Desktop Hardware Q&A

[Kourage]

What should I do about my lack of RAM?

 

My Motherboard is a GigaByte P35-DS3P

 

Supports DDR2 800/667 memory

Dual Channel architecture supports up to 8GB by 4 DIMM slots

 

I am using 2 paired 1 GB sticks of RAM

- G.Skill F2-6400CL5-1GBNQ 1GB DIMM DDR2 PC2-6400U DDR2-800 (5-5-5-15 3-20-6-3)

 

 

I could;

- buy 4 new paired 2GB sticks - $100

- add 2 paired 2GB sticks - $50

- add 2 paired 1GB sticks - $26

- add 1 single 2GB stick - $22

(800MHz only)

 

 

Not sure, but I think buying a single 2GB stick would be better than buying 2 more paired 1GB sticks, and cheaper also. I really don't want to spend $100 either. $50 at the most. Also waiting on a friend who is out of town, to hook me up with Win 7 to upgrade from XP. Only have a Intel Core Duo 2.2GHz.

[Grendel_Prime]

Okay so previously I was using a Pentium D 2.66, 2gb Ram and GeForce 8800GT. To say things were slow would be understating it a lot, but it was playable...mostly.

 

So I had the money to upgrade everything but the videocard (CPU needed it badly as it was starting to act surly).

 

Now I've got the same video card, 4gb DDR3, Phenom XII 960T quad core 3.0 ghz. My onboard video is ATI HD4250. It gives me a better video WEI than my card did.

 

I'm just curious as to what kind of bump I should expect.

[Bobabounty]

Okay so previously I was using a Pentium D 2.66, 2gb Ram and GeForce 8800GT. To say things were slow would be understating it a lot, but it was playable...mostly.

 

So I had the money to upgrade everything but the videocard (CPU needed it badly as it was starting to act surly).

 

Now I've got the same video card, 4gb DDR3, Phenom XII 960T quad core 3.0 ghz. My onboard video is ATI HD4250. It gives me a better video WEI than my card did.

 

I'm just curious as to what kind of bump I should expect.

 

A definite bump due to your CPU, but upgrade your graphics card. It's bottlenecking the powerful Phenom x4, and not allowing it to perform at its peak. I suggest the Radeon HD 6770 or the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti for cheap solutions that will allow you to run flawlessly at max.

[Dabrixmgp]

Here is the PC I just ordered just wondering what kind of performance I should get. First time not buying brand name. Also is 750w enough power to SLI in another 560ti down the road?

 

 

ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68

Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V v2.2 SLI Certified

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLHX 300GB 10000 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600

EVGA 012-P3-2068-KR GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 448 Cores Classified 1280MB

 

Also enough Blue LEDs to make a police car jealous

Edited December 30, 2011 by Dabrixmgp

[Grendel_Prime]

A definite bump due to your CPU, but upgrade your graphics card. It's bottlenecking the powerful Phenom x4, and not allowing it to perform at its peak. I suggest the Radeon HD 6770 or the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti for cheap solutions that will allow you to run flawlessly at max.

 

Any more upgrades are far, far in the future. I'm not worried about playing on max or anything, but while I'm waiting for the game to redownload/install I've been dreaming about being able to play mostly smoothly:) I was averaging 7-9fps and considered myself lucky to get to 13.

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

[ibeanzz]

Not to sound rude or anything.. but can someone answer my question? Really wanna play this game. I click play the screen goes black and crashes on desktop. My question is on the page before this one.

[CygnisJunior]

Thanks for doing this! Heres a quick question for you.

 

I'm getting a new computer in about 6 months when I graduate college so I just need to hold off until then. Currently, I have:

 

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+, 2.59 GHz

3.25 GB RAM

Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT graphics card

 

I want to spend maybe ~75 bucks to get a better graphics card to last me the next 6 months. I don't care about running on terrible (bare minimum) graphics, I just want my game to look smoother and not lag as much as it does currently. (I get 8fps in the fleet, and 10-15 when I'm in combat, about 25fps otherwise)

 

Can I get a graphics card that is significantly better than my current one for that price? More importantly, will it actually improve my fps?

[flem]

Okay so previously I was using a Pentium D 2.66, 2gb Ram and GeForce 8800GT. To say things were slow would be understating it a lot, but it was playable...mostly.

 

So I had the money to upgrade everything but the videocard (CPU needed it badly as it was starting to act surly).

 

Now I've got the same video card, 4gb DDR3, Phenom XII 960T quad core 3.0 ghz. My onboard video is ATI HD4250. It gives me a better video WEI than my card did.

 

I'm just curious as to what kind of bump I should expect.

Wait, are you saying you're using the 4250 instead of the 8800GT!?

 

Because that's a gigantic mistake. Unless you're misinstalled the 8800GT, it will destroy any integrated video, esp. the 4250 which can't really even run the game.

Edited December 30, 2011 by flem

[bobclinton]

Would the graphics card AMD HD6530D be able to run this game on low to mid settings?

[Radorock]

Other people seem to have a similar problem: the game 'runs fine' as in there is no movement lag, except there are huge patches of color blocking the screen, but the toon can move without restraint. It's been like that ever since I uploaded it. I tried re-uploading it once already. I'm running it on a vaio, dual-core, windows vista (which might end up being upgraded to 7). Any advice?

[DeltaDawg]

http://www.outletpc.com/a1003a0-athlon-ii-two-core-motherboard-and-cpu-combo.html

 

this any good? Trying to upgrade from amd quad core 2.2ghz

[Hostility]

So I'm between these three desktops right now. Which is the better buy?

 

1: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5395891&CatId=4928

 

2: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7007449&CatId=4928

 

3:http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5395892&CatId=4928

 

Would anybody be able to help me choose between one of these three? Which is the better buy or should I even buy one of these in the first place?

[Furrygorilla]

I'm thinking of getting this Desktop (without peripherals) http://www.chillblast.com/pconf.php?productid=18059.

 

Have had a some advice about it and know that I would need to upgrade the cooler. For it to be better would I need to use a better 1st and 2nd Hard Drive too? Or would that be unnecessary? As the first one is only 30GB and the second isn't manufacturer labelled and is probably the quite poor stock hard drive.

 

My budget isn't extremely high so I don't want to change too much stuff .

[Enako]

Running on Eyefinity portrait and it is EPIC!!

 

hey !

 

how did you do that !?

 

i am running 3 monitor eyefinity normal landscape mode.

 

did you use softth ?

[FrostyAU]

Hey everybody! i have a Acer H57M01 motherboard and i was just wondering, if a Gigabyte GeForce GTX570 would be compatiable and work/fit into the motherboard, or tell me how i can find out. thanks alot.

Frosty.

[APhantasm]

Let's try this again since Customer Service are idiots and close threads telling people to check threads that likely don't pertain to my problem.

 

I have been trying to play ToR for the last week and getting BSOD and CTD. BW pretty much wiped their hands of the problem. When I sought help from Customer Service telling me they knew of the problem, had no resolution, and to contact Nvidia.

 

While I wait to see if Nvidia will do anything (I have a thread started on their forums) I need to look at alternatives. Which means a different video card.

 

I need to get something that will work with my current configuration, but at the same time play the game with little hiccups. So if someone could help me in determining what video card I should be thinking about getting next it would be appreciated.

 

My Specs:

 

MOBO: Asrock N68C-S UCC

CPU: Athlon II X2 240 - 2.8 GHZ

RAM: 4GB (upgradable to 8GB, would just have to buy new ram)

OS: WinXP (If I have to I can upgrade to Win7, would just have to buy Win7)

PSU: 650 Watt

 

Anything else you need to know just ask.

[FrostyAU]

Hey everybody! i have a Acer H57M01 motherboard and i was just wondering, if a Gigabyte GeForce GTX570 would be compatiable and work/fit into the motherboard, or tell me how i can find out. thanks alot.

Frosty.

[Sylwaria]

So I checked out a couple of forum threads and the new Nvidia Beta Drivers. Seems like there is no SLI support yet for SW:TOR. Is that correct?

[Kookus]

Hey everybody! i have a Acer H57M01 motherboard and i was just wondering, if a Gigabyte GeForce GTX570 would be compatiable and work/fit into the motherboard, or tell me how i can find out. thanks alot.

Frosty.

 

Yes, it is compatible with your motherboard. The limiting factors will be the size of your case, since the 570 can tend to be a little on the large side, and the raw wattage/per-rail wattage of your power supply.

[cameronjambo]

Just my views.

 

I would always suggest building your own rig. I built my own three years ago and it still runs everything i have thrown at it easily. All i have upgraded are the cpu from a dual core @ 3.16ghz to a quad 2.4 ghz OC'd to 3.6ghz. My PSU and my cooling (water cooled). I picked up the quad core for 60 GBP off ebay. And the PSU and cooling were for future upgrades.

 

Going this route will be cheaper in the long run, and a lot more fun!

[Leetsolja]

I have an old laptop that I used to play counterstrike on, and it's the only pc that I will have access to over christmas, can anyone tell me if it would run this on bare minimun settings?

 

OS - WINDOWS XP

CPU - Inte Core 2 Duo T5800 @ 2.00GHz

RAM - 3GB

GPU - NVIDIA GeForce 9200M GS 512mb memory

 

It should run the game. Just make sure that you keep the laptop cool. We have countless people come into my shop with burned video chips. Clean up the system too to try to squeeze more performance out of it. CCleaner, Hijackthis, Malwarebytes Antimalware, Windows Updates, Driver updates from Nvidia.

[Kookus]

Let's try this again since Customer Service are idiots and close threads telling people to check threads that likely don't pertain to my problem.

 

I know from experience that this game will choke on an Athlon II X2. It is playable, but you will have more problems than others due to the CPU bottleneck. Some of this can be alleviated with a monster video card (I didn't see one in your specs), but you will see diminishing returns and probably want to put a full system upgrade on your to-do list within the next year or two.

 

Another bottleneck is your RAM. I've seen my system eat up 5+GB (not swtor itself; total system usage) while the game is running. I would wager that you're doing a lot of swapping, which is going to cause slow-downs and any number of issues if your HDD starts getting stressed. That said, upgrading your RAM won't do you any good on a 32-bit XP build -- you will only ever be able to enumerate about 3.5GB unless/until you upgrade to a 64-bit OS.

 

Bottom line: you're looking at major involvement to iron out your issues. My personal opinion is that you would get more bang for your buck by simply moving to a newer system.

[Marmerus]

If I want to increase the voltage on my CPU what should I do? Its maxed out in bios and I have to connect external power.

[APhantasm]

Bottom line: you're looking at major involvement to iron out your issues. My personal opinion is that you would get more bang for your buck by simply moving to a newer system.

 

Well I guess then I should just cancel my subscription. I am not going to build a new computer this soon after building this one, I had this one built just 6 months ago.

[sithkllr]

I was getting pretty decent FPS (usually 40-80fps) but a lot of skipped frames. I assumed it was my video card and almost pulled the trigger on a new one for $300. Last nigght I fired up Resource Monitor in Windows 7, filtered it on swtor.exe, and waited or a frame skip. As it turns out, the problem is the hard drive, not my video card. Every time it would skip a frame, there was a corresponding massive orange spike in resource monitor under my hard drive. I am not sure if a better HD would fix it, or if it is a problem with the game that no HD would improve.