Originally posted by: metsfan1930
So not even 512 MB PC133 Ram would help? Would my computer even be able to run Doom 3 without the ram upgrade? I know i would need a new video card cause 32 MB wont cut it.
And if it wont even work what would be a good computer that would be able to run Doom 3 stock?
Nope, PC133 is crap for you, and your machine was slow when it was brand spanking new.
PC133 (133MHz single data rate) offers 1GB per second for bandwidth.
PSA: Desktop PC Processors and YOU.
Modern CPUs, in this case Athlons and Pentium 4s, have alot of buzzwords and such going into their design. The important one here is pipeline. Generally we use the ALU (integers and logic) pipeline as a guideline, as the other parts scale accordingly.
The Athlons have a 10-stage ALU pipeline (Athlon64 12), and the Pentium4 20-stage. It's like an assembly line. Each stage can do one part of an instruction, and you can have as many going through as the stages. Each stage takes a cycle to complete. Longer pipelines (less work per cycle) allow one to reach higher speeds.
So you need to add x and y, it takes 10 cycles on an Athlon and 20 on a P4. There's more magic behind the P4's ALUs, but I won't go there right now. So it is less efficient. However, you can get high speeds. If you are able to keep the pipelines full, you can do as much work as the speed allows (IE, 2GHz P4 = 2 GHz Athlon). It uses on-chip memory to keep things it needs and what it thinks it will need.
However, let's say the chip predicts what it needs wrong. It has to stop, go ask the memory controller for some data, and wait for the memory controller to request that part, then the lookup is complete, and it reads, and sends it back to the CPU. Meanwhile the CPU must also flush something else out to make room.
With the longer pipelines, this snowballs and you end up with doggy performance. Hyperthreading helps a bit, allowing other threads to go through instead of stalling the CPU. With shorter pipelines, it's less of a problem. So what do you do? Put more cache memory on the CPU, so it can hold more, and be more likely to have what is needed.
However, you still need to constantly get things in and out of the CPU, and meeger bandwidth offered by PC133 doesn't cut it, so you're getting stuck in those stalls ALL the time. Gaming is not for such a PC.
Your current PC can get beat to hell with a $600 new PC no problem. Take to heart the suggestions of saving for a new rig. $600 can do the hardware now no problem, $800 can make an even better one (by a pretty big performance margin), and prices always go down.
Upgrading your current PC is like ricing a Yugo.
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