My pc won't play with me

Rotor

Hi folks, PC is struggling to play bioshock and Oblivion games ( very jerky movement) so what do i need to upgrade (and what to)
It is a dell optiplex gx745, intel core 2, 6300 x 1.86 GHz, 1 gb ram
Graphics i 'think' is ATI Radeon x1300 pro ( was under 'display adapters')
I'm afraid i won't be able to spend lots to upgrade just to "play your stupid games" says the wife.
Any ideas gratefully received

spakkker

See here - http://cyri.systemrequirementslab.com/CYRI/intro.aspx

Your video is at the minimum recommended for bioshock . Do you have 8GB free hdd?
You'll have to look up minimun for other game.

exup

could try extra RAM? I think your motherboard can hold 4 sticks - if you have one stick of 1GB then match it with another.
I have a 2nd PC with an Radeon AGP X1650 card and it would be jerky when playing the larger maps in Battlefield 2 - took it to 2GB of RAM and its pretty smooth now.

John_the_Boy

Definately get some extra ram. Other things might help a little:-

1. Overclocking utility (google ATI overclocking for a load of apps).
2. Gamebooster (http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html) will help free up some resources when playing.
3. Disable unwanted services to free up resources.

1 & 3 are more for dabblers - take a restore point first just in case :-)

HO87

Overclocking may assist to some extent but putting all of the extra strain on the CPU will mean compromised performance elsewhere. The easiest - though not the cheapest - solution to the situation is to expand to the maximum RAM you can sensibly afford and install. Your box will take (depending on rating) betyween 8.5 and 12 Gb. A 2gig 667 DDR2 stick will cost you around £30 from an online retailer.

Rotor

Thanks all. I reckon i can stump up £30 or so without too much grumbling. So its more likely to be a ram problem than a graphics one?

JasX

well 1GB of ram for gaming is quite minimal and definitely a very economical way to boost performance is getting some more

As mentioned above clearing junk off the machine will help quite a bit too... if you have time rather than money to spend and want to really wipe the slate clean wiping and reinstalling the OS to take it back to its brand new factory state will give the best results. less intrusive is simply checking the programs that run every time you turn the machine on and disabling the ones that aren't critical from being albe to run automatically at startup.

you don't say what operating system you have, if its windows vista or windows 7 setting the display theme to the 'windows basic' one and turning off the sidebar will free up a bit more performance aas your card won't be worrying about making the desktop look pretty and have more oomph to dedicate to games.

other stuff that'll help is reducing the graphics settings and RESOLUTION of the display but will make the game look uglier and slightly less fun.

I'm not sure what HO87 is talking about with overclocking, it does have a fair potential to help boost performance and won;t compromise performace anywhwere else on your PC however the drawbacks there are more around risking physical damage to your PCs hardware (will be expensive to fix ie new PC time) thru overheating if you get it wrong -yes it is moderately complicated, and in any case you'll generally be shortening the life of your PCs components.

ddoris

Are you talking onboard graphics??
A dell m/b will have no o/clock options.
Why haven't you got 2 gb ram?

turbobob

My E6300 was run at 2.8-3 Ghz (standard speed is 1.86Ghz) for a couple of years without any voltage increase, and it has always stayed cool and stable. However Dell motherboards aren't known for their overclocking ability so that might not be an option.

Anyway the graphics card is not very good for gaming and the memory is a bit low. If you can spend £30 I'd get another gig of memory (that will also improve non gaming performance, so you could argue its a required upgrade maybe ). Oblivion has quite high hardware requirements but looking at this it looks like you should get OK performance at 1024 x 768 on the minimum quality settings with an X1300.

[Deleted User]

In my opinion the main bottleneck is the five year old graphics card. Adding more RAM is probably going to give the system an overall improvement but the 3D graphics capabilities are still going to be a problem.

I think you'd be better off buying a second hand Xbox and the games you want, rather than wasting money on an aged system.