New game, need new gear

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boris20

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Hey all, I just got Age of Conan a few days ago, and I am noticing my year old PC needs a facelift, its only gettin about 10-25fps when playing. Ive got a 256 vid card nvid GeF 7600gt series, and 2 gig ram that I put in when I got the comp. I was wondering if i could get some advice on what to do to get the game runnin better. I DO have all the game settings set on the lowest possible settings graphics wise. I was lookin at new vid cards, such as the 512 8000 gefore series but I dont know how to tell which card will fit my Dell e521 and what ones wont. If anyone could help me out and perhaps give me some good ideas on a cheap upgrades to help i would appreciate it! I would like to try and keep the price tag around 100$.

AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual core proc 4000+ 2.10 GHz
32 bit
2gig ram
Cant find the power supply specs on the comp anywhere, but its a stock from dell for the e521 as is everything cept the new ram and vid card i put in when I got it.
 
According to Dell's website you have a PCI-E x16 slot and 305W PSU.

As far as a video card is concerned, you're probably best off buying either a 9600GT or an 8800GT (512MB).

Yes, I would probably take a look at a new PSU along with the new video card. While you don't need a 600W PSU, the OCZ600SXS is on sale with a rebate for a great price. Not the most amazing PSU in town but, it'll definitely get the job done and it's worth the $49 bucks in my opinion.
 
You cannot use the 9600GT or 8800GT in your system with your current PSU. This is a better bet.
Also, $100 will not get you a PSU and a video card better than your current setup. You'd need to spend at least $150 on a card and about $50-60 for the PSU.
 
yall are of great help, and i thank you. Do you think this card would work?

XFX PVT84JYAJG GeForce 8600 GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card

what is the ddr2 or ddr3 about? my card atm is ddr3 and 350w requirment

I wish i could just get the 1gig 8600gt but that would require a new power source for sure wouldnt it? I would really like to avoid buying a new power supply cause it just seems like id be gettin into alot more then id like to do, but I do agree that sometime you there isnt an easy way out.

and that 256gig card you mentioned, im kinda afraid to get a 256 cause all conan specs are sayin 512 is recommended as a minimum.
 
It is the GPU that matters more than the memory on the card. The 8600GTS is much more powerful than the 8600GT, which delivers only about 10-15% more performance than your current card. The 8600GTS is the better card and will give much better performance than even the 1GB 8600GT card.
 
Aren't all the new 9 series GeForce cards PCI-E 2.0? His dell modo I doubt would have that, so that rules out 9 series yeah?
 
As far as I know, according to PCI-SIG, the PCI-E 2.0 interface is backward compatible with PCI-E 1.0 and 1.0a. The GeForce 9 series should be fully compatible with his Dell motherboard, skitzo_zac.
 
Fair enough my bad, so what? If you chuck a PCI-E 2.0 card into a PCI-E 1 slot you just don't get the full bandwidth offfered by 2.0? And 2.0 allows for more power (watts) over the actual PCI bus yeah?
 
this is getting interesting, contiunue on, im learning tons here. So the GTS = lots better then the plain GT and the actual size of the card, 1gig 512 ect doesnt matter all that much in terms of gaming but I should be focusing rather on the getting GTS instead of bigger memory?
 
skitzo_zac said:
Fair enough my bad, so what? If you chuck a PCI-E 2.0 card into a PCI-E 1 slot you just don't get the full bandwidth offfered by 2.0? And 2.0 allows for more power (watts) over the actual PCI bus yeah?
Click to expand...
Not sure about the power part, but current cards don't saturate the full PCI-E 1.0 bus at all, much less the PCI-E 2.0 one. So there won't be any difference in performance if you mix and match the slot types.

@boris20, yes, that is what you should do.
 
do you guys think i can get away with buying the 8600gts 512 x16 ddr3 and NOT buying a new power unit? the card I have in there now requires 350w and someone had said that my comp is 305w, and my card runs fine.
 
twas purchased along with an additional 2gigs of ram to make 4 gigs total. should be okay now i hope anyways :) thanks all!
 
Unless you're running a 64-bit OS, odds are you'll only be able to put around 3GB (give or take) of that RAM to use.
 
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