How to Improve my Performance Without Buying another PC

**Barry** · 04-06-2009, 19:38

I have had my PC now for about 1 year and generally it has been great for my needs. Now though I feel as though it is aging and I am resorting to playing Medieval II on low low low settings and still hitting lag although I think that this was the case when I bought the PC. RTW plays fine up to a very high point.

I have brought together some of my major PC Specs from dxdiag, if anybody needs more please post and I will try to find out for you.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

I really would like to upgrade my PC without actually buying a brand new one but I am really lost where to start, more than likely I would hire a professional to fix new parts as I dopn't feel confident taking my computer to bits and putting it back together.

Main aims are to be able to play MTW II to a high standard and possibly even ETW.

**Lemur** · 04-06-2009, 20:24

One gig of ram is sub-par, and can easily be remedied. Two gigs is considered minimum wage these days, and Vista Home Premium can (sort of ) address 4 gigs if it's patched and up-to-date.

That ATI 2400 will be able to handle Medieval II, but I don't know about Empire. Given that you can upgrade to a 4850 for $130, I would recommend swapping it out.

These is my thoughts.

**Barry** · 04-06-2009, 21:39

Brilliant lemur, thanks. I have a budget of around £300/£400 if that helps?

**Lemur** · 04-06-2009, 21:54

Pounds Sterling confuse me. They're worth more than a dollar, but you Brits spend them like dollars. If a pint is three bucks here, it's three pounds there. I never get used to that.

Anyway, I'm a Colonial, so I have no advice when it comes to where/how to buy in Glorious Britannia. But 4 gigs of sparkly-fresh RAM and a new videocard should spruce you up nicely.

**Barry** · 04-06-2009, 22:28

Thanks a lot Lemur, ahh I see you are a moderator, just to let you know there is a duplicate of this thread in the Apothecary.

**Veho Nex** · 04-07-2009, 16:11

Theres also some minor cleansing you can do in your task manager but since you are running Vista, I dont know whats safe and not safe to end. You might want to look it up. It wont be a significant improvement but its enough to maybe knock half a second off the load time.

**Barry** · 04-07-2009, 21:58

Anything is a win Veho Nex, my thanks.

**Veho Nex** · 04-08-2009, 01:30

I forgot to mention, you need to look up system important processes and goto processes in the Windows Task Manager. End the ones that aren't system important. I know for XP it would be
svchost.exe(there are several)
Explorer.exe
system
lsass.exe
winlogin.exe
csrss.exe
smss.exe
services.exe