Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Yossarian on October 05, 2008, 11:14:06 AM
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The computer I use to play Aces High at the moment is several years old, and here are it's current specs:
NVidia GeForce FX 5200
Windows XP Home (32-bit)
512MB RAM
Two hard drives, with about 240GB total
Widescreen monitor (1440x990 I think)
Intel Pentium 4 processor 3.00GHz
SoundBlaster 24-bit Advanced HD (this is what it says on the sticker on the front of the computer box)
At the moment, I'm running AH on 512 textures, and I usually get around 5-20 fps.
My parents have agreed to upgrade it to have 4GB of RAM, and I'm wondering what type of performance increase I should expect to see with this (mostly in Aces High, but overall as well). Would this be enough to allow me to use the High-res texture pack.
Thanks for any help,
Yossarian
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you will see improvements. however, you will notice that XP only recognizes a little over 3Gb of ram.
NOT
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You'll be fine with 2GB.
Biggest diffrence you'll see is that stuff will load up faster, you will be able to switch between programs much faster also you'll probabbly see less jerkiness (mini freezes) when playing games too.
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You'll see a small gain however your CPU and video card are the bigger bottlenecks.
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Personally I think 4gb is overkill on your system, I went from 1gb to 2gb and noticed a marginal difference (AMDxp3000 processor, Asus 6800GT, 2gb Crucial ram, Audigy 4 = 30-70 FPS in 512 textures)
You may be better of just getting 2 gb ram then using the money to buy a better graphics card and a sound card (sound cards take some stress off the processor, and I read AH uses the processor a lot). Second hand stuff from Ebay is fine, thats where I get my bits from.
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you will see improvements. however, you will notice that XP only recognizes a little over 3Gb of ram.
NOT
The reason why you install 4 gigs of ram as opposed to 3 gigs of ram is on most, if not all motherboards if you want to run your ram in dual channel mode you have to install it in pairs
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The reason why you install 4 gigs of ram as opposed to 3 gigs of ram is on most, if not all motherboards if you want to run your ram in dual channel mode you have to install it in pairs
Could the Dual channel be available with 3GB of RAM by simply using 2x 1GB sticks and 2x 512MB sticks? I never really understood the Dual channel part.
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Thanks for all the advice :aok
If I were to go ahead and get a new processor, how would I best go about doing it, and what sort of price would I be looking at overall?
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you will see improvements. however, you will notice that XP only recognizes a little over 3Gb of ram.
NOT
my system See's 3.5g of 4g
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Thanks for all the advice :aok
If I were to go ahead and get a new processor, how would I best go about doing it, and what sort of price would I be looking at overall?
That depends on what socket your current CPU uses. My guess is that it's a 478 pin socket in which case you'd need to buy a new motherboard first. If that's the case then you're better off saving until you can buy or build a new system.
If by chance it's a socket 775 then the cheapest Intel Cor2Duo is the E2180 2.0 Ghz Allendale for $70 on newegg. This would still be an upgrade even though it's only 2 Ghz. Even at that you're video card would be the new bottleneck. To replace it with an Nvidia 9600 GT would run another $110. That, of course, requires your motherboard to have a PCIe x16 slot. You're current board may only have an AGP slot.
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The computer I use to play Aces High at the moment is several years old, and here are it's current specs:
NVidia GeForce FX 5200
Windows XP Home (32-bit)
512MB RAM
Two hard drives, with about 240GB total
Widescreen monitor (1440x990 I think)
Intel Pentium 4 processor 3.00GHz
SoundBlaster 24-bit Advanced HD (this is what it says on the sticker on the front of the computer box)
At the moment, I'm running AH on 512 textures, and I usually get around 5-20 fps.
My parents have agreed to upgrade it to have 4GB of RAM, and I'm wondering what type of performance increase I should expect to see with this (mostly in Aces High, but overall as well). Would this be enough to allow me to use the High-res texture pack.
Thanks for any help,
Yossarian
You don't need 4 gigs of ram for Windows XP... 2 gigs is plenty... XP usually doesn't like 4 gigs anyway...
You need 2X1 gig sticks... Don't add to the ram you already have... Get RID of the stuff you have... Use it as a keychain, what ever.. Mix and matching ram is a bad thing and will give you problems... And more problems with mount if you have a crappy motherboard.. Also, get another video card... Geforce FX series cards are several generations old.. You can get a decent AGP card fairly cheap these days... The Geforce 6800GS, 7800GS, or ATI 3870 are all great cards for AGP(you may need a better powersupply if you upgrade videocard)... The difference will be night and day..
And by the way, don't listen to ANYTHING Krustsack (Krusty) says.. The Geforce 7600 GS/GT is substandard on any level... Why he thinks it's good when the facts show it's not a performer by any means is beyond me... And beyond him apparently...
You could upgrade that system pretty inexpensively, actually... It won't be on par with anything like a Core2Duo... But you CAN make a significant improvement especially if the only game you play is AH...
I'd got the eBay route... Older stuff is dirt cheap there... No sense in buying a brand new AGP card for top dollar when you can get a 2nd hand one for less than half AND still under warranty in more cases... :)
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no it depends on the wether it is a 64 bit can have 4 and mabey more not sure or 32 only does 3 my dad for geting strait a for freshman year in high school i was suposed to get 4 GB but i could only get 3
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no it depends on the wether it is a 64 bit can have 4 and mabey more not sure or 32 only does 3 my dad for geting strait a for freshman year in high school i was suposed to get 4 GB but i could only get 3
Do yourself a favour and don't even remotely consider anything with 64-bits with a computer that is several years old technology. You will _not_ see any kind of performance gain if and _if_ the system will run at all.
4 gigs is ok but on XP 2 gigs would have been enough for 99% of the users. I know I never go past it in my regular use.
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Any upgrade in ram will help. You need to match each stick of ram with same vendor and model. XP WILL NOT RECOGNIZE 4 G. Get 3 x 1g sticks. The video card is the biggest difference. Maybe compromize and get 2 g ram and new video card. Some real good video cards are now around $100.
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Nvidea 9600gt is about $140 now. Ram is cheap.
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Nvidea 9600gt is about $140 now. Ram is cheap.
It went up since yesterday? $110 on newegg.
DO NOT put in 3 1 gig sticks of RAM if it's DDR2. It will take it out of dual channel mode. You want PAIRS of matched sticks.
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Honestly, his system is very similar to what my old one was (replaced Jan 07). It ran AH fairly good (it would dip into the 20's when flying near a smoking base with lots of cons) otherwise 40-50+, no high res packs but I believe I ran it at 1280x968 or whatever. I had P4 (Northwood 533mhz FSB) 2.8ghz, 1gb DDR 333mhz, and an 5900XT.
He's most likely has a PresHott, and DDR. Although I can't say if its dual-channel or not. My Asus P4S8X board circa 2003 did not have dual channel. He has an AGP card so it makes no sense to recommend PCI-E cards (your Nvidia 9600's).
My opinion is that adding 1gb of RAM (dual channel sticks or just 1 stick) and upgrading the graphics card could make a nice difference. The amount of ram in that computer and that terrible FX5200 are really holding back that P4 CPU. For +/- $100 you could see a marked improvement for the short term if you mainly play Aces High.
SAPPHIRE 100175L Radeon X1650PRO 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail - $62.99
*I went with this card because of PSU limitations. He did not say what he had but the 1650 needs a 350 watt PSU which is reasonable and this card won't break the bank and/or be too powerful for the old P4 cpu.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102073
WINTEC AMPO 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Desktop Memory - Retail $18.99
* This is pretty cheap for old DDR and you could buy 2 if you motherboard supports dual channel. Totaling your system at 1.5gb or 2gb. Granted dual channel would give you a performance boost, but its not gonna make or break the system if you're in a bind.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161626
Now I only recommend these upgrades if:
A) You main game is Aces High and you spend a great majority of playing it and will continue to in the future.
B) You're on a budget and cannot afford a new system in say 5-6 months time.
If you say no to any of the above, then I'd recommend saving that $100 and waiting to get a whole new system which depending on what parts you reuse, can get a nice gaming rig for $400-700.
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if he has agp video card will be less!!! Nice Find on the 9600gt bald!!!!
I spent $400 on me gtx280 lol... shoulda shopped with u!
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You can get a decent AGP card fairly cheap these days... The Geforce 6800GS, 7800GS, or ATI 3870 are all great cards for AGP(you may need a better powersupply if you upgrade videocard)... The difference will be night and day..
And by the way, don't listen to ANYTHING Krustsack (Krusty) says.. The Geforce 7600 GS/GT is substandard on any level... Why he thinks it's good when the facts show it's not a performer by any means is beyond me... And beyond him apparently...
While anodizer keeps his very biased opinion in the face of the facts and chooses to throw his insults around in this forum defies all logic.
The Ge7600GT outperforms the Ge7800GS, even. It handily outperforms the Ge6800 that Anodizer loves so much and glows about unendingly. He simply refuses to acknowledge these facts that EVERY benchmark test ever made has to show us.
As an example of how the 7600GT (and even the 7600GS in some cases) outperform the 6800GT, please see the following links:
http://xtreview.com/review140.htm
English is a bit broken, but scroll down to see the many performance comparison charts, across MANY games, and MANY settings. I think in all but 1 of them the Ge7600GT beats the 6800GT, and in all of them it beats the 7800S too.
http://www.penstarsys.com/reviews/video/evga/7600gtco/index.html
Here's a pretty in-depth review. Practical one, too. Says he thought it would be good to test against the 6600 but that it literally just blew that card into the dust, so he ran it against a 6800 GT thinking it would maybe be par, but it outpaced the 6800 GT.
Here, let's cut to the third page for the 6800/7600 comparison:
http://www.penstarsys.com/reviews/video/evga/7600gtco/7600gt_3.htm
Anodizer has tried insulting at me in-game as well, to the point I had to squelch him to continue playing. He seems to have some grudge.
[Edited to tone down my response]
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They don't even make the 6800GT anymore IIRC. That card is quite old. Only thing I could find that is new (non-eBay) was a 6800XT. Like I said before, w/o knowing more details on the current computer (mainly his PSU and what model motherboard he has), we can't go much further. Any video card is going to be an improvement over the bad FX5200, and I mean anything. But for PSU/budget reasons (and CPU bottleneck), we cannot recommend too powerful of a video card such as the ATI 38XX series or any of the higher power hungry 7XXX series nvidia cards.
I use to disagree with Krusty a while back on the 8800 cards, but I don't recall ever calling him out in a thread. We should be posting to help someone and leave our egos at least in game.
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my system See's 3.5g of 4g
XP only addresses 4gb of memory, so anything that uses memory takes from the total. if you have a 512vid card, and4 gb of ram, you will see about 3.5. anything else that xp allocates as memory will subtract from that total. my post was a general, rule of thumb answer, not a definitive amount.
The reason why you install 4 gigs of ram as opposed to 3 gigs of ram is on most, if not all motherboards if you want to run your ram in dual channel mode you have to install it in pairs
if you install 2 sticks of ram, they are running in dual channel.
NOT
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XP WILL NOT USE ALL 4 G OF RAM IT USES (IF I'M NOT MISTAKIN) 3328 MB. ITS A FACT..... GC WILL TAKE A CHUNK BUT 4G IS A WASTE. The difference between 2 g and 3g is minimal unless you are multi tasking. Stick WITH 2G. 4G will not hurt at all.
I run 1g memory on my board with 4g 2 x 2g cards and dxdiag shows 3328. If your formula was correct I would only be running 3096 on my ram>>>> If you run a 128 m card it will still show as 3328 a 64m card 3328. Thats as high as it will go!
64 bit XP will use all 4g.
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interesting, i have 4gb installed with 512 on the vid card, plus 364mb page file, showing 3072mb of ram. but hey, i didnt write the OS.
NOT
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These memory arguments are totally useless, you will lose more time reading this thread than you'll ever save by getting whatever memory.
Just slap 4 gigs of generic ram in, XP will use all it can and you will never need to buy more ram again as long as you use the 32-bit XP.
Latencies, 3 gigs or 4 gigs, PC ratings whatever are totally useless to bicker about because the differences are so marginal. Only if you run a high-end PC say $4000 price range should you start worrying about ram latencies. PC ratings come to play only if overclocking hard (as long as you have at least minimum required by your CPU)
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Additionally, its not like 2x1gb / 2x512mb stick combos are going to break the bank over 2x2gb sticks.
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Rip you gonna pay for it? maybe the dude should use 2 x 1g sticks.
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Rip you gonna pay for it? maybe the dude should use 2 x 1g sticks.
He can use 16Mb for all I care. Ram is so cheap nowadays anyway that there's no sensible point not to get the max possible. If the extra $20 will break his bank then he should get 2 gigs or stick with 1 gig. I mean I get $20 for typing this much stuff at work.
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if you install 2 sticks of ram, they are running in dual channel.
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Yes. "Pairs" usually does indicate 2 of something LOL ;)
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Spend the money replacing the FX5200, it will make more difference. There's loads of cheap 2nd hand stuff out there that will mince the 5200. The 5200 was always a low-end card, and several generations old now.
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Spend the money replacing the FX5200, it will make more difference. There's loads of cheap 2nd hand stuff out there that will mince the 5200. The 5200 was always a low-end card, and several generations old now.
While I fully agree with that, he needs to spend more than 1 gigs ram worth to displaycard. However Spatula is right, if the machine has a minimum of 1 Gb ram the bottleneck is the displaycard in most games.
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The maximum memory supproted for the 32 bit version of XP and Vista is 4 Gig. This includes Base Ram, Video ram, and any other on-board devices such as physx and sound.
If you have 4 gig of ram with a video card with 1 gig, you'll have about 2.5-2.8 gig of base ram actually used. If your video card has 512meg they you'll max out at around 3 gig or alittle more.
As stated earlier it's best to go to 2 gig and upgrade that 5200 video card to something like a 9600GT which will give you a great bang for very few bucks.
About 100 bucks on Newegg.com
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This is not accurate
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I bought 2 GB x 2 Mushkin PC8500 DDR2 for my build and XP 32-bit recognizes 3.25GB of it. The number is random per PC is what I have come to understand. This computer is a hot rod and I haven't OC'd a thing.
Buy 4GB, when you upgrade in the future, it's there.
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While anodizer keeps his very biased opinion in the face of the facts and chooses to throw his insults around in this forum defies all logic.
The Ge7600GT outperforms the Ge7800GS, even. It handily outperforms the Ge6800 that Anodizer loves so much and glows about unendingly. He simply refuses to acknowledge these facts that EVERY benchmark test ever made has to show us.
As an example of how the 7600GT (and even the 7600GS in some cases) outperform the 6800GT, please see the following links:
http://xtreview.com/review140.htm
English is a bit broken, but scroll down to see the many performance comparison charts, across MANY games, and MANY settings. I think in all but 1 of them the Ge7600GT beats the 6800GT, and in all of them it beats the 7800S too.
http://www.penstarsys.com/reviews/video/evga/7600gtco/index.html
Here's a pretty in-depth review. Practical one, too. Says he thought it would be good to test against the 6600 but that it literally just blew that card into the dust, so he ran it against a 6800 GT thinking it would maybe be par, but it outpaced the 6800 GT.
Here, let's cut to the third page for the 6800/7600 comparison:
http://www.penstarsys.com/reviews/video/evga/7600gtco/7600gt_3.htm
Anodizer has tried insulting at me in-game as well, to the point I had to squelch him to continue playing. He seems to have some grudge.
[Edited to tone down my response]
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The number is random per PC is what I have come to understand.
The number is dependent on the amount of video RAM on your video card, not random.
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Im not sure it is dependent on video card. I run 1g (gtx280), had a 2g card(ati 4870 x 2) and a 512(3870). My ram showed up exactly the same with ALL 3 CARDS. I am trying to find the reason and every explaination seems to be vague. I will try to find out but it seems the consencus on each forums is XP will max out at a bit over 3g. Macs max at 2g but there is some command or switch to get them to 3g. Will let ya all know but more than 3 is a waste. 32 bit is 3g 64 bit xp will recognize all. The performance difference between 2g and 3 g is minimal unless you do a lot of multi tasking.
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ok guys I found it. This seems to be a reasonable explaination
Friday, April 13, 2007 2:59 PM by Hilton Locke
The 3GB-not-4GB RAM problem
Problem statement:
I just bought a system with 4GB of physical RAM in it. The BIOS posts 4GB, but Windows tells me that I have anywhere from 2.75 - 3.5GB of RAM. Where is the rest of my RAM?
Summary:
If you are running 32-bit Windows, you must live with it. You will not ever see all 4GB of RAM you've paid for.
If you are running 64-bit Windows, you may have to live with it. Depending on your motherboard's chipset, your system may support memory remapping. If so, you will be able to use all 4GB of RAM.
Detailed:
Due to an architectural decision made long ago, if you have 4GB of physical RAM installed, Windows is only able to report a portion of the physical 4GB of RAM (ranges from ~2.75GB to 3.5GB depending on the devices installed, motherboard's chipset & BIOS).
This behavior is due to "memory mapped IO reservations". Those reservations overlay the physical address space and mask out those physical addresses so that they cannot be used for working memory. This is independent of the OS running on the machine.
Significant chunks of address space below 4GB (the highest address accessible via 32-bit) get reserved for use by system hardware:
• BIOS – including ACPI and legacy video support
• PCI bus including bridges etc.
• PCI Express support will reserve at least 256MB, up to 768MB depending on graphics card installed memory
What this means is a typical system may see between ~256MB and 1GB of address space below 4GB reserved for hardware use that the OS cannot access. Intel chipset specs are pretty good at explaining what address ranges gets reserved by default and in some cases call out that 1.5GB is always reserved and thus inaccessible to Windows.
When looking at memory in systems (be it desktop or notebook) there are three questions to ask that will tell you the maximum amount of memory your O/S will be able to use:
1. What O/S Edition have you installed?
a. 32-bit Windows is limited to a maximum of 4GB and cannot see any pages above 4GB.
b. 64-bit Windows can use between 8GB and 128GB depending on SKU.
2. What address range can your processor actually access?
a. Typically that’ll be 40-bit addressing today for x64 (Intel EM64T/AMD64), but older processors may be limited to 36-bit or even 32-bit
3. Can your system’s chipset map memory above 4GB?
a. Mobile chipsets on sale today cannot (but that may change with time)
b. Newer workstations (which use chipsets developed for single or multi-proc servers) usually can.
Windows can remap memory from below 4GB to above 4GB and use it there, however, that relies on the three points above:
1. Can Windows access memory above 4GB?
a. 32-bit – NO
b. 64-bit – Maybe (due to chipset limitations)
2. Can your processor access memory above 4GB?
a. If it’s recent then it might, and if it’s either AMD64 or EM64T it’s almost certain
3. Does your chipset allow pages to be remapped above 4GB?
a. Probably not – and that’s what’s catching people who install 64-bit Vista to work around point 1 – they find they still cannot see above 4GB
In some cases, OEMs may be able to tweak their BIOS to reserve less memory for platform use, but we’re not talking a huge difference (ie, 100’s of MBs).
In the end a 32-bit OS and/or application can only, ever, handle 4GB of memory at a time, the AWE stuff just swaps chunks of memory in and out of that 4GB space, thus fooling the application and OS into using more space than it can “see”.
Physical Address Extension (PAE), extends the physical address space to 36-bits if your HW supports this. For most operations, the processor execution units will only see 32-bit addresses, the MMU will take care of the translation to 36bit addresses. No swapping here, only page translations (which are used regardless of PAE being on or not), this is a fundamental feature of any virtual memory operating system.
The OS and apps only see 32-bit addresses because the registers are limited to 32-bits (hence the “32-bit” architecture nomenclature). These are linear addresses which are extended to 36-bits in the translation to physical addresses, but they never show up in registers since there’s no room. It’s all internal until the address lines coming out of the chip are toggled. Thus my comment above about “if your H/W supports this (PAE)". I’m not going into how that works…
So, the OS can happily handle up to 64 GB of memory for 32-bit PAE-able systems.
Hope this helps explain the whole, ‘Why can’t I see 4 Gig of RAM in my system?” thing…
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x) Do you really need to care about all this?
- No, not unless you actually run out of memory some day. Never happened to me with XP32 and 4gb physical ram.
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Spend the money replacing the FX5200, it will make more difference. There's loads of cheap 2nd hand stuff out there that will mince the 5200. The 5200 was always a low-end card, and several generations old now.
I completely agree with this, however my parents are far more interested in how well the computer will run than how well my games run :D
I installed the RAM 2 days ago, and so far the computer is way faster.
When I tested out Aces High, when I turn down the settings for it from the Nvidia control panel, I can get a good 20-40 fps. With antialiasing on, I can get around 8 fps.
<S>
Yossarian
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I would stop at 2g. The performance gain will be minimal unless you are multitasking like I suggested. Rip maybe some just do n ot know. 2 sounds better than 1 and 4 really sounds better thatn 2.
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Just finished a new XP Pro 32 system with 4G of RAM and XP sees 3.4G of the RAM from Task Manager. Aces High only sees 2G. My videio card is a GeForce 9800GT 512. Cpu Intel Core Duo 3.16Ghz E8500.
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Just finished a new XP Pro 32 system with 4G of RAM and XP sees 3.4G of the RAM from Task Manager. Aces High only sees 2G. My videio card is a GeForce 9800GT 512. Cpu Intel Core Duo 3.16Ghz E8500.
This is perfectly as it should be and you should not worry about it. Your computer runs great unless you have problems elsewhere.
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You should be good to go Bustr!!!!! Very stout system!
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I feel better now knowing my aging FX5500 isn't the oldest card in service. :rofl
But I REALLY need to upgrade. Are there any better cards out under $30? I'm thinking a midrange 6XXX.
And NO, going above ~$35 is NOT an option.
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I feel better now knowing my aging FX5500 isn't the oldest card in service. :rofl
But I REALLY need to upgrade. Are there any better cards out under $30? I'm thinking a midrange 6XXX.
And NO, going above ~$35 is NOT an option.
Get a paper route?
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I feel better now knowing my aging FX5500 isn't the oldest card in service. :rofl
But I REALLY need to upgrade. Are there any better cards out under $30? I'm thinking a midrange 6XXX.
And NO, going above ~$35 is NOT an option.
Checked Newegg and Tigerdirect.
Assuming your current card is the
256MB 128-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card
Core clock 270MHz
Memory Clock 400 MHz (effective)
No.
In fact the best I could find for that price including on EBay was the exact same card you have now.
Too bad you dont live near me in Jersey.
I could use a day laborer (read. slave) for a day. LOL
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may be able to find one on Ebay for under $30