• Ask the community now
  • Publish
Ad

News

Product News Roundup Monday, March 24: Plextor Hybrid Blu-ray/HD DVD Drives, Alienware Quad-core PC

Rather than making you click through several news items, we decided to combine interesting product news into one news item with brief information about each item. Read more

AMD challenges Intel with its first integrated graphics chipset

AMD today announced its RS690 chipset which is not only AMD's first-ever integrated graphics chipset solution, but also the first product that takes advantage of technologies from both AMD and ATI. The 690 will attack Intel's dominance in the high-volume mainstream market of desktop PCs and position the chipset as a product that is superior to Nvidia chipsets. Read more

Australian Microsoft strategist raises eyebrows with Vista hardware requirements

A Microsoft strategist told attendees of the TechEd 2005 conference on the Gold Coast last week that Windows Vista's new display driver model may compel users to upgrade to a PC with 2 GByte of DDR3 SDRAM and a graphics card with at least 256 MByte memory, according to Australian PC enthusiast publication APC Magazine . Read more

Alienware Sells Mainstream Area-51

Alienware has announced a new performance gaming desktop designed for the mainstream market Read more

Latest Reviews & Articles

Cryostasis: From Russia, With An Appetite For Fast Hardware

Cryostasis: From Russia, With An Appetite For Fast Hardware

We recently had the chance to play a bit of Cryostasis, the latest title supporting Nvidia's PhysX technology. In fact, we played the game on five different hardware configurations. Want to play this one? We'll tell you what you need in order to enjoy it. Read more

Hard Drives, Yesterday And Today: From 500 GB To 1.5 TB

Hard Drives, Yesterday And Today: From 500 GB To 1.5 TB

Hard drive capacities have increased in large increments over the last few years, while trends indicate reduced spindle speeds of 5,400 RPM instead of 7,200. We looked at three generations of Samsung hard drives to analyze the performance ramifications. Read more

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: June '09

Best Graphics Cards For The Money: June '09

This month, ATI's new Radeon HD 4770 is missing in action, since online stores are not only unable to keep it in stock, but also de-listing it completely. With violent movements in pricing, though, it'd have been taken off the recommended list anyway. Read more

Editor's Corner: Nvidia’s Ion Revisited, 7.1 Ch. LPCM Fixed

Editor's Corner: Nvidia’s Ion Revisited, 7.1 Ch. LPCM Fixed

Nvidia's Ion for the do-it-yourselfer launched last month in the form of Zotac's mini-ITX motherboard. Though sexy in principle, the platform had some teething pains right out of the gate. Chris Angelini revisits those issues and uses Ion as a real HTPC. Read more

All the Reviews & Articles
Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > Other Components > RAM/Video Card Upgrade on cheap motherboard

RAM/Video Card Upgrade on cheap motherboard

Tom's Hardware: Over 1.4 million members in 6 different countries available to answer all your high-tech questions. Sign up now! Its free!
Word :    Username :           
 

Hey,

Currently im running a system with:

GA-M61SME-S2L Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Duel Core Processor 4800+ 2.51GHz
2GB Ram
HD Radeon 3650

I was thinking about upgrading my RAM to 4GB(2x2GB) 800 and my video card to either a 9800GT/9800GTX/HD4850/HD4870.

Someone mentioned to me that because I have a slow processor/motherboard it wouldn't be worth upgrading to the videocards mentioned because they'd be bottlenecked. Also, would i get more speed from my PC by upgrading the RAM or by upgrading the processor?

Sponsored Links
Register or log in to remove.

In order of performance gain for you setup:

1. Video card
2. Processor
3. Memory

Reply to flyin15sec
- 0 +

1. What operating system are you currently running?

a. If it is a 32 bit OS (whether it is Win XP or Vista), then you will only see a gain of, at max, 1 GB of ram if you install 2 more GB due to the limitations of the OS.
b. If it is a 64 bit OS, then you don't have to worry about this.

2. You have a "good" processor already. It may not be the best due to its age, but it can still contend. It would take a very-high end graphics card to bottleneck your processor. (Since you will not be running in Crossfire or SLI mode.) Thus, I wouldn't think about a processor upgrade.
--------------
And, even if the video card does bottleneck your computer, a video card upgrade at this point for your system should be seen as a "upgrade this computer now, put it in my new computer build in a year...probably in Crossfire/SLI."

Thus, I would post a similar message to this one in the graphics card section of the forum, requesting a video card recommendation for your system that can be used immediately...then Crossfired/SLI'ed in a year.
---------
As for video card recommendations, I would go with an ATI video card instead of Nvidia atm. ATI generally has the best performing cards right now. But, I would think about what games I play prior to the final decision. (Some games prefer Nvidia, some ATI.) Check the benchmarks here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts [...] ks,30.html


Message edited by terr281 on 01-14-2009 at 10:30:20 PM
Reply to terr281

Thanks a ton for the advice mate I tried here and a few other forums and your the first person to give me such a good answer. really appreciate it. :)

Reply to Anonymous
Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > Other Components > RAM/Video Card Upgrade on cheap motherboard
Go to:

There are 953 identified and unidentified users. To see the list of identified users, Click here.

Sponsored links