I have a friend that has: Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz Intel Motherboard 8800 gts 512 1 Gb DDR 400 Windows XP Pro I'm really just trying to get validation for my question of whether or not his CPU and RAM are holding back his performance in newer games. He plays TF2 and a lot of the newer source games. My answer was that he needs a good ram upgrade at the least. (In the end he probably should just upgrade motherboard, CPU, and RAM altogether soon.)
Hi, yes his cpu and ram are the bottleneck in that system. You are right in advising him to upgrade to better specs it will also use the graphics at a higher potential (higher settings) with a higher spec pc. I take it he is also using one module of 1gb ddr? so he's only running single channel memory, so he isn't benefiting from dual channel bandwidth. So basically his graphics card is the best piece of hardware in that current setup. If he does want to upgrade, I would recommned an Intel X58 setup.
Actually he has 2 512MB sticks. Forgot to mention that in the description, sorry. He probably should've upgraded last fall when the prices were outrageously low. They are still OK (2GB for 69.99) but they were much better then. Prices overall are starting to head back up and the fact that it's older DDR doesn't help the price either. Thanks for the reply.
