I have a system that's only a year old, Pentium Dual Core, 2 gigs of ram and an nVidia GeForce 8600 GTS (256MB GDDR3) and yet the new Call of Duty game "World at War" runs like ass unless every graphic enhancement is disabled. Do I more likely need an even better video card or a whole new system with faster ram and a faster processor?

 

what motherboard do you have?

 

Operating System
Windows Vista Business (build 6000)

Main Circuit Board b
Board: Dell Inc. 0UY253 A00
Serial Number: ..CN1374073M0058.
Bus Clock: 1066 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Inc. 1.4.1 05/07/2007

Processor a
2.13 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
4096 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Drives
320.02 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
29.89 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
PHILIPS DVD+-RW DVD8881 SCSI CdRom Device [CD-ROM drive]
ST332062 0AS SCSI Disk Device (320.07 GB) -- drive 0

System Model
Dell Inc. Dell XPS710
System Service Tag: 60XWYC1 (support for this PC)
Chassis Serial Number: 60XWYC1
Enclosure Type: Tower

Memory Modules c,d
2046 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM_1' has 1024 MB (serial number 770751D2)
Slot 'DIMM_3' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM_2' has 1024 MB (serial number 77075299)
Slot 'DIMM_4' is Empty

 

you dont have a pentium dual core

you have an intel core 2 duo, big difference between a pentium D and core 2 duo.

anyways, yea i would upgrade your video card, i think the 8600 GTS is more of a budget video card.

how much are you willing to spend on an upgrade?
for about ~160 id recommend a radeon HD 4850.

 

Thanks for clarifying the chip difference, I get confused. I'm willing to pay around $300 for a new video card, and so I'll go looking per your advice. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't putting lipstick on a pig so to speak.

I've had horrible luck with gaming systems playing games. Even UT3 runs like garbage on my XPS 1710 which is a gaming laptop that was only 6 months older than the game itself, but I let it go because UT3 isn't that good.

 

for about $230 id recommend either the Radeon HD 4870 or GeForce GTX 260

if you want pretty much the best performance at a good price value sense then i would suggest getting 2 radeon HD 4850's and running them in crossfire mode, that is if your motherboard can support having 2 video cards.

 

IDK, if your wanting to run COD5 or most any new game for that matter at full specs then your going to need to upgrade your processor.

 

I don't want full specs but right now I have to put it to every lowest possible graphics settings short of tweaking the ini by hand. I didn't realize the 8600 was a budget card because it came with my Dell "gaming" system but I suppose it is.

 

By looking at your setup, a couple things will increase your gaming performance:

1. Downgrade to Win XP or make a dual boot option at start up and only game in Win Xp.

Vista is an intense resource hog and makes a huge difference in gaming. I have a Intel Q6600, Radeon HD4870x2 and 8 gigs of ram, and a 10k RPM HD and when I ran WoW on my system with Vista Business, I saw on average about 35-40 FPS on full settings. Which is total bullshit since my system should easily run WoW. So I downgraded to XP and now I'm seeing 60 FPS miniumum.

2. Vid Card. If you're looking for a budget card, look into the Radeon HD3870. I had that before I got the HD4870x2 and it handled CoD4 pretty well on high settings with x2 AA.

I really wouldn't suggest investing $250+ into a nice vid card when it'll most likely be choked by the rest of your hardware.

3. More Ram. 2 Gigs of Ram while running Vista + gaming is no where near enough.

Otherwise, a whole new system might be in order. As always, start with the cheapest alternative first. Try making a dual boot option with Win XP and try gaming in XP first. I think that will net you better results. After that, I'd say a Vid Card upgrade and Ram upgrade are in order.

 

Thanks a lot for the advice. I'll look at ram as well as a new card.

 

you very likely have a core 2 duo E6400 processor, which imo should still be plenty enough to run games, i think at the time you built your computer your video card was probably mid range and ran games decently at the time.

But yea i would suggest a new video card and ram, DDR2 is so cheap right now.
also unless you are running Vista 64bit or XP 64bit, anything above 4gb of ram is a waste of money since 32bit OS' cant address above 4gb of ram.

 

I run COD5 just fine with a single ATI 4850

 

I would recommend an NVIDIA card instead. I used to have the HD3870 and my friend's 8800GT kicked it's butt and we basically had the exact same systems in different cases.

I've been running two 8800GTS (G92) in SLI since last year and I never even needed the SLI unless I played Crisis. I've only been using one card for the past few months and have played the newest games on the highest resolutions without any lag. My brother has borrowed my other card until I need it for something more demanding.

It seems to me like all you're missing is a graphics card. I've seen much worse processors with less ram run COD5 at medium resolutions with just a better GPU.

 

its kind of that the 8800 GT would be faster than the HD3870.

he would be fine with either nvidia or amd, but as of right now the fastest card money can buy is the radeon 4870 X2

 

Not sure what this has to do with anything. All I was saying is that since someone recommended an HD3870, he might as well get the 8800GT.

 

My suggestion for the 3870 was for him to get enough performance to play COD at a low cost.

I'm not sure about the costs of an 8800gt anymore, but I'm almost certain that its much more than the HD3870 still.

 

just ignore me.

 

Newegg has them for around $125 shipped these days, you just have to look for them.