System upgrade recommendation

[Loonatik]

I have a semi-decent PC at work that I somtimes use when playing DAoC. It has an AMD 3000+, 1 GB mem and a Radeon 9800 Pro gfx card.

When playing in 1280 x 1024, the game sometimes lag quite a bit which can be very annoying (and lethal!). I've been thinking of upgrading the mem and getting a better gfx card, but I'm not sure if a new card will improve an old game like DAoC much.

I want the game to run smooth without paying loads of money for it. Does anybody have experience with newer AGP cards like the 1300/1600 Pro?

 

[Penlid]

Try the X800 GTO or HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X1600 Pro at OCUK it's the one in the middle and very bottom. And looks to be the best ATI AGP card out atm.

If you really want better performance you'll have to pay for it. How much are you willing to pay? You could hook up with a new mobo for around £100 and another gb of ram for around £70 and buy yourself a Pci-e gfx card for around £150, although your PSU will have to be decent (500w+) to handle some of the new cards these days.

Around £350 will get you ram, new mobo, and gfx card.

For another £100 you can get a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ 2.00GHz and work your mobo around that (AM2 socket).

 

[Saggy]

Try different drivers first - I've similar comp (3200+ @ 2.5Ghz, 1Gb and 6600GT) and it runs perfectly fine at 1600x1200 :S

You could hook up with a new mobo for around £100 and another gb of ram for around £70 and buy yourself a Pci-e gfx card for around £150, although your PSU will have to be decent (500w+) to handle some of the new cards these days.

7950GX @ Quad-Sli + 6 HHD's and you may need more than 380W+ to run it - quality is what matters the most.

 

[Penlid]

7950GX @ Quad-Sli + 6 HHD's and you may need more than 380W+ to run it - quality is what matters the most.

I'm pretty sure you would need more than 380W to run it, in fact you would probably blow your PSU just starting the machine up with a 380W system.

The new GFX card range out atm especially SLI cards use way much more power than previous. And if your going to playing a game with highest graphics on for a while then your PSU needs be a good one for clean power.

Also if you have a dual core system with SLI mobo/gfx card i would go even higher than 500W to 550W better safe than sorry.

 

[Saggy]

I'm pretty sure you would need more than 380W to run it, in fact you would probably blow your PSU just starting the machine up with a 380W system.

The new GFX card range out atm especially SLI cards use way much more power than previous. And if your going to playing a game with highest graphics on for a while then your PSU needs be a good one for clean power.

Also if you have a dual core system with SLI mobo/gfx card i would go even higher than 500W to 550W better safe than sorry.

As I said the quality is what matters. Friend is using Antec NeoHE 380w with extremely high overclocked FX-60 with X1900XT CrossFire and it takes ~340w @ max. Test in Finnish, check the "Tehonkulutus" part for power consumption with different gfx-cards running AMD Athlon 64 FX-62, Foxconn C51XEM2AA, 2x Corsair Corsair XMS2-6400C4 1 GB, Silverstone ST56F 560W, Seagate Barracuda SATA V 120 GB. Oh, and those are the figures what PSU takes off the wall so basicly computer uses even less.

 

[evzy]

I would say that the system you have should run DAOC fine - maybe a little bit of bother in DR but shouldnt be much - try using TOA client and see if that helps. I wouldnt expect much difference from an upgrade as lag will still happen - I upgraded to a SLI twin gfx PC etc and still suffers from same problems it used to - laggy RvR when mega lots of people around etc - there is only so much your pc is responsible for tbh..

 

[Ballard]

Your system should run daoc fine, must be more down to the way you treat/configure your PC. That is exactly the same spec as mine and I get next to no lag dual logging.

 

[Loonatik]

I only lag in a few locations and when RvR gets crowded, and as it doesn't happen on my PC at home there must be a difference. The question is, is it the gfx card or the RAM (or even the CPU?) that does the difference?

 

[Penlid]

Looking at your spec again, it is the same as my bot comps spec. So i can't really say whats causing the problem. Maybe a defrag would help the situation

 

[Cromcruaich]

Sorry to disagree with you pen m8y, but I agree with the person talking about quality on powersupplies. A good 380 would run PCI-e card no problem. Buy a cheap 500w (ebuyer special) and that is much more likely to fail.

There is also the environment to think about, the industry keeps upping and upping the power requirements on components and hawking increased wattage powersupplies. It's totally irresponsible. They should increasingly be looking at minimising power requirements and being innovative rather than just upping clock cycles all the time.

/rant off

 

[Boni]

I only lag in a few locations and when RvR gets crowded, and as it doesn't happen on my PC at home there must be a difference. The question is, is it the gfx card or the RAM (or even the CPU?) that does the difference?

There are 3 things to look for...

a). Does reducing or increasing screen res and options settings (shadows, trees, draw distance) make a difference? If it does then a new gfx card would help.

b). Does your hard drive light and mechanism work overtime in these high lag situations? Check your task manager and see if a lot of virtual memory is being used. If thats the case then more memory will help.

c). DAOCs not that shiny an engine, in some situations you might find that the load on your PC bus is the limiting factor, the only way to tweak that is to spend a lot more on a faster FSB even then you wont get a good return on your cash and most PCs are kinda restricted by this.

Its hard to tell which of these will help you the most, given your spec I suspect they could all help a bit though none of them on their own will give you a magic speedup.

 

[Boni]

Sorry to disagree with you pen m8y, but I agree with the person talking about quality on powersupplies. A good 380 would run PCI-e card no problem. Buy a cheap 500w (ebuyer special) and that is much more likely to fail.

Yeah I agree, quality is everything with a PSU, a good 380 will do better than a crappy 500, though I would aim for a decent 450+ if your gonna load it with fun cards as you say power consumtions crazy with some newer cards.

 

[Penlid]

I agreed with the quality it was the wattage i was talking about, i've heard of a lot of cases where 380W just wasn't enough