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Jabberwocky
Noble Knight
Joined: 06 Nov 2003
Posts: 208
Location: New York, USA |
| Which upgrade is better - faster hard drive or more RAM? |
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I'm not really experiencing problems, but I am thinking of upgrading a little bit pretty soon anyhow. Which does anyone think would be a bigger performance boost - faster hard drive or more RAM? here's what I've got right now:
1.6 Pentium 4
Win XP
Radeon 9000 128 MB
512 MB RAM
Soundblaster Live 5.1
Hard drive is 5200 speed I'm pretty sure.
Those are the stats I figure are the most important as far as gaming. I'm not too knowledgable on the tech stuff. Thanks!
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"D'oh! I knew I should've saved sooner!" |
Sat Nov 08, 2003 8:30 pm |
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OhBrandi
The Pun-Slayer
Joined: 04 May 2002
Posts: 1038
Location: Somewhere this side of sanity. |
Your hard drive will be fine for a while. Mem upgrade is seldom a bad choice.  Just get the lastest version that your motherboard supports.
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Sat Nov 08, 2003 8:56 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
RAM.
But...
The performance gain from more RAM past 512Mb flattens off so you won't see huge changes in most games. Gothic 2 is a memory hog so it would help there.
A faster HDD will make the machine feel a little "snappier" (hmmm, interesting word) but if you have enough RAM that the machine isn't paging all the time it won't make much difference playing a game except some minor improvements in level loads and so on.
Your video card is pretty low-end by today's standards and will easily have the biggest impact on performance for you (short of a major overhaul). Have a think about the video card.
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Sat Nov 08, 2003 10:14 pm |
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Jabberwocky
Noble Knight
Joined: 06 Nov 2003
Posts: 208
Location: New York, USA |
Hey thanks for the input people. I will probably opt for the RAM. That's an interesting comment about my video card Dhruin. I'll give that some consideration. I knew it was a low-end 128 MB card when I bought it, but it was all I could afford at the time. It made a HUGE difference with Gothic 1! I saw a new base-end model NVidea 256 MB card at Tiger Direct the other day for $99. Again.. low-end but probably the most I can do right now.
Thanks again! 
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"D'oh! I knew I should've saved sooner!" |
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Sun Nov 09, 2003 9:51 pm |
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Black_Lord
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 25 Apr 2002
Posts: 48
Location: Idaho |
Heh I ran Gothic 1 on a 350 p2 with an 8 meg rage pro.
I am running Gothic 2 on a 1.4 ghz celeron with a 64 meg Geforce 2. I guess I am always behind when it comes to upgrading.
Oh well as long as it runs what I want to play I don't care. |
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Sun Nov 09, 2003 10:04 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
Don't be too dazzled by the memory size of a video card - the performance of the GPU is much more important.
Have a look at this chart.*
You'll see the 128Mb Radeon 9800 Pro just outperforms the 256Mb version (actually, that's probably just the margin of error - consider them the same).
A powerful 128Mb GPU (or 64Mb for that matter) will easily outperform a slower one with 256Mb memory. I've seen very low end 256Mb cards - it's often a marketing gimmick.
*This chart is out of date and only shows one test so although it's accurate for that test it's not the whole picture.
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Sun Nov 09, 2003 10:24 pm |
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PlanetSide
Village Dweller
Joined: 01 Sep 2003
Posts: 4
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heard if u have more than 512 mb ram and edit the cache settings in the ini file to use up the extra ram more, there is a large performance boost. Anyway ram is always better than hd unless u move files around alot or something like that. |
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Sun Nov 16, 2003 5:31 am |
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Rattlesnake
Village Dweller
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 12
Location: On top of spaghetti |
Well, it depends. If you're at 512 RAM, upgrading really won't improve your gaming experience that much. RAM is really great at speeding up big, long calculations, such as copying a huge file, running gigantic filters in Photoshop or video editing (which should always, without exception, be done on a Mac,) but for small-scale calculations like what you'd experience running Gothic II, it's not gonna matter much, except in certain areas. There may be a point where it'll make a significant difference, (like, maybe, 2gigs? I donno,) but I'd do research on it before you drop money on it
Your hard drive is fine, don't bother buying a new one.
I'd agree that your graphics card is way to slow. Get a new one. Now. Also, you're running a Pentium processor. Bad news. Pentium is stealing your soul as we speak, and converting it into shitty, obnoxious TV commercials. Buy ADM. Fight the Man.
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Sun Nov 16, 2003 8:13 pm |
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Cm
Sentinel of Light
Joined: 26 Jan 2003
Posts: 5209
Location: Missouri USA |
Thanks for the chart and explanation Dhruin. I really didn't get the difference about all the cards and ram, now I see why I was confused. At least now I know I have a good high end card and won't need to upgrade for awhile. Light comes on over my head. 
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Sun Nov 16, 2003 8:18 pm |
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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
You're welcome, CM.
Video cards are a pain in the butt. There's so many different models, new ones are often slower (in the same category) and different memory types (on the card) can make an enormous difference even with the same "model".
I guess the simplest point is for people to understand a $300 is usually a lot better than a $150 and not to get suckered into thinking you got a bargain because it's cheaper but has 256Mb.
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Sun Nov 16, 2003 8:50 pm |
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hwfanatic
Average Fanatic
Joined: 28 Oct 2002
Posts: 2850
Location: Belgrade, Serbia |
| Re: Which upgrade is better - faster hard drive or more RAM? |
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quote:
Originally posted by Jabberwocky
faster hard drive or more RAM?
I would say a faster HDD. As already mentioned, you have quite a lot of RAM, enough for the time being... And, I am more than convinced that a faster HDD will give you the boost you are looking for. |
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Sun Nov 16, 2003 9:31 pm |
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Jabberwocky
Noble Knight
Joined: 06 Nov 2003
Posts: 208
Location: New York, USA |
| DO NOT PURCHASE A GeForce FX 5600! |
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quote:
Originally posted by Dhruin
Don't be too dazzled by the memory size of a video card - the performance of the GPU is much more important.
Have a look at this chart.*
Hey, thanks for the link and advice. Unfortunately I looked at it too late. I went ahead and purchased an XFX GeForce FX 5600 256MB 8X AGP for $130. I am currently fighting to get a refund. Shouldn't be too difficult considering I am noticing a 'burning' smell inside my computer since I installed this card!  Anyway, smells aside, this card is totall crap. When I say crap I mean as in: I do not have a single game that is playable on it at any setting. Morrowind can barely get 7-10 fps.  In fact, my ATI RADEON 9000 128 MB is running absolute circles around this nVidia.
Oh, and yeah, I do know that AMD is way better than Pentium. Unfortunately I didn't have much choice in the matter when I bought my current PC. (A long story) 
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"D'oh! I knew I should've saved sooner!" |
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Fri Nov 28, 2003 2:20 am |
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Byblos
Village Leader
Joined: 14 Dec 2003
Posts: 80
Location: USA, East |
I just got the Nvidia GeForce 5200 FX 128MB and it runs great! I only have 256 MB of ram and i get 30-60 FPS on Morrowind, i really reccomend this card and its only costing 100$!! |
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Tue Dec 16, 2003 1:51 am |
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Jabberwocky
Noble Knight
Joined: 06 Nov 2003
Posts: 208
Location: New York, USA |
quote:
Originally posted by Byblos
I just got the Nvidia GeForce 5200 FX 128MB and it runs great! I only have 256 MB of ram and i get 30-60 FPS on Morrowind, i really reccomend this card and its only costing 100$!!
Yeah, sorry if I offended any die-hard GeForce fans. Actually, the card I was complaining about was indeed defective, so I got a refund. It would have been nice to see what it's true capabilities were, but I decided to save up for a Radeon 9800 instead.
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"D'oh! I knew I should've saved sooner!" |
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Wed Dec 17, 2003 1:11 am |
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