What is my biggest bottleneck?

S

skyeandangus

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Jul 26, 2004
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OK. I'm a gamer on a budget, at least for now. My big game currently is Everquest 2. My current system is an Athlon Thoroughberd B 2400+ clocked to 166 FSB, 512MB pc2700, and Asus A7NX-E, an Antec 350 power supply in an LANboy case, and an ATI 9500 Pro. I recently got a used 21 inch monitor for free, and now I'm running my desktop at 1280x1024. I started playing playing EQ 2 after a ltaking some time off from the game, and decided to play at 1280x1024 on the new monitor. Now, I'm getting vpu errors quite frequently at that resolution. I dropped it to 1024x768 and the error do not happen.

What is the best $200 upgrade? I don't plan on dropping the over $600 to replace ram, mobo, cpu, and video card, but I think I can squeeze about $200 of my limited funds out for a minor upgrade. Should I consider upgrading anything, or wait out this upgrade period until yet another market refresh comes out(M2, or LGA 775 replacement)?

Keep in mind I play EQ2, and it looks ok right now, but not too spectacular. And, I don't do much else other than net surfing.
 
EQ2 is a huge memory hog, upgrade to 1 GB ram, or even 1.5 GB and you'll notice a huge difference. If you have enough left over, I suppose something like a 6600 GT might be your best bet for a video card.
 
You know, I had not really thought of RAM, to be honest, and it may be best, since, if I move the socket 939 or 754 in the near future, I could reuse PC3200 RAM. NOw just need to check the asus site for compatability to 1gig DIMMS.
 
Definitely your best upgrade is to 1gb of RAM. Also, you should softmod your 9500Pro to a 9700Pro. After that, if you decide you still want more performance (and can pay for it), grab this:

BFG GeForce 6600GT OC AGP - Full retail package. $120+shipping
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=931282

Just my $0.02.

-SEAL
 
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