Why the low frames? Cheapest way to upgrade with results.

[odoyle22]

Here are my spec's
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GS/XT 512MB
Board: P4M800CE-8237
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 06/08/2006
RAM 1024 Megabytes Installed Memory 333Mhz pc 2700
Intel Pentium 4 3.07 gigahertz 8 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache
I play World Of Warcraft, which from what I hear is not all the demanding from your PC. I have my graphic settings on medium to low on all of the settings. At BEST I get 30FPS.
My Pc will CHUG a lot if their are a lot of people in an area. It drops down to 6FPS.
Even in indoor settings where graphics are not all that demanding I get like 20FPS and I have frame lag.
Please tell me what the source of my problem may be and what I can do to fix it.

 

[RineEater]

well i'm no expert but i hear installing more RAM is the cheapest and fastest way to better gaming and a faster pc in general. You could use a couple more gigs of RAM. After the RAM, upgrade to a better video card. However, you need to make sure your pc isn't too old in general. Because you don't want to pay for all this stuff then find out your processor is getting old (which it kinda is), so you have to get a new processor, but you're limited to what your motherboard can handle- so you might not be able to get a really good cpu unless you upgrade your motherboard.

How old is your pc??? I'd just buy a new one if you can manage it financially.

Here's a site to use: http://www.powerleap.com/
and another for memory: http://www.crucial.com/

I see the best deals for memory online. You do need to research all the stuff though before you buy.

So my suggestions for you are:
1) Buy a new PC
2) If that's too much $ for you, buy more memory. Get 2 more gigs (2 sticks of 1gig each is best- i'm assuming your 1gig is 2 sticks of 512mb?)- most pcs don't take more than 3.25 or 3.75, so buying 4 gigs altogether is a waste. Yours is DDR 2700? so you know what to buy.
3) New Video card. I'm not going to recommend one because I suck at buying cards- I say just go for one of the best so you don't have to buy one for a long time. This of course depends on your funds.

Upgrading the cpu and mobo seem too much of a hassle to me so i'd not recommend them. Because once you upgrade the cpu you also usually have to buy a heatsink or fan of some sort. It's a pain. All I can say is use google and research it. That's how i'm able to tell you all this stuff.

 

[mattfrompa]

RAM is definitely the easiest way to increase overall performance. Here are a few things:set your AGP aperture to 128mb in your BIOS, if you have Symantec anti virus (Norton) and or internet security, get rid of it. Install something that won't cause as much system delay like AVG (which you can get for free). What OS are you using? Also your bus speed is pretty darn slow, and certainly causing a bottleneck. I personally wouldn't buy much for the computer you have now, because the biggest problem in my opinion is coming from the motherboard.Also, noting RineEater's comments, 32 bit OS's can only address 4096mb of RAM total,but windows XP can only address 3gb of RAM. Although don't think I'm suggesting you buy 64 bit hardware and a 64 bit OS, because I personally don't recommend doing that. I don't think the computer you have is anything to just scrap, but if what I suggested above doesn't help you could see if it's something with your internet/network. If you don't want to buy a whole new computer the best solution would probably be a new motherboard and possibly more RAM (Id buy 2gb of the fastest you can get). If we were talking about a more graphically intensive game Id suggest a new video card, but the one you have should be fine.

 

[odoyle22]

Thanks for the information guys. With the errors I recieve from my computer and only the possibility of ram helping some, I think I will hold out until I can afford a better system.
Again, thank you for your time and advice.
odoyle