Help with my system

[howardan]

Hi folks, you have been there for me before and i hope you would be kind enough to help me again.

I am running BF2142 on my system and its coping, though not as well as i would like. Looking at the following what would you recommend for an upgrade.

AMD 64 3000+ s754
1GB Ram
128MB 6600gt AGP
Cheapo MSI Motherboard (has no overclocking facility)

Would i get away with just a GFX card upgrade or is it time to get rid?

Cheers if you can help.

Howardan

[edp33]

I'm in a similar situation to you, same kind of system with a 6600GT. I was going to just update the graphics card to a 7900GS or an 8800.

However, lots of articles are saying that the newer graphics cards really need a faster cpu, or the old cpu will be a bottleneck.

So I came across an article on Tom's hardware where he is testing the latest graphics cards firstly on the older athlon xp's, and in the second part on the athlon 64's. Just waiting for the 2nd part to be posted before deciding which route to take.
http://tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/index.html

[DratUK]

Up your ram to 2Gb will help a great deal. It uses the BF2 engine which is bad memory hog through bad coding. I play both and upped my ram last year and it made a significant diff in game play. The 6600gt is still a capable card.