🚀 go-pugleaf

"Jon Atkinson" <jra505@totalise.co.uk> wrote in message news:411fc8c0$1_1@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com...
> Hello all,
>
> My system.....
>
> 2.6GHz AthlonXP
> 512Mb RAM
> Geforce 5900XT
>
> and I get pretty decent frame rates on 1024x768 and medium settings, however
> experience pretty
> severe slow downs when baddies start to appear (just when you want the
> motion to be quick and smooth!)
>
> does the fact that my computer seems to be able to cope with the graphics
> pretty well when I am just wandering around doing nothing, but slows down a
> lot when any sort of action kicks off, mean that it is the CPU that is
> struggling, as opposed to the gfx card? I wouldn't actually say I have got a
> weak CPU at 2.6GHz, so maybe it is the memory which is the limiting factor?
> Could the drop in speed be due to the system using the paging file due to
> the amount of physical memory being insufficient?
>
> Any comments would be most welcome!

Nowadays, any less than 1GB of RAM can slow you down in the latest games,
what with WinXP requiring almost 256MB just to keep itself happy, before you
even factor in the memory useage of the games and apps themselves.

With a paltry 256MB or so left over for the game to use, I'm sure your system
frequently has to access its harddisk swapfile at all the worst times.

With 2GB of RAM in this box, I can't remember the last time my system slowed
down or even burped due to something having to be retrieved from the harddrive
and loaded into memory during in-game action. 1GB is the minimum I would
even consider, for running todays games.
    -Marshall