Posts by fadedorca66

Check CPU-Z to see which motherboard you're actually running and let us know.

If it's sitting at 399MHz, that's probably DDR2, not DDR3.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3635-18.html

From what I can tell, that CORS unit should probably handle it just fine.

The VS series isn't exactly anything special, though... kind of low end, I guess.

Dell just puts things in nicer boxes, so our suppliers jack up the prices just to maintain that sense of prestige.

Yeah, that was back when ASRock was basically just ASUS's budget wing. Things have changed quite a bit since then, I guess.

I mean, I guess ASRock is pretty much on par with Gigabyte and ASUS...

So, what exactly is wrong with ASRock?

As for $67 the new stuff, you’re probably stuck with just the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel options, if you can even find those. I guess you might have to look at the used market instead.

Upgrading your GPU isn't really gonna speed up the whole rig unless you have enough RAM. I guess, how much are you running right now?

I don't know, I guess my take is that any GPU at a decent price (I’d say up to $667, though $500 is the sweet spot for a best buy) can handle games for at least the next two years—maybe longer—at pretty solid settings and resolution. Tech isn't advancing so fast anymore that you buy a card today and it's junk tomorrow. Maybe some unoptimized garbage game will launch and make everything struggle, but then you just tweak the settings. Besides, I don't really see the point in overkill graphics when you're just using a single monitor anyway.

IMO=my two cents

If you've got the cash, enough juice to power a small city, and honestly think a "standard" GPU is just overkill, then go for it, man...

Honestly, it doesn't really matter. If you grab two more 1GB sticks, you'll get dual channel mode, which might be a tiny bit faster, but you probably won't even notice the difference. Just pick up whatever DDR2 you can find. What are you running right now? It’s better if they're from the same manufacturer, but it's not a dealbreaker.

It’s a slight bump up, but honestly, probably still not enough to actually play anything decent.

restlesstrucker24 said:I reckon it's worth even more, since I can run decent games on it (Far Cry 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops...)

The value is based on the hardware specs, not on which games it happens to run.

It should run fine, probably won't even lag.

What does the age of a GPU even matter? If the drivers still support it, they should work just fine.

What’s the exact error message you're getting? And what OS are you running?

So, what kind of RAM are you running right now?

Basically: you need DDR RAM (up to 400MHz). Just standard DDR—you can go with DDR1 if you really want to:

and so on.

I guess I don't know exactly what you have in there currently, but I'd probably suggest grabbing two 1GB sticks. You could maybe hunt for some used ones on eBay.

I guess my take is that having one beefy GPU is still better than running dual weaker ones. Why? Less heat, lower power draw, and way less of a headache overall. I don't have to constantly stress about whether a game actually supports SLI or whatever.

Those sites should give you a decent idea of how the game performs and if your rig can even handle it. I guess SR4 will run fine for you, but just try it and see.

Don't worry, nothing you put in there is going to explode.

You can actually go into the BIOS on your motherboard and decide how much RAM gets allocated to the GPU. So, you could just set it to 1GB and you'll have a gig of video memory, easy.

Have you even tried SR4 yet? Is it stuttering?

I've got a similar processor, and I can run it on medium at 1280x1024 with decent FPS—maybe around 40. The frames do dip to about 20 during cutscenes since they're clearly pushing the heavy details, but it's definitely playable. And that's just with 512mb of VRAM.

With an APA, memory speed is pretty huge. If you're running DDR3 at 1600MHz, make sure you set it to that in the BIOS. You might also squeeze out a little more performance if you overclock that integrated graphics.

SLI isn't exactly a silver bullet either; it works great in some games, but in others, the difference is pretty negligible.