Upgrade or Ramdisk?

[kheckler]

Hello, I'm new to the community and have a couple of questions about memory.

I am running a system with:

Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Asus M4A785-M Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 6400+ x2 3.2Ghz
4 GB of DDR2 800 (G.Skill)
HIS IceQ X Turbo H687QNT1G2M Radeon HD 6870
Seagate Barracuda ST3750525AS 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB

I recently upgraded the video card from a Geforce 9800 gtx+ and am looking for some tweaks to the build to improve its performance in games. For the most part, games run very solid but I still noticed stuttering when loading distant textures or displaying several particle effects.

I was browsing a forum for Gothic 3 that suggested to another player to use a Ramdisk to increase performance. I'm unfamiliar with Ramdisk and would assume that I need more memory in order to use it to launch games from. Would Ramdisk help boost performance or do I need a new build to really see an increase?

Thanks in advance!

 

[DEY123]

I think your MB is the actually M4A785D-M PRO version which is AM2+ (as opposed to others which are AM3 and would not support your DDR2). Anyhow before trying to get a RAM disk which would be limited to having open RAM slots I would upgrade your proc. On the Asus website they have the BIOS versions and list of supported CPUs for your board. You will probably have to update your BIOS to get a new Phenom chip (Asus I believe has instructions on how to do it)

I upgraded my AM2+ board from a athlon 6000+x2 to a phenom 2 X3 740 about 8 months ago after flashing my bios to a newer version. I would suggest you find a good deal on a Phenom 2 chip that is supported and that should help to remove any bottleneck you might have. Also if you get a BE chip you can OC it as well if you have a non-stock cooler. the Phenom 2 955 BE is a good chip and can be found on sale sometimes. This should remove any bottlenecks you have for a minimal cost.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808

it is $119.99 and if you enter the promo code by 7/31 it is $10 off that price...

 

[kheckler]

DEY123,

Thanks for the response, I'm positive that my MB supports AM2/AM2+/AM3 and it lists that it supprts DDR2 800/1066. I've been skeptical on switching to a quad-core due to negative feedback by other gamers but things might have changed since then.

 

[DEY123]

For sure it will depend on the game a bunch of the games that have come out in the last few months make better use of multi-core setups with 3 cores seeming to be optimal in most cases...
also you could try overclocking your current chip but the Phenom 2 will OC better then the old athlons (especially when already running at such a high clock speed).