Quick Question (Please help me out here!)

[chazdraves]

I'm looking at buying a new part or two on Monday. Like many, my computer gets used primarily for games. My latest gaming problem seems to involve The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. No, this isn't a question about Morrowind itself, just hardware issues involving this game. I find as I'm running around in this, and many other games, that there are spots where everything just stops and the hard drive revs until the computer is satisfied enough to continue the game. I'm looking at either buying an ATI 128MB Radeon 8500LE or 512MB of 168-pin SDRAM. However, I would like to know which will be more helpful in resolving my gaming problems. It seems as though the frame rates aren't that bad overall, but it just locks up so frequently in so many spots. Here's a quick walkthrough of my comp:

AMD Duron 1.0 GHz Processor
Abit KT7A Motherboard
64MB GeForce 2 MX420 Video Card
128MB SDRAM (Sad isn't it?)
10GB Hard Drive
and I doubt anything else is relevant to my problems.

I remember a drastic improvement in my games when I bought my last video card, but I don't know that a new video card will solve all my problems. It's certainly more than frame rates this time. I was told by a friend that if it's reading of the hard drive in such a way, and constantly in such a way, than RAM is most likely the best way to go. Any opinions? Again, I plan on ordering tomorrow, but I don't know what. The video card is $115 and I think the RAM was around $65. I don't want to spend any more than $120 and I'm ordering from Newegg.com. Also, if you have any other ideas, please let me know! Thanks so much in advance, as I honestly don't know which will be more helpful.

- Chaz

 

[peter7921]

If you have to pick only one, then definately go with the RAM. What is happening is your system is running out of physical memory (RAM) and using virtual memory (Hard Drive) which slows things down considerably. If you can i would upgrade both cause you will see a big improvement with that Radeon 8500(graphiclly and performance wise) especially when you see the water in morrowind. By the way i have a very similar set up to yours and i just bought the Radeon 8500 great card.

My Rig
P3 1000 @ 1109
Asus CUV4x
128MB Radeon 8500
512 MB RAM
60 gigabyte HD

P.S. Another reason to go with the RAM is that you will see a big improvement in everything you do on your computer not just games.

GL with your upgrade.

 

[chazdraves]

Thanks a lot for the timely response! I'm especially glad to hear from a fellow Morrowind gamer. My biggest beef was that the water didn't look like it does on my X-Box, but you said that should improve with a new video card. I'm actually going to do both eventually, but I can only afford one at a time without drainin' my pocketbook. I'm really excited to do both upgrades, I think they'll both be amazing improvements. I'm curious to see if the frame rates will go up at all with the new RAM. I'll probably order the RAM on Monday, and then order the 8500 on Saturday or so. I hope these will prepare my computer for when I buy Unreal Tournament 2003! That will take a lot of computer to run! We'll see how it all turns out! Thanks again!

- Chaz

 

[peter7921]

Ya i am big Morrowind fan, i also have an Xbox by the way. I prefer playing Morrwind on my PC basically because of the controls and the Mods for it. The new video card will make the water just like the way you see it on the Xbox. The reason you don't see it is because your current video card doesn't have DirectX 8 support. The Xbox does and so does the Radeon 8500.

P.S. If you get a Nvidia card don't get the MX line of cards(if you want the water in morrowind to look like it does on the Xbox) because they don't have support for DirectX 8, so skip those. Basically for price performance right now it goes to either the Geforce 4 ti4200 or the Radeon 8500.