fruitfly
09-23-2006, 18:11
I'm looking to upgrade my fairly antique computer specifically for M2TW, but also to make CIV4 run faster on larger map sizes. My current setup is:
AMD Athalon 2500+ Barton core processor (socket A - currently overclocked slightly to 2.0GHz)
MSI K7N2-delta-ILSR motherboard (MS-6570)
512MB PC2700DDR RAM
Gigabyte Radeon 9600Pro graphics card (a GVR96P128D)
Antec Sonata case, including the 380W Antec PSU it came with
All of which dates back to the release of the original MTW!
Ideally I'd want to replace the whole lot, but upgrading everything at once isn't financially practical at the moment. As the games I mentioned above are the ones likely to dominate my gaming for the next 12-18 months, it's wringing the best performance out of them for the smallest financial outlay (£150-£300 is my total budget, but the lower end of that is obviously preferable) that's most important really.
A new graphics card is a must and having looked at some of the threads already on here, given that I'm on a budget and restricted to AGP, the 7600GT from oveclockers.co.uk looks like a good option. Is there anything else worth considering? I'm not an FPS player, but I'd like to be able to fight M2TW battles on 12x10 with large unit sizes if the rest of the setup will allow it.
I also know I need a lot more memory, but do you think I should be looking at 1GB or 2? Is there going to be a point at which the processor ends up causing a bottleneck and adding more memory gives no boost to performance? The other thing to consider is memory speed. The motherboard supports DDR up to 400 (ie PC3200), which would mean I could up the FSB on the processor to 200 whilst maintaining a 1:1 ratio for some additional overclocking. I assume it'd mean ditching the existing 512MB I've got, but do you think it would deliver a noticeable improvement in performance?
Thanks for any advice.
:help:
AMD Athalon 2500+ Barton core processor (socket A - currently overclocked slightly to 2.0GHz)
MSI K7N2-delta-ILSR motherboard (MS-6570)
512MB PC2700DDR RAM
Gigabyte Radeon 9600Pro graphics card (a GVR96P128D)
Antec Sonata case, including the 380W Antec PSU it came with
All of which dates back to the release of the original MTW!
Ideally I'd want to replace the whole lot, but upgrading everything at once isn't financially practical at the moment. As the games I mentioned above are the ones likely to dominate my gaming for the next 12-18 months, it's wringing the best performance out of them for the smallest financial outlay (£150-£300 is my total budget, but the lower end of that is obviously preferable) that's most important really.
A new graphics card is a must and having looked at some of the threads already on here, given that I'm on a budget and restricted to AGP, the 7600GT from oveclockers.co.uk looks like a good option. Is there anything else worth considering? I'm not an FPS player, but I'd like to be able to fight M2TW battles on 12x10 with large unit sizes if the rest of the setup will allow it.
I also know I need a lot more memory, but do you think I should be looking at 1GB or 2? Is there going to be a point at which the processor ends up causing a bottleneck and adding more memory gives no boost to performance? The other thing to consider is memory speed. The motherboard supports DDR up to 400 (ie PC3200), which would mean I could up the FSB on the processor to 200 whilst maintaining a 1:1 ratio for some additional overclocking. I assume it'd mean ditching the existing 512MB I've got, but do you think it would deliver a noticeable improvement in performance?
Thanks for any advice.
:help: