Mr Kidd
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
591
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Posted - 2012.05.15 12:32:00 -
[1] - Quote
Quick tips on upgrades:
1) If CPU is purchased within the last 3 years, it's good.
2) If memory is < 4GB, upgrade
3) If hard drive space < 10% free, upgrade
4) GPU - a bit more complicated and I don't pretend to be up to specs for the newer cards, especially their ever changing naming schemes. However, there are some general guidelines here. There are specific cards in every series that are geared towards gaming or simple desktop apps. If you're card is of a model type geared for simple desktop apps you want to upgrade. If you're using a onboard video card, upgrade. If your card has less than 512mb of ram, upgrade.
The GPU really is the driving force for gaming. As long as you have a modern CPU and enough memory and free hard drive space to not bottleneck your GPU and assuming the GPU is adequate then you'll be fine.
I run 8gb of system memory, phenom II 4 core, Geforce 9800GTX+ w/ 512mb. With this I can run 1 client full settings with no lag. 2 clients at almost full settings, 3 clients on low settings. The biggest bottleneck for my rig is the GPU memory @ only 512mb. One client at full settings will eat most of that.
A good utility to see how your video card is performing is GPU-Z. If you're close to or at 100% on GPU memory or GPU utilization, time to upgrade the GPU. If not and performance is still slow then your computer is bottlenecking your GPU. To see how, open task manager and look at system memory or CPU utilization. If memory is close to or at 100%, add more. If CPU utilization is close to or at 100% upgrade the CPU. But in the case of the CPU you might also be looking at replacing your system in order to utilize more modern generation CPU's. It depends how old it is and whether or not you can purchase a CPU sufficiently more powerful so that it doesn't bottleneck your GPU. I would guess if you're approaching 100% cpu utilization while playing the game that chances are you'll need to replace the entire computer with something newer. I've actually experienced this on an old old system where I was unable to upgrade the CPU sufficiently to overcome it bottlenecking the GPU. The only fix was to upgrade to a newer system allowing me to use the next generation of CPU's.
Also, you speak of Windows eye candy. Turn this **** off. I mean if it's the difference between spending money or not then why not turn it off especially on a system already having problems running the game. I can guarantee its affecting your gaming performance significantly. The difference might be +20FPS depending on your system. That's huge, significant and a real performance increase you can feel.
Good luck!
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