PC upgrade help
 

Hi

I've been playing a new MMORPG called Darkfall and am having long loading times and i also have to play it on lower video settings

so i want to upgrade my old PC
as im only playing this game (and abit of CS:S) and every other programs i use on this PC is fine
im not looking to spend loads of money on it just to play this game
the thing is my PC is very old
im using a
AMD X2 939 4200
DDR1 512mbx2
7800GT
so i dont know if there is a point of me upgrading it
was thinking of upgrading the memory hoping it helps loading times
but 2x1gig DDR1 are expensive being a phasing out memory
and not knowing if it will really help

want to get a new video card as high end cards looks very cheap
but is there a point with the old CPU and RAM im using??

any1 have any advice??
should i upgrade something?
or i shouldnt bother till i really need a faster PC??

Re: PC upgrade help
 

pci express gfx? if so I would upgrade that first and see. What would you want to spend on a GFX? 4670 AMD/ATI comes in a little over the £50 mark the 4850 a little over the ton. The gfx would be the first way id go might need a better psu depending on what you have. GFX and PSU can move along with you.

Do not be to down on your cpu I am sure its still very able
Does your mobo only have 2 slots? what model is it ?

Re: PC upgrade help
 

To be honest thats pretty dated, by the time you get decent RAM, Graphics you might as well buy a new system, you can get full systems including extras for £300 with graphics better than most systems released only a year ago, and if you're really into games you can just get a PC like mine where I chose what Graphics I wanted in it, and Ram.

If I was you, I would save what cash you were going to spend on upgrading, and just upgrade the entire set up.

I've never played Darkfall so I can't comment, but I run World of Warcraft full settings at 1680 x 1050 and I still lag sometimes, so unless you're going to put up front £500 for a half decent system it's not worth upgrading components that will only be dated again in 6 Months.

Re: PC upgrade help
 

Componants do not go out of date in 6 months at all just newer models come out. I built a machine in excess of 2 or more years ago that would still stand up well now

E6600 2 gig Geil ddr 6400 Asus P5W deluxe Raptor HDD and a 8800GTS 640 meg. The GFX would be the weakest link but more than capable o pwning World of Wallpaper

The CPU in the "dated" machine is dual core 2 gig plus per core. I remember the 939 chips fondly

Re: PC upgrade help
 

my mobo is a Gigabyte K8N Pro-SLI
it does have 4 memory slots
using a pair of corsairs XMS i think, too long ago

how stable or unstable would it be adding another 2x512mb??

Re: PC upgrade help
 

depends on what your manual says. I had no problem in various boards back then

Re: PC upgrade help
 

Yeh but Zing, how much did that cost you when you built it compared to now? Moores Law sucks but it's true, this system I bought was £1100 in December 07, 1 1/2 Years ago, But look at whats out now..

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/stor...ory_oid=-35430

And thats not even off the scale, for £1000 you can build a really nice system, luckily I bought mine expecting not to have to upgrade for at least 2 years, but game technology is advancing fast, one of the reasons I had to upgrade my Graphics at Xmas was because of world of warcrafts new expansion, and i know a lot of people who cant play now because their system can't keep up.

Re: PC upgrade help
 

thing is i dont play video games as much as i used to
so never bothered updating my PC much
from the time i brought this PC to now the only games i played were source games, WoW tabula rasa and vanguard i think
and everything else i use my PC for could run very well with the PC i had before
so i feel i wasted closed to a grand when i built this PC

don't really want to use much money on it as its only for 1 game
and i won't know if i keep playing it for long

so in the end if i could upgrade it using little money and get some good performance boost i will
but if it aint gonna help much i wont bother

Edit
i mean £100-£200

Re: PC upgrade help
 

The manual shows no real problems it says you can populate all 4 with double or single sided. Might be worth a risk. Buy 2x512 from play .com its free delivery if it does not like it send it back under distance selling regs just lose the one way postage

---------- Post added at 02:26 ---------- Previous post was at 02:25 ----------

Please dont waffle at me about specs and then link to bloody currys

---------- Post added at 02:27 ---------- Previous post was at 02:26 ----------

Spend a ton on the 4850 gfx and possibly a psu depending on what you have

---------- Post added at 02:30 ---------- Previous post was at 02:27 ----------

you could bung a couple of these at it http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/343575...y/Product.html

And sometimes a system just needs a format is that an option?

Re: PC upgrade help
 

Oh Dragons :D , I perticullarly like the flash animation on the homepage

Cpu is still quite capable although probably starting to show it's age as others have said, modern MMO's do tend to be quite ram hungry though, perticullary if running on vista, so some extra ram might help.

I suspect extra RAM would help, It might drop it down to PC2700 speeds, but that was mainly a problem with the older cores, the x2's didn't suffer with that perticullar issue with the memory controller , if it does drop to pc2700 speed you can probably force it back to PC3200 speeds by manually setting it in the bios although you might have to loosen up the timings to do it.

I used to run a 3200+ X2 socket 939 on an Abit AN8 board with 4x 512mb DDR and it was ok, It was the board that went in the end, the CPU i believe I still have somewhere and as far as I know still works.

Re: PC upgrade help
 

well i did format my PC around 2 months ago (a month before i started playing the game)
so could say i have a clean install of Windows XP

looking at thse memory and that could be a cheap thing to try
didn't thought of buying another 2x512mb seperately
usually buy twin packs myself and when i was helping a few friends building their PCs
been afraid of mixing memory incase of compatibility issues
does compatibility issues happens much when mixing RAMs??

well think i'll get 2 sticks of 512mb and see if that helps much
as the main issue i want fixed are loading times (especially during gameplay)
if it does help then i'll look into a new vid card

Re: PC upgrade help
 

well the ram will default to the slowest so you should be ok. Incompatability comes with the mobo really but yours appears to be ok and as I say if it dont work send it back you have 10 days distance selling they have to refund you just lose the postage back. Some games on some upto date configs still suffer from slow loading. Ironically I installed Zoo Tycoon 2 in a VM on vista and that loads quite slowly and im only a gen behind lol