Upgrading RAM. What's best?

donnajunkie

ts_aly2000 wrote: »

Take it to your local computer shop one man band. Upgrading RAM when you're not familiar with all of the terms and speeds opens a complete new can of worms. You could *technically* install RAM which gives you what you want yet makes the system unstable to the point of unexplained crashes.

A local bloke will do it for the cost of the RAM, and you have the satisfaction of knowing that it's done then. Might cost £10 more, will cost alot more than that in hassle if you buy mail order etc. etc.

i dont trust local shops. they are con artists most of them. putting it in isnt a problem coz i have a mate who knows how to do it.

GoofyGAT

donnajunkie wrote: »

thanks!
well i want to play games, not necessarily the latest though. i have been told that windows vista is memory hungry and alot of games i look at say more memory is needed if useing vista. i am sure i have seen games that say 2.5gb is needed. as i currently only have 1gb while 2gb(altogether) may well be decent enough, 3gb would be better. i have fifa07 and tomb raider legend and they seem to work fine. i have demos for doom 3 and unreal tournament 3 and they work well but not anywhere near the top spec i think. they do still look good to me though.

I'd get 1Gb as BillScarab says too. The games you currently play aren't going to benefit from more. Consider a single 1Gb stick for now, so you'll have 1 slot free to add more later if ever required (won't run in dual-channel, but unlikely to be significant - see this).

What graphics card do you have? This is the most important component for games. According to your PC specs it's a 8400GS, which is a relatively poor GPU for games (except older less-graphically intensive ones). I'm surprised Doom 3 & UT3 demos look good to you - what settings are you running them on? G

Edit 1: Save a little compared to Crucial - compatible Kingston ValueRAM: 1Gb for £14.98 delivered

Edit 2: If you're a Quidco member, you can get 10% cashback if buying from Crucial. This will bring the 1Gb module to £15.04, & will be the one to go for

donnajunkie

that stuff to do with dual channel goes straight over my head, maybe its coz i'm a bit tired. i have been convinced that another 1gb will do for now.
i know my graphics card is a bit below the usual recommended(geforce 8800) but its not too far below and it is well above the minimum requirement i see on games which is usually a minimum of geforce 5000.
i am not sure what setting the demos of games like doom 3 and unreal are running at. i know they arent at top spec but as i said they do look good to me which makes me think that top spec will be absolutely amazing. as far as i can tell there are no settings set for the full games i have(fifa07 and tomb raider legend).

BillScarab

8400 may sound like it is only a bit below 8800 but it in reality it's vastly different. The 8400 is designed as a budget general purpose card. Of the new DX10 cards the minimum you should look at for games are the 8800 GTS or the new 8800 GT which looks to be a great card at a (hopefully) good price.

Having said that if you're happy with the way the games look with some of hte fancy stuff turned off it's not a problem and you've saved some cash.

donnajunkie

i am right about it being well above the minimum requirement of most games though arent i?
you will be lucky to get any graphics card at a cheap price. i would rather buy a new pc than pay those kind of prices just for an upgrade. i think it is a con. if ram can be relatively cheap then graphics cards should be too.

BillScarab

donnajunkie wrote: »

i am right about it being well above the minimum requirement of most games though arent i?
you will be lucky to get any graphics card at a cheap price. i would rather buy a new pc than pay those kind of prices just for an upgrade. i think it is a con. if ram can be relatively cheap then graphics cards should be too.

You can't compare a graphics card to RAM, a graphics card is effectively a specialised computer by itself with it's own RAM and Processor.

The other point to remember is that when a new range of cards are launched. e.g. Nvidia 8xxx series, they are not all faster than the previous generation. The low end cards of the new generation will be poorer at games than the higher end cars of the previous generation.

The following is a link to the perfomance charts at Tomshardware, if you look at the cards in blue the 8500 (current gen) is a lot slower than a 6800 Ultra (not even previous gen).

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html?modelx=33&model1=856&model2=720&chart=275