Hello all, I built a pc a few months ago, the specs are: AMD Athlon X2 3800+ 1gb ram (2x512) Nvidia Geforce FX 5500 (256mg AGP) I feel my pc could perform better, especially on games. So what I want to know is, should I double my ram, or get a better graphics card? Which would I see the most improvement with? Thanks in advance for your advice. Andrew
if you're going for a new graphics card, you want a PCI-E card, as that's replaced AGP. however, that would mean a new motherboard for you. so, ram will help you all around (go 2 gigs or so), but for twice the price (or so), pretty much *only* your game performance would improve, but it would improve drastically. your call. my recommendation is motherboard first, so you're up to par. the more ram when you save up for it.
Auslander's right, you'd be best off getting a newer motherboard (one that's PCI-E enabled, and can use SATA II and DDR2 if this one doesn't have those abilities), and then getting some DDR2 RAM (preferably 2 GB or more), and THEN get a new Videocard. OR, you could indeed just update to 2 Gb's of RAM, but i'd switch to two 1GB sticks, and take out those two 512MB sticks. In the end, switching out the motherboard to have more upgrade possibilities would be the best choice for the long run, but it would help your current problem much, so the choice really is up to you.
Just curious but what motherboard could he have that would take an and 3800+ am2 that would have an agp. I thought all the newer ones would have pci-e or am I missing something?
we're waiting to find out. might be a slim chance of a transition board, with both pci-e and agp; in that case, graphics card, then ram.
please don't post with text speak. it annoys a lot of members, ream. and the computer is custom built. it might already have a 550 watt psu; we don't have enough information to say that's a must, yet.
My motherbored has pci-e, i had an agp graphics card I got cheap so i put that in as I have an agp slot too. It also has sata and takes ddr2 if that helps. Thanks for your help.
Oh, I was trying to find my motherbored online but I can't find it anyware. Its an Asrock but I don't have the box so I don't know what model. But here is a picture!
picture here don't post the actual image on this thread, it's too large. *edit* i only see an agp slot and four pci slots on that motherboard. are you sure it's got a pci-e slot, too?
