thinking of more RAM, but will it help?

I have a three year old laptop; when I bought it the intent was that it would be used for gaming in addition to all the minor things that computers are used for. I just installed a new game and for the first time I'm experiencing slowdown even at lower graphical settings.

The nature of the slowdown generally occurs when rendering lighting effects in addition to camera perspective changes, and is alleviated in time - it isn't consistent, and I know that pausing the game for a few moments will allow it time to 'catch up', eliminating the slowdown for a while.

The system basics are...

Intel Pentium 4, 3.2Mhz HT
ATI Radeon Mobile 9700
Intel 865PE chipset
1GB RAM, space for up to 4GB; currently running 2 single thread 512MB DDR 3200 400MHz chips

Would stuffing the laptop full of RAM (well, I was thinking of adding 2 double thread 512MB chips) help alleviate my troubles?

I ask because my uneducated guess is that the slowdown seems to be related to I/O speed and the graphics card, and not so much RAM, and adding RAM wouldn't help that, would it? Again, this is an uneducated guess.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

You can check whether you need more RAM by ook at the "Page File" under the "Performance" tab, in Task Manager. If it uses more page file than the physical amount of RAM you have, then an upgrade of the RAM will help. It also depends on what games you are running, as some will use alot more than others.

 

I don't think the RAM will make much difference since 1 GB is not bad. I'd say the Video card is the bottleneck by pretty far, although it would be useful to know which game are you talking about. I think your card should play games from 2005 pretty well.
Still, mine is also a pretty uneducated guess.

 

Unfortunately, the 9700 is a pretty old graphics chip. More RAM won't help a lot with the gaming on that power of a card. Turn down the graphics settings, and save for a new machine

 

Thanks all for the tips and advice. The PageFile never even gets close to 1GB - its not the RAM, its the card.

I was tracking slowdown from other games, and its mostly related to CPU speed. I imagine that the poor graphics card is just overtaxed. Time to start saving!

Thanks all!