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Advice on what to upgrade on my computer

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unmerged(37194)

First Lieutenant
Dec 25, 2004
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My computer is a bit outdated. The graphics card is fine but the cpu/processor is just 850 mhz. My mouse is difficult to control - it just jerks around. I have no spyware running in the background nor do I have other applications eating up memory. It seems that the 850mhz is not quite enough to get the job done. It is playable but VERY frustrating.

What would you recommend for the appropriate cpu speed and memory? I do not have an umlimited budget so obviously I can not get the latest and greatest so I am looking for recommendations on things that can get "the job done" while not necessarily having to run the game at light speed.

Thanks in advance for any help/thoughts.
 
Hard to say without knowing you budget.
512 MEG is minimum for WinXP 1024 better.
Right now I would say 3000+ mhz
 
if you look on the back off the game case it tells you the minimum and recomended requirements, also it isn't slow just because you have a slow processor it can depend on many things like
1) your processor
2)how much RAM your pc has
3)how long your pc has been on, because over time your RAm fills up with out then moving the memory back to the harddrive (or only moving a little amount of unused memory back to the hardrive) so your pc will slow down and make the game slow, to combat this problem you could always restart the pc every hour, and hope the game runs faster than plying the game 4 or 5 hours straight without restarting the pc every so often
 
Everything works together.

For instance I build my own system from parts I personally select, So my systems tend to overperform equivelent rated systems sold in the package deals. You often do get what you pay for in computers.

Ideally you should be one step behind the Bleeding edge of technology. What I mean is that the fastest processor is not worth buying. IF you look at prices for CPUs you will notice there is always a point with a bigger drop in price between the same relative difference in CPU speed.

Exagerated example:
Speed Cost
3500DL 1000
3500XL 950
3400 850
3300 750
3200 550 <--- This is the one you want to buy
3100 475

So you see that in our non real world example, the price above 3200mhz per 100mhz is $100.
but the price between 3200 and 3300 is $200. So you have identified the leading edge for the budget consious, since it gives you the best trade off for speed vs cost.

This concludes Castellon's Computer buying Lesson#1 :D
 
The first thing I would look at is memory. How much RAM do you have? As Castellon said earlier I would recommend 512MB as a minimum. The game runs OK on my 500MHz laptop (at least at the start) but it has 576MB RAM (see my sig). If you do need a new CPU+motherboard I would get at least a 3000 MHz Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 3000+ desktop or a 1.6GHz+ Pentium M notebook.
 
Just stay far away from anything with VIA drivers.
 
Basically, they don't deal with the AGP bus correctly. Which means that, if you happen to own an affected PC configuration (VIA chipset + AGP video board), you will be confronted with either lots of unexplainable crashes or, worse, frequent complete system freezes.

Jan Peter
 
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