: : hello,
: : i made my computer myself. i hav a celeron 1.1 gigaherts, 10 gig hd, and currently, around 168 mb of ram. i hav an onboard vga, so that takes about 16 mb of that. som my comp uses 144. my vomputer still goes a bit slow i some places. i was wondering how much ram i should hav. i use my comp 2 play games, and i hat tehm going slow, i like 2 listen 2 musicmatch and surfing the net, or playing a game w/ musicmatch in the bg.
: :
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: Well, your RAM chips isn't the only thing you should consider when you want more speed from a system without replacing the mobo or the CPU. The harddrive is also important and you should have some AGP graphics card rather than an onboard VGA. If you are running Windows XP you should get more RAM. You should be able to run in most other OS' without too many problems with the RAM you have - if you are able to you should get some faster RAM chips but that all depends on what you have already and what kind of RAM your mobo supports. Your harddrive should have a seachtime as low as possible and you should get a transferspeed as high as possible - ata 133 if you can get it. Please add to the list or correct me anyone
:
You must have been on a tight budget to put system like that.
But as you have noticed you cannot save on every corner and
still have a fast PC. Onboard video is BIG no-no for a
gaming computer. It is ok for a secretary that prints one
memo a day and plays solitare, but not for a gaming
machine you want at home. This is definitelly the biggest
bottle neck...
So, first thing you want to do is forget about onboard
video (slooow...) and shared memory (even worse!).
Get a real graphic card. Just about *ANY* would do much
better job from what you have right now
(even an ancient TNT2 with 16mb).
Example:
If you are on budget, for only few bucks you can get
still decent AGP card with nVidia chip (MX200 or MX400)
with 32MB ram (don't worry about brand, any no-name would do).
You can get better card for more money, of course but don't
go lower that these two. Just install it and disable the
onboard crap. You should see the difference right away.
I don't think more system memory would make any difference
since you already have 168MB. I have 6 computers including
two Celerom machines and upgrading from 128 to 192 or 256MB
on Celeron dind't make notable difference. On the other hand
If you really want go ahead and see for your self.
Memory is cheap enough nowdays. Tell me if you think it was
worth it.
If you like to play music in the background WHILE playing
games, make sure that music is NOT the MP3 or similar but
from audio CD. Otherwise, your PC will be more than likely
to run slow.
Iby
