Dont know whats Bottlenecking my system

[Santino]

My system is a 4ghz celeron,with 1gb memory of ddr400 ram, and my graphics card is a 1600pro, my game perfromace is pretty poor, worse than expect. now my best bet is that the 1600pro is the reason for this and upgrading to a 1900gt would greatly improve my gaming perforamce, but is their any way which my proc and ram combo could be slowing my games down as well, i dont think it would be smart to upgrade to a faster graphics card if its going to be bottle necked by my ddr400 ram. what do you guys think.

 

[nategarst]

Get another gig of RAM. You should see better performance all around not just in gaming. If you still want to get upgrade GPU, 1900GT will be fine. What games do you normally play?

 

[blade85]

when you say the performance is poor, do you mean it plays games at a framerate lower than expected?

what sorta details do you play them at, what resolution...and what games?

 

[hball]

My system is a 4ghz celeron,with 1gb memory of ddr400 ram, and my graphics card is a 1600pro, my game perfromace is pretty poor, worse than expect. now my best bet is that the 1600pro is the reason for this and upgrading to a 1900gt would greatly improve my gaming perforamce, but is their any way which my proc and ram combo could be slowing my games down as well, i dont think it would be smart to upgrade to a faster graphics card if its going to be bottle necked by my ddr400 ram. what do you guys think.

I'm willing to bet with DDR, you are running a 478 slot processor with a 533 MHz FSB. You have an AGP slot, not PCI-E.

Upgrade your computer to something newer.

hball

 

[mesarectifier]

4ghz Celeron?

 

[JQB45]

Hmmm.

I doubt the CPU is an issue, i'm curious though about it being 4Ghz.

I'll assume for now that he is serious.

Now lets look at my system.

AMD Athlon64 3000+ (754 Socket, 2.0Ghz, 02/2004) Normally running at 800Mhz due to Cool 'n Quiet
ASUS K8V Deluxe (First Edition, never updated the BIOS)
2x80GB 7200RPM Hard Drives SATA150 RAID 0
1GB DDR400 CAS 3-3-3-8 (2x512MB Kingston Value RAM)

Not to shabby so far, when I built the computer back in Feb. 2004 I purchased a:

ASUS nVidia 5200 128bit/128MB Video Card - my systems weakest link.

Recently I updated my video card to a 7800GS. I can now say with confidence that I can play damn near anything shy of FEAR or Oblivion at high settings.

Keep in mind High settings to me is 1280x1024 or less resoloution as I never will like LCD over CRT for gaming. So I don't have the temptation to run at insane screen resoloutions.

I can now say that the DDR400 RAM @ CAS 3 is my main issue.
Obviously I could upgrade to an AMD Athlon64 3700+ but those are hard to find now.

His video card is a decent midrange GPU but he certainly could benefit most from a better one.... Who couldn't?

If I was him, I would set my CPU back to a normal speed. Obviously 4Ghz for a Celeron is Overclocked or he is smoking something and not shareing.

If in fact it is Overclocked I would suggested setting it back to its stock speed and comparing the difference in performance to rule out any odd issues... I doubt there are any but lets do that before we shell out several $$$ on a video card.

His RAM is fine, 1.5CAS vs 3.0CAS isn't going to make more then a frame or 2 difference, same with DDR400 vs DDR500 or even new everything and DDR2 6xx or DDR2 8xx.

 

[Santino]

the cpu is a LGA 775, and it is pci-e, i was on a budget and i had 1 gb of left over ddr400 ram so i decided to use it on this build so i use a LGA 775 which supports ddr400, the FSB of the cpu is at 533 stock, so i just moving the FSB to 700mhz, or something like that, (dont remeber and dont feel like going into the bios right now and finding out), and lucky me the lil celeron runs stable at 4ghz, only problem i think i would have with it is the low L1 and L2 cache. the perfromace problem is only with games. i play my games at 1024X768 res, and every thing at meduim-low, with 2XFSAA, and 4XFSAF. i did run games and stuff without anything overclocked and my games just ran slower. NFMW runs fine with a couple slow downs here and their, same with BF2, FEAR lags more than i think it should, and playing oblivion in outdoor areas and in fights really slows down alot.

i upgraded(or downgraded) from a 2.4 athlon64, with a 9600xt, and gig of ram, i ran mostly the same games at the same settings with the only dif being 800X600 res vs 1024X768res. the 9600 had less slow downs, it just shutters less than my x1600, and since the x1600 is like 2 gens newer, it makes me wounder if the graphics card is the one to blame, and how i could make my performace better

 

[Debugger]

How about looking at the Task manager when running your game, You will be able to see that the celeron unable to keep up with the games requirements.

I bet that the thing will be flatlined at 100% when playing, even at 4Gig..
All these games are compiled for a P4 model and thats where the mismatch lays.

I am surprised at your AA and AF settings, but after all - it is your experience..

Better Video will only improve your eye candy and more ram will improve loading speed of the maps, object and textures etc.
Raid will help with the micropauses slightly but so will more ram
Cant beat price/performance from a CPU upgrade.

Leave the money on the fridge..

 

[advcomp2019]

If your Athlon64 was a Socket 939, you could have only got a new motherboard that had PCI Express. That AMD would have been better at gaming only if it was a Socket 939.

 

[JQB45]

Given what you just said.

upgrading the video card is your best bet for fear and Obliv...

-Jeff