What should I upgrade?

[Smoot178]

I have a Radeon 9600 Pro, 718 mb Ram, a crappy sound card (factory install). I can play on medium settings but lags none the less. Low is perfect with great FPS. Would upgrading Ram Help?
EDIT: Sound has 'pricks' or specs of whatevaer you wanna call it. Its like a record player with the fuzz. Should i get an X-FI Card? (SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic Sound Card)

[xSomeGuyx]

Re: What should I upgrade?

First upgrade RAM now to 2GB, Then the video card later on or now, and if you want buy a sound card.

[Smoot178]

Re: What should I upgrade?

Hokay then!Anybody know where I can get some cheap RAM? Ive been wanting to upgrade for long time now

[knghtwhosaysni]

Re: What should I upgrade?

There's a topic asking when is it a good time to build and... well I guess it would be best just to wait til the summer and build a whole new computer with conroe, 2 gig ddr2, and a PCIe card (geforce 8 is supposed to come out Q3 according some people on these forums). X-Fi would be great if you can afford it. But I also think you really need at least a 5.1 system to truly enjoy it.

[TehFunk]

Re: What should I upgrade?

First upgrade RAM now to 2GB, Then the video card later on or now, and if you want buy a sound card.

uhhh. i think that the video card would be a much bigger priority. And ill probably get bombed for this, but im doing fine with only 1 gig of ram. For the first 15 -30 seconds of the first game i joiin, it gets a bit laggy, then it goes nice and smooth. On my g15 lcd, it says 99% of ram used up, but once that short period is over, it goes down to 85% ram usage. And yes, i haev all settings maxed.

[Blak_Phoenix]

Re: What should I upgrade?

ok.. both, get AT LEAST 1GB of RAM, it will help lots, but a new video card will also helps tons, it works like this.....

A new video card will allow you to play on higher settings, but only if the RAM is there to support it. Where as RAM will make is so that the glitching stops, this is where you are in a jeep driving fast then after 30 seconds the game starts to lag. So RAM will stop that...

So you need both to function properly.

[megawhompertoo]

Re: What should I upgrade?

^^^What the other folks said about RAM and video cards is true. Search for A-Data on newegg--cheap stuff, but functional and reliable. I have two sticks of 512mb (pc3200) and nary a problem. I paid $75 for them 18 months ago. These are now $40:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820211119

The 1gb version is ~$80.

Sound has 'pricks' or specs of whatevaer you wanna call it. Its like a record player with the fuzz. Should i get an X-FI Card? (SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic Sound Card)

You (probably) aren't going to get your money's worth out of a high end soundcard unless you do mixing, or are an extreme audiophile. I have an audigy 2zs that I picked up on ebay for ~$50. Creative even has refurbed audigy 2zs' that go for $35-$50 on their "Creative ebay store". The 2 zs' will push 7.1 channels and (because the zs model was an updated, re-released model of the audigy 2 series) is arguably as good as an audigy 4 (which was about as incremental of an update that they could get away with and still a "new" model.) In fact, you can get a audigy 2 zs platinum model for a few bucks more, and have all your sound controls at your fingertips on the front face of the p.c.

In the meantime you might try updating your current soundcard drivers. I'm guessing you're using software sound rendering, but it still never hurts.