Is my memory the limiting factor?

[Skipper007]

I'm currently running a Athlon XP2600+ with 512MB of RAM and a 128MB Radeon 9700 Pro as my primary rig (I do have access to my dad's uber box some of the time, but since I'm a student I can't really afford one of my own). Problem is, I've noticed a lot of my games will often freeze for a second to load something while I'm gaming. Half Life 2 does this at 1024X768 high. So does Far Cry (medium is fine). Battlefield 2 is just a mess at anything above low settings. Since I seldom drop below 30FPS except when these pauses occur (well, except maybe BF2... would need to check), I'm highly suspicious that I don't have enough memory in this rig.

Do you guys thing upgrading to 1GB of RAM would solve this problem? Also, what's the cheapest way to approach such an upgrade without major side effects (I haven't seen 2X512MB kits around here for less then $130 Canadian new and $90 used... Vancouver area, so Newegg and most other US online places are out of the question)? I currently have 2 256MB modules in there running in dual channel. I could just plunk a cheap 512MB module in slot 3, but that would eliminate my dual channel... and I'm worried that I might need that memory bandwidth if it turns out my Radeon's 128MB is being overloaded too and is storing anything in system ram.

Anyone got any any advice on this one? I don't expect to be able to run stuff like GRAW or Oblivion on it at anything above bare minimum (which actually does work, although Oblivion STILL has some lag when I do this... though I don't have the new patch with the "ultra low setting that look like total crap" setting in it yet), but I'd like to get it running everything else nicely.

 

[BillParrish]

you didnt say what motherboard you have, the point is the ABIT NF-7s will still run in dual channel with a 3rd module in, maybe yours will to.

Yes i think going to a GB or even 1.26GB will make a great difference in your games. It might not completely eliminate the load stutter but it will make an improvement you will notice.

Also consider upgrading the hard drive if you running an old 5400 RPM drive, I bet you can get a drive twice the size, 7200 rpm for $50 US. If your board has SATA , even SATA 1 go for it. If your current drive is 7200 rpm probally not worth upgrading as you will see little improvement.

 

[Negative Decibel]

first of all, as far as I know, having dual channel ram only improves performance 2-3% with the older athlons.... I'd say upgrade to a gig. It would give you a significant boost in performance...

The other item I'd do is upgrade the vid card. You don't need to be dumping a whole lot of money on an agp card. Look around for a good deal on a 6800gs or something... I was able to unlock it to practically to a 6800gt.

That's all I'd do. I wouldn't worry about upgrading your hard drive, unless you really need more space. You won't gain much performance wise, other than faster boots and load times. I'm running close to the same system as you right now.. I play oblivion, FEAR, and many other current games...
Waiting to build a new rig after DirectX10 hardware becomes available...

 

[Skipper007]

Motherboard is a fairly late model Asus A7N8X Deluxe. Based on what I've read it does actually support dual channel with three modules, so it might be worth a shot, although I have heard rumours of stability issues. I can test it at PC 2100 fairly easily due to being able to borrow some PC2100 modules, although I'd be trying for PC 2700 when I actually got my own memory for it.

Then I guess I'd need to try and track down a 512MB CAS2.5 DDR module for cheap.

 

[Met-AL]

You can put your two 256 sticks into the two slots that are next to each other and a 512 in the one by itself and still maintain dual channel. I ran my XP rig with that motherboard like that with no problems for years and still am running it like that for my kids to play BF2 on.

Mobile XP Barton at 2.4Ghz, 1GB DDR 400, 9700pro and it plays BF2 fairly decent on medium settings unless its on a larger 50+slot server.

But yeah, dual channel only really showed it's strength when the NF2 GPU was used since it used the system RAM for it's video RAM. Other than that, it did nothing since the EV6 buss itself didn't have the bandwidth to use the bandwidth that dual channel brought.

 

[Skipper007]

When I get the chance I'm going to check out the memory stock at a computer store I used to work at, since they sell some used stuff... I figure that since I don't need 400MHZ support I might save a bit.

I know dual channel makes little difference for most things... I'm just worried if the video ever stores anything in system memory (which I think AGP cards can), I'll need the bandwidth.

I've got two 7200RPM drives in there, an 80 for the OS and a 200GB storage drive, both Seagate (strangely, the 200GB was a warrenty replacement for a 120). Might try putting the pagefile on the 200GB at some point though (I already used a fixed page file to avoid fragmenting).

As for GPU... it's actually pretty solid in most games, I've found. F.E.A.R. did get choppy in some bits, but for some reason it never bugged me like it would have in some games. That leaves Oblivion and G.R.A.W. as the two big ones, and maybe Quake IV just because I thought it looks MUCH better at high then the settings my rig could handle. I do have access to my dad's vastly superior gaming rig for a few hours each week, so for a couple FPSes there's not a lot of point to me upgrading. Yes, there will be newer FPSes coming out, but I think stuff like Crysis might be CPU limited on my rig too. Oblivion does make me reconsider a little because it's a long RPG and it would probably be annoying to have to play it in short blocks, but I'm not quite ready to shell out for one RPG. If NWN 2 runs like crap too, then I might pop in something like the 7600GT AGP I've seen for about $212 Canadian (the market for older cards in Canada is small and lacks a lot of the better deals you see in the US), but considering that's 3/4 of the Canadian list price of the Wii, I'm going to hold off on that decision for a bit.

 

[Met-AL]

I know dual channel makes little difference for most things... I'm just worried if the video ever stores anything in system memory (which I think AGP cards can), I'll need the bandwidth.

Actually, dual channel on the nForce 2 does not make a difference in most things.

Take a look at this article.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/nforce2-1vs2channels/index.html

Scroll down to the bottom and take a look at the table. Look at the numbers for the benchmarks with the GeForce TI-4600 video card installed, see how dual channel makes less than 2% improvement for most of the tests.. Now look at the numbers for when they used the integrated graphics processor, that is what the dual channel was meant for. The only thing it helps with is memory copying, drv-08, and proe-01. The rest of the results are tiny improvements.

I see in your post above that you are going to be trying for PC2700 RAM, but will settle on PC2100? You do not want to run your RAM clock and FSB asynchronis. The extra latency introduced will choke your performance. Keep your RAM and FSB clocked the same. It doesn't matter if your FSB is 166(333) and your RAM is 200(400), it's still gonna drop your performance.

If it were me, and I could find a gig of DDR400 cheap, I would buy that. Set your BIOS to like this picture:

Then in small increments, increase the FSB and see how fast you can get that 2800 to run. I would bet you could at least get the FSB up to 184mhz and get 2.4Ghz out of your XP 2800, which if memory serves me correct, that would be a XP3200.