agp 4x motherboard

[barberbookie]

hello , can somebody shed some light on my question?

i have a p4 2.8 ghz processor , 1 gig of pc2100 ddr ram , on board sound and a radeon 9800 pro card with latest drivers. although i am happy with my system and that it plays up to date games to most of my likings i cant help feel it is still underperforming and the odd game is a bugger to run even on low settings. my motherboard ( i am unsure of the spec think it is sis) is only agp 4x. would upgrading my motherboard to accomodate agp 8x and some more memory slots improve my gaming as my card does require agp 8x

thanks for any help .

barberbookie :

[Jagndeke]

From what I have read, the general consensus is that going from 4x to 8x makes little difference. I remember reading an article somewhere about it. Don't know whether it was at Tom's Hardware or some other place.

Make sure you've got up to date vid card drivers and a relatively up to date bios. Also, the onboard sound can draw some power away from your system. Even a cheap to mid range pci sound card will help out some.

[Gaim Mastr]

Added to what Jagndeke stated...

With a Gig of RAM, you don't need any more, unless you use professional graphic artist software or some such thing.

Don't forget the basics like defragging your drive and cleaning out the registry.

Make sure that nothing is running in the background on your system, including antivirus, firewall and other such things.

If you have spyware on your system, that will usually slow it down.

And definitely get yourself a sound card, even if it's a cheap one, to take the load off of your CPU.

[Rafal Dudek]

how did you manage to get pc2100 crap on a p4 2.8ghz system?

[barberbookie]

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR COMMENTS. I WOULD JUST LIKE TO SAY I INVESTED IN A CHEAP PHILLIPS SOUND CARD ( AROUND £25 POUND STERLING) AND HAD NOTHING BUT TROUBLE ON RUNNING MY GAMES. THEY WHERE CONSTANTLY CRASHING TO REBOOT AND SO I REVERTED BACK TO MY ONBOARD AND HAVE NOT HAD ANY PROBLEMS. WHAT COULD THE PROBLEMS OF THE PHILLIPS SOUND CARD HAVE BEEN.
THANKS AGAIN AND WILL WELCOME ANY FURTHER RESPONSE.

BARBERBOOKIE.

[bluE_Neon]

gaim mastr, can you give me a proggie for cleaning up registries? :D:

[Gaim Mastr]

barberbookie, please don't forget to hit that little caps lock key on the far left side of your keyboard before posting. Posts that aren't solid capital letters are easier to read, and tend to get answered more often.

:wink:



BN, I use Easy Cleaner (http://www.toniarts.com/products.php?PHPSESSID=88c69a75b58f332e122bdfb98e3 50cf3&PHPSESSID=88c69a75b58f332e122bdfb98e350cf3) from ToniArts. But I see that a paid membership with them has now become a requirement for downloading their "freeware".

Perhaps someone else here knows of a good registry cleaner that won't screw up your system. As always, only use registry cleaners that come recommended by people currently using them. And make a complete backup of your registry before attempting to clean it out.

[DanTheManPR]

Weird that you should be having problems with that sweet rig of yours! Sound cards have a funny habit of screwing things up, but its good that you have a card now and not integrated. Did you make sure to disable the integrated sound? The best way would be to do this in the BIOS. Thats probably the reason that the system is crashing - the two sound devices are in conflict. And make sure you have new drivers :thumbup:

[Terry Penrod]

.

Also be sure to get a good, free Spybot killer like Spybot Search & Destroy 1.3 which has a highly expanded new library of spybot files that it screens for / immunizes against and a free online update checker.

Just Google the program name for a link to the free download page.

Cheers, Terry

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