New Graphics Card or RAM?

[richb14]

When playing games, they run *choppy*. My computer shouldnt run them, as it has lower specifications than what the box says the game sound have to run, but this is only in the RAM and Graphic Card department. I have 256MB RAM and a 32MB Graphics Card. How can I make my game less choppy, should i buy a new graphics card or some more RAM? Thanx. Rich.

[khana]

When your talking games, especially 3D ones, then both the memory and the graphics card are very important. Then again so is the main processor as a high end graphics card coupled with a slow processor is a waste of money.

If you have a processor of at least 1.5GHZ then go for the graphics card upgrade and if you can afford it upgrade the RAM to a min of 512MB as well, as thats going to be very cheap.

A mid range one gets you the most bang for your buck (between �100-150).

Happy gaming.

[WoWo]

Depends what you have in terms of graphics card at the moment, do you have a dedicated graphics card or is it on board/shared. Is it an old PCI or AGP?

[fo3nix]

As a general baseline, to run any 3D game of the past year or year and a half at a half-decent level, you're going to need the fastest processor you can get (as khana says 1.5GHz or above), and 1GB RAM, together with a dedicated graphics card like the GeForce 5500 or above.

If you want to run an older game, then it'll run OK on cheaper hardware. Something like Quake II or Half Life (the first one) should run OK on your computer as it is now, but it'll be jumpy I'd guess. Just doubling the RAM and graphics memory would sort this though (assuming the graphics memory is on a dedicated card)