Sacrifice the 667 memory in the name of Crysis?

[chrisvsplumber_81]

Hey I was wondering what you all thought about my system and if you could help me identify my bottleneck. I got disgusted with Dell and fell in love with Crysis the game at the same time and gave my ispiron 531 a labotomy. saved my money and got a amd phenom quad core 9950, motherboard: MSI k9a2 platinum 790 fx am2+, still have the HDD that came with the dell, the 19" monitor (max resolution 1440X900) and had 4 X 1 gig 667 ddr2 240 pin memory (5300u?) recently gave all my old stuff to my parents computer as it took them like 5 minutes just to load a web browser, and gave them two sticks of the memory. I'm going to get new memory but I have no idea if it would be worth just getting all new memory at 800 or 1022. Also as far as graphics go, is a bottleneck at my monitor's resolution? would it look more realistic with a better monitor? My brother told me it could have to do with the HDD speed? Also I don't know if this helps, but I was watching the frames per second and when I put the graphics options to the max my fps dropped to like 18 from 40.... I guess my goal in upgrading the memory would be so I can keep the settings up without the choppiness.

one other side note, have any of you ever had your harddrive say that you're using WAY more gigabytes than you actually are? is this another blessing Dell has bestowed upon me,
if I've learned on solid piece of information of all this it's.... friends don't let friends buy Dell, wish someone woulda told me.
Thanks a bunch

 

[leva]

What graphics card came with the Dell?

 

[MaDMagik]

If you want max detail and decent framerate in Crysis than you need to look at your gfx card, not memory. But when upgrading memory give your parents the remaining two sticks as well and buy 2x2gb ddr2 800. As for monitor - crysis looks equally awesome in 1440x900 and 1680x1050 there isnt that much of a difference, but to play it maxed out you probably need at least a card like Radeon 4850 or Geforce 8800gt

 

[chrisvsplumber_81]

hey sorry, graphics card is gforce 8800 gt
knew i would forget something it was late

 

[chrisvsplumber_81]

what a charming picture madmagic

 

[MaDMagik]

Heheh, thx

Well this card should handle crysis fine at this resolution with max details(with no AA or max x2), but going for bigger monitor with it is pointless. Memory, as said before, get 2x2gb ddr2 800, its really cheap now.

one other side note, have any of you ever had your harddrive say that you're using WAY more gigabytes than you actually are?

Ive never had that. What do you mean exactly?

 

[chrisvsplumber_81]

hey thanks madmagik, I think that answers everything, much appreciated, as for the harddrive, i don't really know why my 138 gig hdd shows on the pie chart that I only have 30 gigs left..... i open drive c and look at the space each primary folder (windows, program files, etc) takes up then add it up and it equals like 50 gigs, including the 8 gigs windows uses to back up stuff, leaving like 80 gigs unaccounted for. I don't know my guess is it has something to do with dell, but if you still don't have any guesses, thanks anyway for your input on the memory
where did you get that pic, it rocks!

 

[chrisvsplumber_81]

ps what's "max x2"

 

[MaDMagik]

I dont really know what to suggest for the the hdd problem, maybe run chkdsk? Its a windows tool to check for disk errors/bad sectors/corrupted files etc and fix them. If you never used it than depending on your system google "chkdsk vista/xp" and read the instructions on how to. Or hopefully someone else will suggest something.

"max x2" - that was regarding the Anti-Aliasing setting in crysis, you have a choice of x2 x4 x8 or off. AA seems to be the gfx card performance killer, so with your card I wouldnt go above the x2 setting at best.

Picture Company I work for sells that kind of stuff. Obviously it comes without the cigarette ;]

 

[chrisvsplumber_81]

hey, well thanks again, I feel much more informed and i'll be putting my parents computer together tomorrow.... went to do it and my dell motherboard had no ide slot for their hd so the sata----> ide adpter is arriving tomorrow. Really thanks so much, your help is soo appreciated, if we were in person, i'd even reach out and shake that nasty little smokin yoda hand of yours, lol just kidding. Youre the man, off to Newegg now to grab a smokin deal. thank you

 

[MaDMagik]

No probs ;]