 6600GT was made in both a 128MB version and a 256MB version. For playing proper games like Gears at that detail level, you should really be thinking along the lines of an 8600GT. The motherboard in that system is PCI express 16x so it should support it. Realistically you should upgrade the power supply as well.
You will definitely suffer with 1GB of RAM (you do in fact have a gigabyte, it says 958 because 64 is used to power the geforce 6150. Proper graphics cards don't need your system RAM, so you'll have 1GB when you get a proper one), I'd really recommend 2GB to run games properly these days.
I dont think your PC will be able to run Gears of war at Maximum detail.
Your CPU and memory are at or around minimum specs but at least you have a PCI-E slot to utilize for a GFX card.
I would suggest a PCI-E 256MB Graphics card or (512MB if you can stretch) of the likes of a Nvidia 8600 GT or GTS.
This would probably get you running at a playable Framerate on perhaps meduim settings depending on the Res you choose. 1024 x 768 is a perfectly respectable res to aim for but to run at Medium settings and maintain good framerates you might well have to suck 800 x 600.
In my opinion another 512MB (or perhaps 1Gig) stick of DDR400 Ram would help too, but there's no point going beyond 2 gig of RAM or going higher with the GFX card because your CPU would be holding you back at that point.
The 4000+ is a very strong CPU for a single core, so in games that only use one core, it'll manage fine, it's only the games that can make use of dual core CPUs that will give him grief. I don't think GoW is one of them. You have to bear in mind though that he's probably running 939 and DDR1, so new CPU basically means new system.
