Help on lag problem

[demonic]

hi. my comp always lags wen i play games like warcraft 3. Its not net lag i get, but comp lag. I was wondering wat i should upgrade to get it to work better.
I have:
-PIII
-733mhz
-128ram
- nvidia tnt 2
-windows xp

yeh..ne more info u need..ask me.but wat should i upgrade or do to stop this lag!
thanx

 

[Jim]

Here's a few tips if you don't want yo upgrade to a new comp.

1) Get a new stick of ram 256meg.
2) GForce 3 Vid Card (very cheap)
3) Go into your Bios you might be able to squeeze a little more out of that 733mhz chip.
4) Turn off a lot of the Visual Affects in XP.
5) When playing games turn the grahfics down a bit.

This is what I did and had no problems playing the latest games.

 

[mokuni]

yea i agree. get a 256 or 512 stick of ram. but sd ram is hard to come by nowadays but im sure you'll find it if you look long enough.

get a geforce 4 ti 4200. it should be like dirt cheap now bout $200 (AUD) or just a MX 440 ($90 AUD) would suffice. make settings to normal instead of high in war3 (helps )

you shouldnt lag. i mean 733 aint that bad.

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by demonic
hi. my comp always lags wen i play games like warcraft 3. Its not net lag i get, but comp lag. I was wondering wat i should upgrade to get it to work better.
I have:
-PIII
-733mhz
-128ram
- nvidia tnt 2
-windows xp

yeh..ne more info u need..ask me.but wat should i upgrade or do to stop this lag!
thanx

memory and video card are 2 massive bottlenecks there...

you should not really be running windows xp if you can help it with 128mb ram...

with more memory you should eliminate much of this lag you experience...

also what resolutions and settings do you play WC @... if they are a little on the medium to high side... your video card will also lay a turd...

when playing games you are trying to ensure as much work as possible is done by the hardware w/o having to swap files in which case your bottleneck becomes the medium via which the swap is taking place... ie the agp port for the video card...

so... um... get more memory.. or just wait and upgrade the whole rig... computer parts are dirt cheap right now to make a decent setup..

 

[jonifen]

If you were looking to slowly upgrade the PC bit by bit, I'd start by adding a bit more ram (another 128 may not really be enough (a 256 would be better), but will make a difference). A graphics card - I just got a leadtek ti4200 from ebuyer.com for ~£100 (inc vat + delivery) - gonna put it in the PC tonight, but the reviews look v.good - so its cheap and powerful

Alternatively, as Sazar said, save your cash for now and just upgrade the whole box - but if you're either likely to spend the savings on other things (beer is a common system-money-robber ) or you would take a while to get new things, I'd start with the things you can definitely use in a new setup (graphics card, perhaps a faster hdd - may help with swap file if needed due to lack of ram).