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So with the release of the SC2 beta, it feels as if SC2's release is imminent. I have a rather solid computer, so instead of buying a new one (got it in December 2006) I'm just going to upgrade certain specs.
Thing is, I know NOTHING about computers. I went to bestbuy the other day, and they told me there are three things I should be concerned about. Hard drive memory, RAM, and graphics card.
Originally I was looking for an additional internal hard drive (500 GB for $79.99 there). All my questions pretty much went to it, because I only had like 41 GB left on my 250 GB hard drive.
Long story short, the other day I just started deleting random old files in my computer when I found out my "download" folder had like 21 GB in it. So I kept cleaning, found out I had completely forgotten about 71 GB of FRAPs recordings, and ended up cleaning up my hard drive to have 148 GB left, and then proceeded to perform the most useful defrag I've ever done in my life.
So now, with the hard drive not an issue, I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card and my RAM. I have no idea what RAM even actually is (short of standing for Random Access Memory) and how beneficial it will be, and the same being with the graphics card (what any of the specs mean).
I have a NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX graphics card that came with my Dell XPS 700 I won in a gaming tournament. Although I mind blowing graphics card at the time, I feel like it might be outdated, which is what the guy at best buy told me. He also told me it would sell on the market for $20 at most on ebay. But looking online, whenever I type "NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX" the "new" prices are like $300 and the "used" prices are $150, and $150 is the upper cap limit on what I'm looking for on a NEW graphics card. Was this guy trying to scam me into buying a product or?!
The specs for the card are (from Wikipedia)
Performance Specs
Core Clock Speed: 650 MHz
Memory Interface: 256-bits
Memory Bandwidth: 51.2 GB/s memory bandwidth
Fill Rate: 15.6 Billion pixel/s
Vertex/s: 1.4 Billion
Shader Power: 24 pixels per clock
Memory Type: GDDR3
I'll post the memory specs tonight, I'm on my laptop now, but they should be whatever comes standard with the XPS 700... the guy told me to go to Crucial.com and download their scanner. I'll post them within 2 hours.
PS. Willing to drop around $175-180 TOTAL for a graphics card/memory upgrade... if it would benefit me more just to spend all the money on a graphics card or something, I'd sooner do that than upgrade both to shitty specs. I also have a blank spot for memory (two slots, one is full)
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your graphics card is really good... it might be outdated, but it is a VERY strong card.
tell us the type of games you play and we will judge whther you need to upgrade graphics or not.
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yeah man, your current video card (and your computer as a whole) is more than enough to run SC2 well!
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The guy at best buy is right to an extent. While the 7900GTX will be fine for SC2 at mid, it will perform like the ATi HD 4650 (which is a $60 card). While it will perform at the level of the 4650, it undoubtably has a much higher power consumption than our little ATi card which doesn't even need a PCIe 6 pin from the power supply 
It should run some modern games fine at mid, though high would be a stretch.
If you have 2GB of DDR2 RAM or more, you shouldn't bother with upgrading your memory. You will see a much bigger increase in performance if you upgrade your graphics card. $160-170 could get you an ATi HD 5770, ATi HD 4870, or at $130, a Nvidia GTS 250. Of those, the HD 4870 is normally the best performance (not in the SC2 beta benchmarks though!), but the 5770 is the only one that supports DX11. The 5770 also has the lowest power consumption.
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Well my video card can't run Crisis on high solidly (it'll skip every 10-11 seconds). It can run it on medium no problem. I have 2046 MB of RAM. I think it can hold 4 GB total but it says it will only utilize like 3.5 GB or something? According to crucial.com (from what I remember, for some reason the scanner is no longer working on my computer).
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You have a 32 bit OS which will only recognize about 3.5GB of RAM. 2GB of RAM should be more than enough
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You should checkout Newegg, they have some amazing deals every once in awhile.
I recently upgraded my computer as well and managed to snag a GeForce 9800 GTX+ for $100
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So would it be worth it to buy 1 GB of RAM or 1.5 GB of RAM? How much of a performance improvement would I be able to notice? Would it just be programs running faster? I'm guessing graphics wouldn't increase whatsoever though. But I'm more concerned with a faster running computer than running shit on ultra-high.
Can anyone give me a comparison about how much of an increase in graphic power buying a gfx card for ~$125 would get me? The guy at best buy said "an absolutely noticeable increase." But people here are saying that mine is still decent... confused because I would think a good gfx card would be way more than $125.
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A $125 graphics card (if one exists) would be a vast improvement over what you have now. 1GB of RAM would contribute however, to an overall faster computer, though I'm not sure by how much.
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I don't get it... Graphics cards are supposed to be expensive... I have a supposedly good graphics card, yet a $125 graphics card would be a vast improvement? Seems so contradictory to me! So all the sites that are selling my card for ~$150 are full of shit I suppose.
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On March 04 2010 16:05 FabledIntegral wrote:
I don't get it... Graphics cards are supposed to be expensive... I have a supposedly good graphics card, yet a $125 graphics card would be a vast improvement? Seems so contradictory to me! So all the sites that are selling my card for ~$150 are full of shit I suppose.
yes, prices for quality video cards are quite low these days. You really don't need to upgrade anything. Use the money to buy the actual game!
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On March 04 2010 13:26 FabledIntegral wrote:
So with the release of the SC2 beta, it feels as if SC2's release is imminent. I have a rather solid computer, so instead of buying a new one (got it in December 2006) I'm just going to upgrade certain specs.
Thing is, I know NOTHING about computers. I went to bestbuy the other day, and they told me there are three things I should be concerned about. Hard drive memory, RAM, and graphics card.
My first issue is you went to best buy. Don't do that. They will lie, cheat, and steal to get money out of your pockets. They are the used car salesmen of the consumer electronics industry. I witnessed it all first hand as a member of Geek Squad. Only worked there for a month and I have plenty of stories.
Originally I was looking for an additional internal hard drive (500 GB for $79.99 there). All my questions pretty much went to it, because I only had like 41 GB left on my 250 GB hard drive.
Long story short, the other day I just started deleting random old files in my computer when I found out my "download" folder had like 21 GB in it. So I kept cleaning, found out I had completely forgotten about 71 GB of FRAPs recordings, and ended up cleaning up my hard drive to have 148 GB left, and then proceeded to perform the most useful defrag I've ever done in my life.
So now, with the hard drive not an issue
Good. A new hard drive will serve you well the next time you have some extra money lying around, but you correctly removed it from your list of priorities.
, I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card and my RAM. I have no idea what RAM even actually is (short of standing for Random Access Memory) and how beneficial it will be, and the same being with the graphics card (what any of the specs mean).
RAM is considered to be the single most important and best upgrade you can do for your computer, and also the most cost-efficient. There's a dozen or so companies manufacturing the stuff, so the supply is up, while the demand is... "consistent", for lack of a better word ("low" would be inaccurate)
I have a NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX graphics card that came with my Dell XPS 700 I won in a gaming tournament. Although I mind blowing graphics card at the time, I feel like it might be outdated, which is what the guy at best buy told me. He also told me it would sell on the market for $20 at most on ebay. But looking online, whenever I type "NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX" the "new" prices are like $300 and the "used" prices are $150, and $150 is the upper cap limit on what I'm looking for on a NEW graphics card. Was this guy trying to scam me into buying a product or?!
This card will serve you just fine for Starcraft 2. I would be very surprised if you couldn't run it at max settings in everything except 4v4s, 2v2v2v2s, and some wacky UMS maps. (if you play any of those)
I'll post the memory specs tonight, I'm on my laptop now, but they should be whatever comes standard with the XPS 700... the guy told me to go to Crucial.com and download their scanner. I'll post them within 2 hours.
You say you have 2gb. It would help us to know what generation of memory it is (DDR, DDR2, or DDR3; it's most likely going be DDR2), and what the speed is.
PS. Willing to drop around $175-180 TOTAL for a graphics card/memory upgrade... if it would benefit me more just to spend all the money on a graphics card or something, I'd sooner do that than upgrade both to shitty specs. I also have a blank spot for memory (two slots, one is full)
Considering how good the 7900 GTX is, the fact that you have more than enough space to do a full install of SC2, and the fact that Blizzard products -always- caters to a large consumer base of casual users, I would say spend $60-$100 on some good RAM. You could spend that and probably get 4 gb worth of fresh sticks, and be set until you replace that computer. Keep the other $80-$120 for...well, whatever.
On March 04 2010 15:36 FabledIntegral wrote:
Well my video card can't run Crisis on high solidly (it'll skip every 10-11 seconds). It can run it on medium no problem. I have 2046 MB of RAM. I think it can hold 4 GB total but it says it will only utilize like 3.5 GB or something? According to crucial.com (from what I remember, for some reason the scanner is no longer working on my computer).
Crytek, makers of Far Cry and Crysis, are open and notorious about their games being the pinnacle of consumer graphics technology stress testing. This is kind of the diametric opposite of what Blizzard aims for. People looking to test their brand new $2,000 PC will buy Crytek games and then post their ePeen score online for all the world to envy. As I said: Blizzard games are designed with the biggest consumer in mind. Their biggest consumers are going to be the casual gamers in the USA, who have 2 year old Dells purchased at best buy, and South Koreans, who still use CRT monitors, among many other outdated pieces of hardware for their computers. You will not have a problem running SC2, and I'd bet anyone here that you can run it at max settings without a hitch, barring the above stated situations.
On March 04 2010 15:55 FabledIntegral wrote:
So would it be worth it to buy 1 GB of RAM or 1.5 GB of RAM? How much of a performance improvement would I be able to notice? Would it just be programs running faster? I'm guessing graphics wouldn't increase whatsoever though. But I'm more concerned with a faster running computer than running shit on ultra-high.
Already made my suggestion: buy 4gb
Can anyone give me a comparison about how much of an increase in graphic power buying a gfx card for ~$125 would get me? The guy at best buy said "an absolutely noticeable increase." But people here are saying that mine is still decent... confused because I would think a good gfx card would be way more than $125.
The NVidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512 MB is a full 2 generations newer than your current card, for $135 + shipping. If you can't play Crysis at max settings now, you would be able to do with that card. Starcraft 2 would likely not even phase it.
On March 04 2010 16:05 FabledIntegral wrote:
I don't get it... Graphics cards are supposed to be expensive... I have a supposedly good graphics card, yet a $125 graphics card would be a vast improvement? Seems so contradictory to me! So all the sites that are selling my card for ~$150 are full of shit I suppose.
Yes. If someone is trying to sell a 7900 GTX for $150, even if new, they are scamming the shit out of you.
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GPU stands for graphics card? Yeah I know it was top of the line... in 2006 haha. I'm just surprised a graphics card that's worth $30 could be considered good.
Thanks for the help though. I'll probably end up buying another 1 GB of RAM and look for a new graphics card, including the one you listed... assuming that 1 GB of RAM is relatively cheap.
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On March 04 2010 16:31 FabledIntegral wrote:
GPU stands for graphics card? Yeah I know it was top of the line... in 2006 haha. I'm just surprised a graphics card that's worth $30 could be considered good.
Thanks for the help though. I'll probably end up buying another 1 GB of RAM and look for a new graphics card, including the one you listed... assuming that 1 GB of RAM is relatively cheap.
GPU standards for Graphics Processing Unit. But yeah, means the same thing: graphics card.
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Why do people still insist on buying older gen products
The 9800 GTX+ was also a good buy and a good card, but at $130 it isn't worth the fucking money. The GTS 250 is the rebrand at around the same price with better power consumption and better performance. Please keep up to date for god's sake, and stop making these terrible recommendations.
RAM is not the best upgrade. If you had any common sense you would realize that 2GB for $50 is not ideal at all. That entire conclusion that RAM is the best price/performance was during the time when RAM was cheap and 4GB of DDR3 would be like $50.
Buying an extra 2 gb of RAM will get you negligible performance in any game, and almost 0 performance from daily applications. Only when you are running many processes at once will you even need more than 2gb of RAM.
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On March 04 2010 16:43 FragKrag wrote:
Why do people still insist on buying older gen products
The 9800 GTX+ was also a good buy and a good card, but at $130 it isn't worth the fucking money. The GTS 250 is the rebrand at around the same price with better power consumption and better performance. Please keep up to date for god's sake, and stop making these terrible recommendations.
RAM is not the best upgrade. If you had any common sense you would realize that 2GB for $50 is not ideal at all. That entire conclusion that RAM is the best price/performance was during the time when RAM was cheap and 4GB of DDR3 would be like $50.
Buying an extra 2 gb of RAM will get you negligible performance in any game, and almost 0 performance from daily applications. Only when you are running many processes at once will you even need more than 2gb of RAM.
I didn't see your post on the GTS 250, which is a better deal than my 9800 GTX+, but yeah... no on the RAM.
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Hey, I'm going to spend $80 on useless RAM sticks that won't increase any of my fucking performance and won't carry over to my next build!
You COULD make an argument if he was running DDR3, but he is spending $80 on RAM that will not improve performance at all. No normal user could even use past 2-3GB.
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It's a matter of finding the bottleneck in your system, and relieving it. This may or may not be the memory, the graphics processor, the cpu, the hard drive, or the motherboard. General statements about the usefulness of speeding up one specific component are rubbish.
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EPT
