GPU vs. CPU vs. RAM vs. HD

Hmm... wow i heard that.... there are three or four UPGRADES that can improve gameplay in high demanding 3Dish games like UT2004, Doom 3 and Far Cry... the four major upgrades that can improve the performance in these games are.... upgrading the video card, the processor, the RAM and, maybe even the hard drive to a faster speed like 7200 RPM. Anyways... right now im thinking that if you are in a budget and need to upgrade or make a gaming laptop... then these should be the order of upgrade from most important to least:

1.) VIDEO CARD.... basically this upgrade will improve your performance the MOST..... im getting a ATI Mobility Radeon 9800, 256MB Graphics Card and well DUH because... if you have great RAM and no real good video card... then you'll be playing a blur with choppy performance.... thats how it is... RAM is not meant for gaming as much as the video card.... it only is meant to run processes on the comp at a better speed... and they only use some of that RAM for gaming...

2.) CPU... with my Inspiron XPS im gunna have a Pentium 4, 3.4 Ghz processor and this... is the second most item that will improve your system if you guys want better performance

3.) RAM.... i have 512mb DDR SDRAM.... i wanted to save money so i didn't buy 1 GB... (its about $215 more for 1 GB... but right now on dell.com they have the upgrade for free.... but then they don't have the free 4X CD/DVD burner (DVD+RW+R) and the 15 percent off of all the Inspiron notebooks that they had last week so... i got the better deal....) i think now the price for the video card and the 1 GB of RAM plus other features that one must have costs around... $4200... but i got my those features for only $3300 which is only missing the 1 GB of RAM...I figure... that if the GPU and the processor are UBER fast and powerful... then they would have to use less of the DDR SDRAM for gaming performance...and thats why... the Video card and the CPU are RANKED lower than RAM...

4.) HD..... i think that if you have a fast hard drive... like at 7200 RPM then that would help loading times... so that would mean... that in game.... that would further better your gaming experience... so one wouldn't have to wait to play...

well that's my opinion what do you guys think [8D]

 

Hi bballdunk,
A fast CPU is important, but I'm not sure I would put it at #2, just because going to 3.4Ghz from a 3.0Ghz is not going to buy you much more gaming performance. What you have to look at is what your bottleneck is because everything works together as a system and a system is only as fast as its slowest part. I'm not sure you will see much of a speed increase going from 512MB to 1GB of ram, but it's not going to slow things down thats for sure. Only if the game is designed to use every bit of ram there is, will you see a difference; if all the parts of the game that are currently being accessed fit inside of 512MB, adding another 512MB won't get you anything more. What will matter a great deal is the bus speed of the memory and the CAS latency because that is a delay that is happening on every memory cycle.
I think I would rate the hard drive higher because, even though most people think it only speeds up the loading and starting of the program/game, that is not true. A faster(7200rpm)drive will help speed thing up a great deal through out the whole game. The reason for this is because 1st the hard drive with its mechanical moving parts is the bottleneck of all systems because it is the slowest component and speeding it up speeds the whole system up. The 2nd reason is that no computer games(except for simple games like backgammon)load the entire game into memory at once, they only load a fairly small portion into memory as it is needed and maybe some extra is cached into memory under the asumption that it will be used next but in many cases game play may change and the prediction is wrong so it must go back to the drive for the data it needs. Also all throughout the game, not only is it grabbing more parts of the progam, but it is writing results back into the hard drive. Try playing a 3D game on your notebook and keep an eye on the hard drive access light, chance are it is flashing like crazy during the entire game.

Jack

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" (Ben Franklin)
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

RAM should be #1. If you don't have enough, a 9800 will play like a 7500, i kid you not. Get a gigabyte, definitely. Windows XP and UT2004 take 800 megs combined, meaning you will have to access the hard drive during play. This results in stutters every three seconds for hard disk access, completely intolerable. The video card will raise synthetic benchmarks, but RAM raises actual gameplay performance.

GPU cooling (100°C->75°C)* Inspiron 8600 * 1.8ghz Pentium M * 128 MB Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo (337/242 -> 400/300) * 2x512 MB DDR2700 SDRAM * Aquamark 3: 24058 * 3DMark'03: 3404 * 3DMark'01 SE: 13120

 

I'm sorry, but I must disagree. Any recent unit that is capable of playing Doom 3, Far Cry & UT2004 should already come with 512MB of memory. So, knowing (assuming) this, memory shouldn't be the #1 upgrade to increase performance.

1. Video Card - A system with 1GB of ram will still play the games poorly if the GPU is not powerful enough. All current games have off-loaded all graphical processing from the CPU to the GPU. So you're gonna need a fast GPU to play these games well.

2. RAM - If the games can't be loaded into memory fully, it must swap out to HDD (Pagefile/Virtual Memory). So to prevent delays, you should have enough system memory to handle all the textures that are loaded.

3. HDD - If there's not enough ram in the system, it will swap to the Pagefile/Virutal Memory (as indicated in #2). If the HDD is too slow, it will cause delays in getting this info to the CPU/GPU and you will see lags/pauses. I've had personal experience with this. Playing Doom 3, P4 2.0Ghz, 512MB ram & a 6GB 5400rpm HDD w/512K Cache & an ATI 9800 Pro w/128MB. The game ran perfectly fine, until it tried swapping to HDD. The game paused for 5 seconds while reading/writing to/from the HDD before it started going again. I'm sure running on a 7200rpm HDD w/8MB cache would have been fine.

4. CPU - Since the advent of the 3D GPU, games have been off-loading graphics processing to the GPU. In some cases, the GPU is the most powerful processing chip in the system, even faster than the CPU. Since all the processing is done on the GPU, the CPU doesn't need to be SO powerful anymore. Again, personal experience. My brother played Doom 3 on his P3-866, 512MB, Nvidia GeForce 3 w/64MB, 7200rpm HDD w/2MB Cache. Even though he had to disable most of the Advanced Options, it ran pretty much flawlessly. It was occasionally slow, but then again, he only has a GeForce 3 & a P3-866.

So, if anyone is looking to get a notebook for gaming, make sure the GPU is near the top-of-the-line.

-Vb-

 

If we talk for game performance, the list goes like this;

1.gpu
2.ram
3.hdd
4.cpu

(cpu is not more important point than others)
if you have a powerful cpu and lake of gpu you cannot play recent and up-middle games anymore...



Fujitsu Amilo M 1420-1.7 Dathon,1gb(333mhz),Ati 9600Pro 128
  15,4 " crystal view WXGA (23 million),7200 rpm,DVD+RW+R    
                                         M 1420 photo

 

(ofcourse there are other minimum requirements that are just as important as the two I mentioned ,.. they wer e just examples)

 

Its kinda hard to say which part is most important. I mean , if you're gonna make a top ten , on what will you base the order? I could forr instance argue , that not having enough space on your harddrive will often actually not make it possible to play games. Which should make it nr. 1 on your gaming "must haves"list

On the other hand , .. some games require a certain "minimum" regarding the video card you're using. Which would mean you should have at least XX MB or a direct X version XX compatible video card or the game wont run.

Without either of these a game that requires them wont run. I think these "basics" are most important, having a videocard that doesnt meet the requirements is often a bigger problem than having a slower cpu. Ofcourse , when you already have an expensive system , that meets all the basic gaming requirements ,.. you should look at what will enhance your systems performance further.

I say , the way in which you should upgrade depends on which part of your system is most lacking ,making it a bit different for everyone.
Also , which "part" is most noticeable when its not top of the line , depends a little on the game you are playing.

 

bballdunk, If You Have A 9800M then your going to want to have a full gig of ram to be able to feed that beast cause your going to bottleneck yourself by not being able to give the gpu a full load to process, it's going to be waiting on the hard drive to give the ram the information, so futhermore it's just as important to get that 7200 RMP drive and try and inprove that weakest link...Your Getting A Verry Nice Machine Though, Congragulations.

"To Be Great Is To Be Missuderstood" ~Unknown

Dell Inspiron 9100
Pentium4 3.2GHz Desktop
1GB DDR 400MHz
60GB Ultra ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive
ATI Mobility Radeon 9800, 256MB, 256-Bit Graphics Card