What do I upgrade next?

[Nebben]

I've been playing World of Warcraft for about a month now, so I haven't been on the forums. But anyway, I'd like to make a few upgrades, spread out over a couple of months. I have a little bit of cash, but not a lot. P.S., and totally unrelated: if you're one of those people that complain about how the hurricane situation is being handled, and you haven't done anything personally to help (i.e. donate), I'd suggest you do so. Thanks

Anyway:

I want to go to 2GB of RAM. But will the performance hit be big if I drop my dual channel, 1T setup? Would it be worth trying to sell my current 512 sticks and getting two 1GB sticks, or should I just stick in another 2x512 and be done with it? WoW *needs* more than a gig of RAM. In zones like Ironforge during peak times, my RAM is being maxed out. That's not cool!

Other things I'd like to do down the road are upgrade to a dual-core processor (I have a 939 board) and stick in a better video card, perhaps when prices on something better drop significantly (something in the 6800 line). My 6600GT is working well, but I'd like something a bit stronger.

 

[CraigRT]

So I assume you have 4 DIMM slots also... Is your system AGP or PCI-E? The only reason I ask is because currently, the fastest cars you can buy for AGP are the X850XTPE or the 6800Ultra.. If you want to make it worth your while to upgrade, you might want to make sure you get into PCI-E and toss a 7800 series card in there.

I don't think it's a big deal to add 2x512 for a total of 2GB in 4x512 flavour... It's definitely less of a hassle than selling your 1GB now and finding 2GB... 1GB kits go for super cheap, and if you buy the same stuff again, you can likely run 4 sticks in dual channel w/out problems.

I personally would probably do the 2GB first, since I play Battlefield2, and 1GB just sucks for that game... but the videocard upgrade will help in your actual FPS, so if that is suffering, do the vid-card first.

I don't think you can go wrong with either... the CPU is definitely not a bottleneck yet, so I wouldn't touch it until later on.

 

[xXgambitXx]

Originally posted by: Nebben
...... my RAM is being maxed out. That's not cool! .....

haha, that's the funniest thing i've seen in a while.

anyway, to contribute:
I def agree w/ craigRT about being in a PCI-E setup since you'll have the best upgrade path in the future. If you've already done that then a little more ram is all you need for now, the performance diff of moving up to a better vid card right now will be minimal w/o getting into $4/$500 card territory.

 

[Nebben]

I'm running PCI-E currently.

I guess I'm having trouble figuring out what exactly will happen if I stick another two identical sticks of 512MB RAM in there. I'm certain I'll have to drop from 1T to 2T, but is that a big deal? Will Dual Channel be killed, and will that be a big deal? I'm finding conflicting information...

It would definitely help me to have 2GB, because I'm dropping down below 100MB free very often, and I AM getting stalls because of caching. Whoa, I haven't seen that problem in a long time. But then, I hadn't played any games made in the last 5 years in a long time.

So, assuming I can figure out the performance differences that will be caused by getting another 2x512 kit, I'll be doing that first and then probably wait on the video card, and then do the processor in the future when dual core can be had for very low prices. Good gameplan?

 

[imported_goku]

YOU WANT DUAL CHANNEL! Can't stress it enough, if you really need 2GB then you should pick up a 2GB dual channel kick (2 sticks) and sell off your oldersticks on e-gay or FS/T forum.

 

[Aquila76]

AFAIK, 2T KILLS an A64 performance-wise. I'd get a 2x1GB kit (Monarch is having a sale on their memory kits this week, BTW) and trade/sell the 2x512MB kit.