Old mobo-what can i upgrade?

[itisi]

i have a :
845ebg2 intel 2.4
2*256 mb pc-2100 memory
bfg 6800 gt oc 256 mb video card (new part)
audio card: audigy 2
win xp sp1 as is (never figured out which proccessed are neccesery and which not)

ok, heres the thing, if i play on high levels (not the highest) i get choppines , now the old cpu isnt hellping of course but what i am asking is what difference will upgrading the memory from 512mb to 1gb or above do, will it help?

something i noticed in games is that of all things its the audio that preceeds the coppines, like the annoying orders in bf2 or the characters talking in half life : episode one.

will memory help alot or will it be an insignificant change.? what else can i do?

by the way: please no "just upgrade you cheap basterd...."

 

[CrossFire851]

The memmory will help alot, but that processor is your second bottleneck, but it's really not a bad system.

So to answer you're question yea, having more ram (up to 1gb) will help.

Make sure though it is the same brand and speed for compatibility.

By the way, if you know, how fast is the harddrive? That two could be you worst enemy and most people don't think twice about it (if once).

 

[IBN]

I have similar specs to you.

AMD 2400+,1.5GBRAM PC 2700, nvidia 6600 oclocked. I can run BF2 on the highest setting no problem at all.

I think if you upgrade to a faster speed of 1GB of RAM and a good PSU you'll be fine. The PSU is very important also. make sue your system is getting enough power dont skimp on this.

ps
make dure you download the latest drivers for your gfx card and patch for bf2.

BTW dont have all your applications and games and documents all on one drive. make partitions eg one for office and internet and another for games etc. everything on one windows xp installation will slow your pc down.

 

[itisi]

first of all thank you for helping.
ill check the hard drive, but as i remember it isnt that old.

and for the power, how do i know if my wat usage of my system is ok?
i know i have a generic 400w psu, how do i check how much it uses while playing and while not.
by the way, the pc-2100 memory is what came out when i bought the mobo,
can anyone tell me whats the highest memory my intel 845ebg2 can handle?

intel says 2gb of 266hz but they wrote that before faster memory chips where made.

 

[luvhuffer]

You can buy faster speed RAM but the operational speed is determined by the speed of the FSB, so if your RAM is running at PC2100, you can put in PC3200 but it will still run at 2100 speed. The advantage is you can buy cheaper RAM that will run at lower latencies bause of the underclock. However if you later upgrade the system to an 800MHz FSB CPU, you'll be stuck with cheap RAM. RAM is relatively cheap right now, so it's a good time to upgrade. I just bought a GB [2x512] of Dual Channel Mushkin PC3200 for $59 after rebate.

Is that a 4X or 8X AGP board? If it is a 4X it will really be holding the GPU card back.

 

[itisi]

the agp is x4 im affraid
but i read that it realy doesnt matter , that agpx8 and x4 almost dont differ at all.

 

[IBN]

You might want to build a new rig in that case. Prices have fallen quite a bit. You might want to consider this.

 

[itisi]

You might want to build a new rig in that case. Prices have fallen quite a bit. You might want to consider this.

BUYING ANOTHER RIG DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF UPGRADING

 

[IBN]

In terms of the opportunity cost with options available a new rig is a viable option.

 

[itisi]

if i upgrade i need:
new mobo 155$
new procesor 200$
new memory 1gig (costly, not like pc-2100) 155$
new video card (pci express) 400$

thats around 1000$

if i just buy memory for my current pc it will be something around 70$

all that bothers me is some choppines i have here and there, its not constant.

upgrading isnt a solution to my problem its avoiding the problem for 1000$.