Which is a better upgrade for me? Video / RAM?

Bong

Member
Jan 26, 2003
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Right now I have a 64mb GF4 Ti 4200 running on my Athlon XP 1600 (KT400). I play hardware intensive games such as UT2003, Spearhead, BF1942, and very much looking forward to future games like unreal2 and doom3. Since I only have 256mb of system RAM (DDR 2100), I experience quite much of chopping during gameplay (due to disk swapping) despite of having a relatively fast hard drive. Recently, my friend became interested in buying my videocard for a price of a brand new unit! (Im so bad..) I know there are lots of new hot chipsets out there such as the new radeons. But the problem is that these chipsets are not available in "our part of the world". Only NVIDIA cards and some old radeons like the 8500 series are the ones available for high end users.

Right now here are my options for my limited budget:
1. A cheap 128mb GF4 Ti 4200 (ill add 20$)
2. Gainward 128mb GF4 Ti 4200 Golden Sample (ill add 35-40$)
3. Or just keep my current card and add 1 stick of 256mb DDR266. (1 stick costs 42-45$)

If ill get option 1, I'll be able to buy a dimm in around 1 month (and just play only my ps2 for the meantime).

What do you guys think? Im open for suggestions. Thanks

 

grabadude

Golden Member
Mar 30, 2001
1,111
4
81
I would also like to hear some opinions on this situation.

I have:

P4 @ 2.1

GF4 ti4200 64mb

256 ddr ram


I'm noticing some stuttering in new games like NOLF2 and MOH:SP

Should I get another 256 ram stick or Radeon 9500Pro?

Thanx in advance :)
 

grabadude

Golden Member
Mar 30, 2001
1,111
4
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Originally posted by: Mith
I'd go with more RAM if I were you.


That's what I'll do. Since the prices on RAM are falling, I will definitely get more. I remember last year when I bought my first stick of 256mb DDR ram from Crucial for $40 with shipping :)
 

jiffylube1024

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
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You should get more system RAM for sure - many of these games play best with 512MB of memory. That said, with upcoming games having larger and larger texture sizes, a 128MB video card is also becoming more important...

 

SickBeast

Lifer
Jul 21, 2000
14,377
19
81
seeing as you're not "upgrading" your videocard, go for memory. why would you go from a 4200 to another 4200? for 64mb of video memory??

get the system memory.
 

DimZiE

Golden Member
Jun 26, 2001
1,093
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if i were u i'd go for memory...

more memory improve responsiveness of your system, less loading time, less disk swap, and probably something else i haven't noticed
 

Bong

Member
Jan 26, 2003
38
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0
:cool: I just bought a 128mb GF4 Ti 4200 Sparkle Platinum series. I think I had a good deal with this one for 150$ here at our side of the world. Although I havnt read yet a review of this card, I got attracted by its very large cooling system and specially with the 3.3 ns memory.

You guys might want to check this card. i think the site is www.sparkle.com.tw

 

Kazuo

Member
Oct 14, 2002
145
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RAM for sure. My Radeon 9000 plays games admirably currently, and a GeForce4 Ti is tons faster than that. Unless you have any real reason to upgrade, I wouldn't. RAM you can never have enough of :) I'm not sure about the validity of the statement about RAM prices going down. DDR appears to be going down, where PC133 is going up. It seems that for some reason neither tend to go in the same direction at the same time nowadays.
 
Jun 9, 2002
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If you go with a RAM manufacturer make sure they have a warranty that they back up! I went with Micron and they screwed me....more like I should have read the fine print. But only certain modules will they service if they go bad. I went Kingston and will always go Kingston as long as they continue to service the large majority of the modules they put out. Go their site to read more! Seriously though...I lost out on $70 of DDR. I bought through a company from pricewatch.com. The company went out of business when my DDR fried. I called Micron....micron totally dissed me. BE AWARE OF THE WARRANTY ON YOUR MODULES! and KEEP YOUR RECEIPTS!.... if not they'll prorate your ram from the date of manufacture! For example, say bought the ram 2 years after the manufacture date and the warranty is for 1 year after your purchase date but you lose your receipt....then you don't get anything replaced since they look at the manufacture date without a receipt (prorated!)....they want EVIDENCE so keep your receipt. Just looking out for ya'll. Pay extra money for a company such as kingston....trust me!