Slow PC

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I have a 2.66GHz P4 with an 80Gb HD, 256MB Ram and an Ati Radeon 9200 128MB Adapter. The problem i have is that if i play games like Far Cry or Call Of Duty the system runs so slow that they are almost impossible to play, especially when there is alot going on. I've run 3Dmark 03 and the best score i got was 689, i don't know if this is a good score or not but i'm started to get really worried that it won't be good enough for Half-Life 2 when it comes out. Any one have any ideas?
 

floppybootstomp

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You won't be able to play Far Cry on a Radeon 9200 Video card, I know, I've tried myself.

You should be able to play call Of Duty with your system without any problems though.

Try lowering the resolution, 800 x 600 is best for that particular Card.

If you can afford it, best to upgrade to a radeon 9800 Pro, they're around £140.00 atm.

You should be able to play Far Cry on a radeon 9600XT, but only at a lower res.

Another stick of 256Mb RAM would also help.
 
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I was afraid that would be the case, looks like i'm gonna have to break open the money box.

Thanks for the help
 
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You should find that your 3Dmark03 score jumps into the thousands with another stick of ram and a 9800pro - i have a 2.8GHz P4 and a 9800pro and my 3DMark score is sometimes in excess of 6000!

If your motherboard allows your memory to run in dual channel, make sure that the new stick is the same make and model to the existing one so that they are compatible.

www.aria.co.uk have 9800pro's for i believe no more than £134. They are usually sapphire or connect 3D. Sapphire ones are awesome - they overclock well. Not that i encourage it of course...
 

Reefsmoka

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Well in PCFormat issue 160 (April 2004) in the Far Cry Reveiw they recommend a P4 3Ghz, 1 Gig of Ram and a 128 Gfx card to be playing it with the prettys turned on, and that 128mb gfx card they say is probably a 9600XT or higher. If anythings gonna make a difference its probably some more memory, but high end graphics cards are so cheap now-a-days so i recommend you get something like an FX5700Ultra or higher from the Nvidia range or 9600XT or higher from the Ati range.

Far Cry suffers pretty bad from huge loading times, so to bump them up you would need a S-ATA drive, but if you can stand the loading times (like me :) ) thats no problem.

Your processor doesnt really need upgrading, as i think anything above the 2.5ghz mark should easily shift games about.

Some games just aint meant to be played on PC though, take Halo for instance, the Xbox rips that game apart with all the luscious textures and detail, yet you need a crazy high spec PC to play the game at not even half the detail!

Any how, good look on conquering Far Cry, im loving it at the moment! i'm aroudn 15 hours in i think, and its getting really exciting.
 
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If your going to pay the money for a 9600XT you may as well just go for the 9800pro and be much more pleasantly suprised. Not much price difference.

I put a 9600XT in the rents PC. Its not bad.
 
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It really helps to have a gig of RAM in Far Cry along with a DX9 card such as the 9800pro.
 

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