More RAM?

[=]H[=TangFiend]

I will tell you from my computer which is about where yours will be if you buff it up.

3GB of DDR400 PC3200 RAM
Pentium4 2.8 (overclocked)
Radeon HD 2400 pro 512MB (used to have a X800 pro 256)
Asus P4P800 motherboard

Two IDE HDD's one to handle strictly virtual memory paging file



Don't expect stellar performance even after your upgrades from that old Pentium 4 clunker. I still play PR pretty much on low settings. With medium for textures and maybe one or two other settings. The framerates are playable 30's-40's but nothing super crisp on the urban maps. After all the upgrades I threw into mine last year to help it out with some of the newer games. I think I spent about +200$ US in the summer and autumn.

Now here I am going into next spring still needing a new computer. It's going to cost me about 500$ USD. I need motherboard/Chip, RAM, Video Card just like you will.

I say don't be like me and make the same mistakes You will just be delaying the inevitable and wasting money doing it.

Start looking at prices for Core2Duo chips/board combos comparable RAM and a decent mid grade PCI-Express video card. SATA harddrive also will really cut those map loadtimes down. Buy your new PC in a couple stages if you are limited financially.

[[R-COM]SocketMan]

Originally Posted by Stemo

I checked out some reviews on that HD3850 card and it sounds really interesting. Hopefully I will find it second hand aswell.

About the RAM, when you say they need to be the same speed, what do you refer to? is it the "3200" in PC3200 that needs to be the same? or the mhz(which seems to be 400 in most modules online) I think this is what i'm looking for;

WEBHALLEN.com [Kingston DDR 1024MB PC3200 400MHz CL3]

...Unless that 400mhz part is a problem.

From the information I got from Everest it seems to be different values in mhz on my present ram; 200, 166 and 133. Which one is it I need to match?

200mhz=ddr400=pc3200 This will also run at lower speed-166mhz/133mhz
that Kingston should be fine;get 2x1024

[Calsoe]

Originally Posted by Stemo

OOps, It seems I made a mistake. My motherboard is in fact a p4p800. Which is a bit more modern I think. I used a program called everest to check what kind of ram i already in the computer, and it said;

DIMM1: Kingston K 512 MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM (3.0-3-3-8 @ 200 MHz) (2.5-3-3-7 @ 166 MHz) (2.0-2-2-6 @ 133 MHz)

So if I want to add 1gig on top of that, Does it need to be the same brand?
Also, does it have too be 2 more 512mb modules, or can I just add one 1gig module?

You can add a 1Gb or 2x 512Mb sticks to get 1 Gb more. Just make sure that your Motherboard has enough memory sockets to put them all in. Next thing that you might want to upgrade is the GPU for a ATI 3850 or a ATI X1650XT if you are a little low on cache/PSU power.

[M_Striker]

Originally Posted by LtSoucy

Try adding another gig of RAM and see if that works. my new computer has 8gigs and run perfectly and I never get lag. try 1 if not 2 gigis more.

8 gigs?! I have 3, and I run perfectly on high. But yeah, the problem is either your graphics card (i don't know anything about ATI cards) or RAM. If you've got XP, I think 2 gigs would work fine for you. If you have Vista, at least 3.

[Stemo]

Well, I got the new RAM today. And I must say it made a huge difference. It's like before, everytime i turned around or moved the textures had to be read again. Now everything runs smooth on medium settings.
I went for the 2x512 which make it total 2gig. And that seems to be enough.
I also ordered the HD3850 graphic card. But now with the difference just from the RAM, I don't know if it was necessary. Oh well, You can never have too many new things I guess :P

Thanks for all the help I got, See you on the battlefield!

/Stemo