Is this performance normal, or to be expected?

[TimeWave0]

I bought ATI's All in Wonder X800XT card which has 256Mb of GDDR3.
I have one of theearly AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processors that clocks at 2.0 ghz
I have 512MB of DDR400.

Performance:
Quake 4 played at medium quality at 800x600 resolution with Anti Aliasing off lags for about 10-20 seconds every time i enter a room, sometimes longer. I wouldn't mind if it were a second delay but it seems rediculous to sit and wait for that long. When it lags, my machine isn't making any extra noise (in fact it's silent) when lagging. When i click on Quake 4 "detect automatic settings" which allows q4 to judge the settings, it says i should run it at 640x480 on low quality. This seems absurd. Is quake 4 really that demanding or is something wrong with my machine? I'm considering upgrading my processor and ram if those are bottlenecking my video card. I have a 500 budget What do you all think?

i posted in the video area and decided that it was best to post in the general hardware section. One person suggested:
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f you're about to invest in new hardware, wait a second with buying that second 512MB...

What you'd like to be getting will be this...

ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 - $ 68 Don't get scared by the name ASRock... this one is a mainboard that performs Very Good, and the best part of it is that it supports AGP and PCI-Express... Because it would be a waste to do away with your X800XT AGP... It's still too good...

Eventually, you'll be able to switch to PCI-e then... When M2 is around, you can even buy an upgrade card from ASRock to make those processors fit on your mobo too... This truly is a mainboard built for the future...

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - $ 322 Dual Core goodness, it overclocks very good too (BTW that ASRock can hit quite high, look here and here...), and Dual Core is the future...

For the mem... Buy this G.SKILL 1GB DDR PC4000 stick, it is certified to work at 250MHz, because eventually you'll want to overclock that X2 a bit... I know, it's still a single stick, but then you can buy another later (2x1GB is better than 4x512MB), and have Dual Channel...

For now, that will be about 10% slower in games, but when you'll buy that second stick, it'll fly...

TOTAL: $ 508.79 (shipping included)
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i'm nervous about throwing 500 dollars at the first suggestion. What do you all think?

thanks,
Anthony

 

[stevty2889]

Well you are definatly being limited by having only 512mb of ram. The lag you are getting is when it runs out of physical memory and starts using the hard drive for the page file, which is much much slower than ram. Unless you are running at super low resolutions, like 640x480 or 800x600, the CPU won't be the bottleneck, and that video card shoudl be enough. I think you just need more ram for the moment.

 

[TimeWave0]

welll i'd like to be running at 1024x1280 on high quality with a smooth framerate. Do you think another 512mb of ram will enable that?

 

[w00t]

well, do you have all the latest drivers there is no way that you cant run the game. I run my X800XL at 1024x768 high quality with good frames i bet i can even run 1680x1050 with good frames quake 4 isnt even that graphic intense. bf2 is more i think

 

[TimeWave0]

in response to :
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well, do you have all the latest drivers there is no way that you cant run the game. I run my X800XL at 1024x768 high quality with good frames i bet i can even run 1680x1050 with good frames quake 4 isnt even that graphic intense. bf2 is more i think
-w00t
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i have the latest drivers. the delay doesn't happen EVERY time i enter a new room, but it happens frequently enough to make me want to stop playing until upgrading.

 

[Lasthitlarry]

There is no reason not to have a GB of RAM nowadays

 

[Gerbil333]

Your processor is fine. You're right...there's no reason to spend all that money on a new motherboard and CPU. Your problem is most likely RAM. 1GB is the minimum for gaming these days, with 2GBs already becoming the new standard.

For comparison, my computer plays Quake 4 perfectly (45-65fps) at 1280x1024 at high quality (no AA/AF):

Athlon 64 3200+
2GBs (2x1GB) Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2PT
ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB PCI-E

Notice how similar our CPU and video cards are. RAM is the only huge advantage my system has.

 

[TimeWave0]

thanks

 

[stevty2889]

I just saw a screenshot of somebody's memory usage after quake 4, and it was using around 700mb of RAM, so with 512mb you'll be hitting the page file, and thats where the lag will come in.