Upgrade Memory or Video Card?

Hello fellow techs! I just have a quick opinion question for everyone: I'm going to be doing an upgrade to my laptop and wonder whether it would be better to go with more ram, or split it up and go for ram and a video card. Right now I have a Centrino 1.4g, 512mb DDR 333mhz ram, ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 w/32mb dedicated.

I'd like to upgrade to at least 1 gb possibly two, but wonder if I should go with just 1gb of ram and upgrade the video card. The other option would be just to upgrade to 2gb of ram as that is the most the my system can carry. I don't want to spend a ton of money, but I don't mind dropping a little coin to upgrade the system.

GW runs great right now with everything maxed but no AA enabled. Zone loading can take a few seconds, but the big drag on the system is when I close out of GW. It takes almost 1-2 minutes for my system to be even usable again while GW is shutting down.

Thanks for any advise you have, I really appreciate it.

Grace

1GB Memory is absoutely fine, I'd highly recommend a new Video Card first.

What's your budget and others or myself can help you find a good card for your money and also what GFX Card slots you have, PCI, PCI-E or AGP.

And about the 1-2 minutes your PC being un-usable after closing GW, I think that lies with your processor.

Probably about $250-300 I'd say, but I'd like to save some money as well. The other thing is that I'm not comfortable replacing RAM myself as I've fried 3 boards that way (I've replaced just about every other component myself just fine, just RAM craps out on me ). I've never worked on a laptop either so I'm not fully familiar with the internals of it.

Not completly sure what the slot is for the video card, but I'll see if I can find some documentation to ID it for ya.

Most laptop video cards can not be upgraded. You may want to check and see if thats even an option. Cause 512MB of ram is enough.

Ah, a majority of Laptops can have RAM upgraded, but I don't know many that have Graphics Card that can be upgraded too.

Are you sure you can upgrade your GFX Card in your Laptop? If you really are, what slot does it use? PCI, PCI-E, AGP?

Laptopsdont have PCI, AGP, or PCI-X slots. The can have the interface but the laptop manufacture creates its own connector. If you can upgrade the video, you have to go through the manufacturer of your laptop.

Gotcha, I know for a fact that the RAM can be upgraded (up to 2GB), but I'm not finding anything about the video card. Dang Well, in that case, would a memory upgrade improve the performance much, or would I be better to just save the money?

More memory will help if youhave lots ofapps running at the same time.

Nope, just GW and the normal background processes. I've modified the startup as well so that only the basics are running. Ideally I'd like to be able to turn AA on, but as it is now the game becomes unplayable at even 2X and just crawls by at 4X. Not sure if the RAM would help this or if it is based solely off the video card.

unless you have a VOODOO gaming laptop i dont know of any other brand that you can upgrade the video card

He's said he has a Mobility Radeon 9200 w/32mb dedicated so no VooDoo.

I would go with 1Gb of ram. This is the new minimum today. Problem is with most laptops I have seen you have to end up buying new sticks of ram. Because, they filled up the two slots with (in your case) 2x256Mb of ram. So in order to go to 1Gb you would have to buy 2x512Mb. That being said...should you go all the way and just get 2x1Gb and max it out? Not going to cost you all that much more.

My son was having trouble playing the new CIV4 game on his Toshiba laptop w/Geforce to Go 32Mb video. His ram was only 512Mb (2x256Mb). I upgraded him to his max at 2x512Mb for a total of 1Gb. He can now play that game.

very true. Bummer about the not being able to upgrade the video card, but that's part of owning laptops. Would a RAM upgrade help the AA performance, or is that strictly run off the video card?

Old Dood - I'm leaning towards just maxing it out since it won't be too much (relatively speaking). I know that more RAM is always better, and I know that I'll need two 1gb sticks since it is based on the two sticks principle. Not sure why they design them that way but...*shrugs*

The thing is not being able to upgrade your GFX Card and your not-so-good processor puts it down.

Well, like I said, GW looks good, I just know that it can look better I'm more concerned with the map loading which is fast, but can take between 5-10+ on average.

I understand....these were just options. IF he were to upgrade his ram he would have to buy two brand new sticks...not just add sticks. I am not totally sold on ram not helping out on performance. I believe there is some kick from having more ram....but in his case it would not be all that much.

As for you map...I have seen it take awhile for me too. I have 4Gb of ram and a 3.4Ghz HT processor with a X800XL PCIe card....

EDIT: What I like about having ram is I can Alt-Tab to many other programs running...this is the big plus for me. Game speed is more dependent on Vid card and processor speed.

Well an upgrade of RAM is his only upgradable choice so it's up to him.

Unless he wants to save for a good desktop computer.

I can upgrade the video in my Dell Inspiron XPS GEN 1.

I have a 3.4g Pentium 512mb (128mb shared video) desktop, but I use my laptop much more often and I've found that GW runs better there (must be because of the shared video). Being able to alt+tab out would be nice because it make looking for infomation a lot easier. I should probably spend some dough on a new video card for my desktop as that would free up that memory, plus the system in general would probably run better.

Anything that uses shared video on a desktop computer is trash. Intergrated vidcards just don't cut it on desktops, as they are pretty much always integrated Intel's videochips. Laptops atleast have mobile editions of good ATi/nVidia cards so they play a loooot faster compared to an Intel graphics chip


Well, exception is coming to the integrated vidcard = trash for the desktop machines, when nVidia pushes out the motherboards with nVidia's GPU integrated. Time will tell

If you got your Desktop to 1GB RAM with a good decent card and something of a card like (if your budget as you said earlier was around $300), then something like;

eVGA GeForce 7800GT
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...56#DetailSpecs

$295, just under your budget. Pretty good card and from reviews and what others have said, can play any game quite well, with 2 of these in SLI is over-kill for any game.

Also make sure you have a good PSU on your Desktop.

I have a generic 420watt PSU that came with my tower case, and I am going to plug a 7800GT, AMD X2 4400+, and 2gigs of ram into it.

Good for you? Lol.

What's that gotta do with this lads/lass' topic?

with laptops, memory (afaik) is about the only thing you can do, since i have never heard of being able to upgrade laptop vid cards....1 gig would let you give the on board somehtng decent like 128 meg for vid, but even 64meg would probably help....

if you had a tower case, i would have said go for a new vid first, such as ati card 9550 or above (since the 9200 is dirX9 *software only* and dirX8 hardware, and you will probably need dirX9 hardware version for good games these days) or one of the decent nvidia FX (probably one that dosent have issues with guildwars heh)

i do know theres pci/cma (is that the right way to say it? lol) sound cards, though they can be hellishly expensive, so i guess it *is* possible theres a vid card that goes into the same slot.....if there is.....

seperate vid cards are ALWAYS the better choice for gamers...its like having two people doing the work rather than one ^^
if two brains are better than one, two chips are better than one, and vid is that seccond head ^^

The lag when you close Guild Wars is most likey due to the amount of RAM you have. Your 1.4 GHz Centrino is roughly equivalent to a 2.2 - 2.4 GHz Pentium 4, so that's pretty much ok. Guild Wars seems to respond better to more memory and a better GPU than faster CPUs once you hit a certain threshold.

It's true that your RAM is probably the only thing you can upgrade in your laptop, and it won't help with your AA at all. Your GPU is going to pretty much lock you down to the video settings you currently find playable.

It's much cheaper to maintain a gaming desktop than a gaming laptop!

http://www1.gamespot.com/features/6129326/index.html

according to this, ram is the most important, just an adequate video card is necessary... and it really showed when i upgraded from 512mb to 1.5gb, now i run top settings, top resolution with no lag, though all this stuff is with desktops, not laptops

Thanks all for the excellent tips and advise. I know that my video card is going to "lock me in" for now. I'll probably upgrade my ram to max and then spend a little bit on a vid card for my desktop

Thanks all!

PS, I'm a guy

You know, the reason the 9200 sucks so badly is that ATI designed it so they could build something based on the old 8500 more cheaply. It's actually far weaker than the 8500, just easier to produce. I'm STILL ticked off at them for that, though not any less so than nVidia's similar tricks (such as that god-awful 5200 or the MX series that nvidia actually LIES about when they call them a geforce 4 since they are actually geforce 2s...)

GraceAlone, if it's not too late, I'd like to very strongly recommend you upgrade your video card before your ram. Memory is important, but, 512MB is enough to scratch by with tolerable performance with. It's the video card that you'll be regretting if you ever try to play any other semi-semi-semi-semi modern game (yes, I threw that many semi's in there on purpose. UT2004 is the last game I got to work even somewhat tolerably on a fast system when I had to put a 9200 in it due to having broken my video card and just having to borrow what I could.) I know a lot of people with high performance systems and 512MB who get games to run just wonderfully. The main catch is you have to be a tad efficient. XP loves to waste ram, and if you keep a lot of programs running all the time it's going to hurt. As long as you're reasonable, 512MB should get you by in games for another two years maybe if you're lucky (one if you're not.)

As for what video card to get, the new Geforce FX 6800GS is basically a 6800 built on the new smaller process, so it's pretty cheap and decent performing right out of the box, but, what's more, it runs cooler and can often overclock enough to perform amazingly. If you prefer ATI and can afford it, a X1000 or higher series will be best due to all the new stuff like pixel shader 3.0 that you won't find on older cards. I wouldn't go any lower than X800 or a Geforce 6800 because you want your purchase to last you a good while and those still have a bit left on them. Sorry 6600 users, but, you're terribly limited by that memory bus (doesn't do any darned good to have ten million gigahertz gDDR9000 if the bus limits bandwidth to slower than original gDDR, so a 6800nu or le can outperform a 6600gt.) Thanks to ATI and nVidia running this whole silly memory war where they toss on more memory than any game can LEGITIMATELY use onto a card for marketing hype, games WILL use memory enough that you need it to run efficiently.

Personally, I have AGP, so went with the latest fastest thing possible in AGP at the time (and I thought ever -- this was before I found out about someone deciding to slap a bridge on the 7800 themselves since nVidia refused to) which is an X850XT Platinum Edition. In practically all the games out there I can max out settings completely, turn on FSAA, and AF, and use high resolutions. I may regret the lack of the PS3.0 in the near future, but, atm games are actually doing the same effects like HDR on my non-PS 3.0 video card I guess via some 2.0 trickery. Whatever trick they use to do it, they do it and it looks good. I'm not sure I'd recommend this card to someone who needs something that lasts them a while due to the lack of PS 3.0 in the long run, but, in the short run, it's an amazing video card. In the long run, no one will require PS 3.0 for about 4 years (I'm not kidding) so the fact that it has high performance memory and GPU that can keep up with such games does mean this card isn't going to be replaced any time soon for me at least. It should give me a good two years or so before I can't take it anymore and have to upgrade (bearing in mind that I upgrade more often than I technically must.)

Nazo...we are talking about a laptop.

Oh, ouch. Well, still, if you can upgrade one, I still say you're going to get much better results by upgrading the video. I hate to say it since ATI makes some of the best mobile chips, but, nonetheless, I have definitely noticed that their mobility chips tend to be weaker than the real PC chips. Probably due to temperature concerns.

I might add that switching from onboard video to a seperate card releases system memory, increasing the available ram for gaming. (Onboard video systems must use system memory as video memory, cutting down some of your total ram. This is also a huge part of why mobile video performs worse usually since DDR/DDR2 both are a lot slower than gDDR/gDDR3.)

my 2 cents on this topic

most people are buying laptops this days , witch are great to right a email in the park , but not so good to play high tech games like guildwars

guildwars works on my toshiba PIII 1.2 Ghz Geforce 2 Go 32 ram , but of corse not that many frames per second and quality all at lowest possible.

before my actual desktop i had a athelon 1.4 Ghz with 512 ram , and a geforce mmx 400 , lost of people say those suc , well for me at that time , comparing to what i had in toshiba laptop was not bad at all ...

then i got the video card i still have now Geforce 6600 i got for 100 euro+/- and this was a few months ago

new problem comes in , well lots of them , the mobo i had didnt suport 8X agp ... so speed of bus was at half ... my power suply was 300 wats , video card needs 350 ... anyway it was running ...

one hot afternoon cpu fan was old and dusty , it melts .. and its the end of that mobo ... the computer was on playing guildwars , hehe ...

i had to buy new mobo , new cpu , new power suply , new box with better cooling system.

so i got a AMD 3000+ athelon mobo 8x agp and power suply 450 wats , put 6 fans on new box ... my friend sold me 1 giga ram , so now i have 1.5 giga ram

whats the point of all this , i didnt spend that mush money and now i run guildwars at max quality even anti alising is at 4x .

mobo - gigabyte ( i dont know the model but was cheap becose no PCIx)
GPU - geforce 6600 ( not the GT one , normal 128 ram )
box power suply - GTR 450 wats
ram - 1.5 ( dont know the model , but not the super expencive ultra fast , im sure they are old , or my friend wouldnt sold me , lol )

now more on topic , did you read those add ons for guildwars.exe shortcut comands ?

after i put 1 giga just for guildwars , made a big diference , it loads faster and also to quit is very fast.

Depends entirely on the laptop model and price. There are perfectly viable gaming laptops in the markets, my friend has one and he can play pretty much everything with full detail.

Only problem is that a laptop with same 'gaming power' as a desktop computer costs twice as much as the desktop would cost.

true but believe me there is no laptop as powerfull as a desktop can be. even with all the money in the world , just for one reason ... over heating problems.
not to say harddrive speed . if you get a 7200 rpm on a laptop you are lucky most of them come with 5400 ... afaik ... on desktop you can put ultra wide scci , make raid , and new kinds o dont remember the name like SATA and suchs. but yeah you have a point.

to go on topic i think i didnt gave my 0.002 cents for the topic question ...

VIDEO CARD

hehe, yeah the video card option would be the way to go. I due some graphic design stuff as well so the extra memory will be nice. As I mentioned above, the laptop can't have the vid card upgraded (dang) so that's no good. But what I can due is upgrade the vid card in my desktop system.

Now here's a question: at the moment my desktop is using shared memory to for the onboard video. If I upgrade so that it's not using the onboard video do I need to do something to "get back" that memory, or will it be automatically reallocated?

The integrated video chip will be disabled when the system detects another vidcard, so the video chip won't allocate memory to itself as it isn't active.

Actually, a few braindead motherboard manufacturers still enable the onboard video and continue using shared memory even when you have a seperate card. In almost every single case, whether it automatically disables or not, you can disable the onboard in your BIOS. I have seen one rare case where the person had a board so poorly designed it couldn't even disable the onboard at all whether you had an external card or not. In such a system, all you can do is set shared memory as low as it goes in the BIOS and make do until you can afford better.

Guild Wars doesn't require a ton of memory to run. It puts the most stress on your video card and your CPU. My GeForce 6800 (in a desktop, but it shouldn't matter for the purposes of my point) runs GW at full resolution/settings/anti aliasing but my very old CPU is maxed out trying to decide where all the monsters should be, resulting in low performance. A quick test to see where you have your "bottleneck" is to hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete to open the task manager. Click the "Performance" tab, and note 2 things. 1, the CPU usage graph, and 2, the commit charge reading at the bottom right. (assuming you have Windows XP) Run Guild Wars as you normally would, and then hit Alt + Tab to get back to the task manager. If the commit charge (currently used M / total possible M) current is close to the total, get more memory. If you notice a spike in CPU usage that hits 100% or close, you could use a new CPU. (note: I'm not entirely sure you can change a notebook's CPU either) If neither your ram nor your CPU seems stressed, it's your video card, although it's entirely possible for 2 or even all 3 of these things to be inadequate. If only your ram seems to be at fault, upgrade it. If it's CPU, video card, or both, and you can't change them in a laptop, you may be stuck with getting a new one.

Edit: Also check these while quitting GW to see where your "2 minute lag time" is coming from.

Actually, most games use low latency timers, which will cause cpu usage to keep hitting 100%. Don't believe me? My 3700+ San Diego (eg 1MiB L2) overclocked to 2.5GHz almost sits unmovingly on 100% when I run Guild Wars. This CPU beats the living daylights out of the maximum recommendation as well as anything this game could conceivably ever attempt via any expansion packs (such as increasing AI distances or something.) All I know to tell you is if you want to get a very rough idea as to how hard your CPU is being hit, you could maybe run Prime95 for an hour, note the temperatures, let it cool off, then run the game for an hour and note the temperatures. If it's hitting CPU limitations, it will probably be pushing the chip a lot harder and you should see a temperature similar to that of Prime95. I guess. Sorry, hard to test this since my current CPU can't run very hot no matter what I try. Stupid me, I wasted extra cash to get a better HSF than it needed (then again, if I'd gotten one of the hotter San Diegos that can make it to 2.8+GHz, I wouldn't have regreted it so much.) My temperature difference between games and Prime95 is too small to tell since the software rounds up to whole numbers. d-:

Although I'm not familiar with low-latency timers, Nazo's right, whatever they do to cause your CPU to read 100% might just be a reporting error. Like he says, try running GW for a few hours and note the temps, let your CPU cool down to idle for a while, and then perform some kind of CPU stressful process and check temps again. Maximum PC has a CPU test involving encoding a section of video (they use DVDShrink to resize and rip a DVD to hard drive) that puts a lot of stress on the CPU. (don't worry, it's good stress and won't burn up your CPU unless it tends to sit at 80+ degrees C at idle.)

Low latency timers means that the game doesn't want to wait for the CPU to get around to responding on a tick of the not 100% accurate built in clock, but, it wants the CPU to run a constant loop watching for the exact moment it's supposed to respond. This is often called a high resolution timer because unlike the system clock, the CPU clock is very very precise (it kind of has to be to be able to tick off so many billion times a second...) This is almost required for gaming because it's needed for a lot of things that can't afford to wait a few random milliseconds here and there and speed up by a few here and there. Such as sound and probably many of the things that get sent to/from the video card. You'll find that even some old games that require a mere Pentium 2 will actually spike 100% a lot on a modern system due to this fact. Due to this, it's impossible to tell in most of these games whether the CPU is a limiting factor simply by watching the performance indicator.

And yes, encoding is a VERY good test of processor temperatures. Prime95 is the only thing that can even theoretically go higher in temperature, and I doubt it will normally. Mainly it's just convenient because there's no setup. Just fire it up and run (well, ok, if you have an X2/Dual Core/SMP, you'll have to set processor affinity to one chip first, fire up another copy of prime95, and set it's affinity to the other chip, otherwise you are only testing half of the processors.) Thing is, it all depends on just what sort of instructions are being used. It might be possible for a game to push a CPU's temperature just as high as Prime95 I suppose in theory. In practice, if your CPU is powerful enough to meet the game's every needs, it should end up with those waiting loops a lot and the CPU should remain below it's maximum temperature. Should.