What's most important?

[Legion Kreinak]

If you have a machine that's got a 3.0 GHZ Intel Pentium 4 630 (I think that's the one) and has 1 GB DDR SDRAM, and any games lag up or multitasking eventually slows down the comp, what's the thing you need to upgrade? RAM, right? Is there ever a need for a bigger CPU? Faster RPM harddrive?

Does a video card slow down games at all, or only determine quality of graphics?

My cousin plays Battlefield 2 & Battlefield 2: Special Forces. He has a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 GB RAM. BF2:SF lagged for him pretty bad beforehand. He got 1 gig of RAM today extra, so he's capped out at 2 GB now. It runs like a gem according to him. He can even play it while running music in the BG.

This tells me that the most important thing really becomes RAM...but then when do CPUs need upgrading? Has anyone found a point where they have too low of a processing speed for anything?

 

[Osak]

RAM will help and also make sure you dont have any spyware/viruses.

 

[David Ireland]

If you have a machine that's got a 3.0 GHZ Intel Pentium 4 630 (I think that's the one) and has 1 GB DDR SDRAM, and any games lag up or multitasking eventually slows down the comp, what's the thing you need to upgrade? RAM, right? Is there ever a need for a bigger CPU? Faster RPM harddrive?

Does a video card slow down games at all, or only determine quality of graphics?

My cousin plays Battlefield 2 & Battlefield 2: Special Forces. He has a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 GB RAM. BF2:SF lagged for him pretty bad beforehand. He got 1 gig of RAM today extra, so he's capped out at 2 GB now. It runs like a gem according to him. He can even play it while running music in the BG.

This tells me that the most important thing really becomes RAM...but then when do CPUs need upgrading? Has anyone found a point where they have too low of a processing speed for anything?

Well certain things (like RAM) are more important, but nevertheless everything still matters. Since I am the descriptive and visual type, allow me to give my creative analogy...A hockey game! You can have the best forwards in the world; more talent than anyone could dream of, but if your goalie is 2 years old, you are probably still going to lose. But! If you have that amazing talent, and a bare minimum goalie, you will MOST LIKELY win. ANNDDDD if you have the amazing forward talent, and pair that with the best defence and best goaltender ever to walk the face of the earth....well then you just couldn't lose, could you?

Hope you stayed with me on that one lol....Anyways my point is that yes, RAM matters, but so does everything else.

 

[Legion Kreinak]

The computer you have is similar to one I plan on getting from DeLL, Dave. How do you find it working? Very well?

My Radeon from DeLL is a 256 PCI Express, though - I forget what model. X600 maybe? Either way, I've been told ATI's suck, especially Expresses. Any input?

 

[Jamxx]

That ATi card doesn't exactly suck, but it isn't the best by a long shot. It is better than what David Ireland has. I think you're getting confused on something too. PCI-Express is currently the best type of video card input (compared to PCI and AGP). I think you are thinking that Express has something to do with the model of the video card, but actually that's just the input of it. For example, you can have an AGP 6600 GT or a PCI-Express 6600 GT. But you can also have "Special Editions" which are downclocked versions of their original card. That's probably what you're thinking of.

 

[Gamingfreak]

If you have a machine that's got a 3.0 GHZ Intel Pentium 4 630 (I think that's the one) and has 1 GB DDR SDRAM, and any games lag up or multitasking eventually slows down the comp, what's the thing you need to upgrade? RAM, right? Is there ever a need for a bigger CPU? Faster RPM harddrive?

Does a video card slow down games at all, or only determine quality of graphics?

My cousin plays Battlefield 2 & Battlefield 2: Special Forces. He has a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 GB RAM. BF2:SF lagged for him pretty bad beforehand. He got 1 gig of RAM today extra, so he's capped out at 2 GB now. It runs like a gem according to him. He can even play it while running music in the BG.

This tells me that the most important thing really becomes RAM...but then when do CPUs need upgrading? Has anyone found a point where they have too low of a processing speed for anything?

ram is very important to games nowadays but if u have at least a gig then ur fine, i wouldnt say its the most important ide say that would be the vid card yes if u have a old vid card u wont be able to play the newer games, as games are looking better and better the stress on the vid card is becoming greater and requires u to have a better one otherwise u will be getting low fps and having to turn the detail and resolution way down, as for the cpu as long as u have a fairly decent one then that should be fine

 

[Gamingfreak]

The computer you have is similar to one I plan on getting from DeLL, Dave. How do you find it working? Very well?

My Radeon from DeLL is a 256 PCI Express, though - I forget what model. X600 maybe? Either way, I've been told ATI's suck, especially Expresses. Any input?

dont get a dell they suck get a custom comp and ati cards do not suck at all its all about preference some people prefer ati some prefer nvidia and the fact is well theyre about the same but ide say nvidia is slightly better but dont yell at me for that ati fans

 

[Legion Kreinak]

Why does everyone say DeLL comps suck? I don't plan to overclock anything, and I've added up prices from equivalent stuff on Newegg and Pricewatch next to DeLL customized stuff - price is basically the same. DeLL is a bit more, but it also comes put together.

What makes nVidia cards slightly better? Will the 256MB PCI Expressâ„¢ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory be good for any of the current high-end games? Doom, Quake, WoW, Battlefield 2, etc?

 

[Jamxx]

Oh, see, you didn't mention you were getting a X600 SE above... You just said X600. I'd say that card will not play many current games and probably won't play any that are now coming out. After seeing F.E.A.R.'s requirements, the games that are coming out now are going to require much more than what we're used to, and that card isn't going to cut it. Well, let's say that that card would be the equivalent to some very dull scissors: it would cut it, but roughly and would take a long time.

I'd definitely get a step up from that graphics card; at least to a 6600 GT. But, if you have the money, look into a 6800 GT/GTX/GS or 7800 GT/GTX (I think all of those exist, if some don't then my bad ) and you won't regret you stepped up to that platform. As you can tell, I'm an Nvidia guy myself, and I know pretty much nothing about ATi cards. Don't ask me about them, I really can't help you all that much.

And another thing: the reason why building computers is better is because you learn how they work and how to work on them. That's why a lot of people around here say, "Dell's are stupid! Build your own!" or something along those lines. They don't exactly back up why they are saying that, but I'm pretty sure that most everyone here is saying that because of what I have stated or that they had a bad experience with Dell, Gateway, etc. You learn while building computers, whereas when you buy a prebuilt one you take for granted how everything is constructed. Also, the cases are cooler that you can select when building a computer. And, you can really pick and choose exactly what you want without having to get something else so you can get what you wanted. You have no pressure buying the parts you want when you're getting everything separately.

Hah, when I first got my computer set up I promised myself I'd never overclock anything. It was broken in about 2 weeks. Trust me, you'll get some game out there that you can't quite play at high settings, and you'll want to, so the easiest and cheapest thing to do is to overclock. You'll do it, in time. It always gets to people.

I've rambled enough. Hope all that helps (it had better, because it took me a long time to type all this...)

 

[AOD]

For most games the most important is graphics card followed closely by ram and then cpu but that isn't as important. For BF2 Ram comes first pretty much every1 i know who plays it says that it stuttered when they had 1gb ram but when they get 2gb it runs perfectly 2GB and a 6800 should be fine for any game atm.