Was I right?

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sp74Supra

sp74Supra

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My friend comes to me and tells me that his computer lags, he has an emachine and has a intel celeron 2.6ghz, 80 gig hard drive, 256mb of ram (pc2100) pretty sure its a 184pin. And he asked me what is the best way to make it faster for $100 or under. I told him a 512mb stick. So I went to newegg and found a 512mb stick from pqi for $68 and he might order it today or tomorrow. So my question is did I do the right thing and lead him in the right way? The games he has are laggy and just wants to correct that. I think a 512mb stick will be a great difference.
 
Yes and no. What kind of graphics card does he have in his computer? The three biggest bottlenecks for videogames are a poor videocard, memory, and processor. If his videocard isn't that great than he may want to upgrade it. You can't go wrong with 512 megs of ram though.
 
He has built in graphics but hes not worried about quality. On my computer I upgraded to the radeon 9000 for $100, and its nice but the thing is it came with 512mb of ram. So pretty much on a budget and the only way to try and take that lag out is ram huh. Thanks. Also put his celeron against my athlon xp 2400+ (2.0ghz) and my doesnt lag and his does, but celerons arent that great another thing which I thing is the problem is his ram.
 
If he has built-in graphics and not an AGP card/pci card, then that is most likely the biggest factor in what is causing his computer to suffer when playing games. I'd buy a new graphics card even if it is somewhat cheap and not use onboard graphics.
 
Yeah, Matrix is probably right.

Assuming that he probably has no AGP slot (Because he has onboard graphics.)

I suggest a Radeon 9200 PCI, GeForce MX4000 PCI, or An Nvidia FX5200 PCI.
 
Yep. Thats what the main problem is. I had an EMachines for a while about a year ago, AMD 2600XP, 512mb ram, and some crummy ATi 64mb video card. I eventually got it tweaked so that it could run UT2k3 at a good quality, but it couldn't hold a candle to how it looked on my roommate's computer. He runs an AMD 3200XP (I believe) with a 2gb of ram and a 512mb video card. :drool: Another smaller factor is that AMD processors are better for gaming, whilst the Intels are better for number crunching/programming. Yet another factor in the problem is the Celeron processor being less powerful than the P4's of the same clock speed, although I cannot recall the reason for this off the top of my head.

All in all, that was the cheapest solution, but may have as much an effect as you would think. I would have tried to talk him into spending maybe $50 more and getting a ATi Raedon 9250 linked below, however I would still attempt to talk your friend into purchasing the video card, as he/she will be immensely happier with the outcome. ATi Raedon 9250
 
Man I tried to tell him about the video card but he cant spend that much now. So the $68 512mb stick, looks like is the way hes going to go. Hope it works well for him. Thanks.
 
No problem. Tell him to ask for it for christmas, its only a month away!

And another thing that I just realized, the video card is a 256mb card and the computer only has 256mbs of ram. It wouldn't have worked properly without the extra ram, unless you made the pagefile sorta large, but I'm not even sure if that would work. Also, make sure to keep the 256mb stick in when you put in the 512mb stick, it will help out in the performance area somewhat, and if he does get the card for christmas (assuming he wants it) it won't take up as large a percentage of his ram.
 
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sp74Supra – You need new friends.

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Hahah, your so right man lol, two friends, two computers, and two problems :rolleyes:. It's funny because I never had any computer problems. And my new gaming rig with the FX-53 is my best friend in the whole wide world :sly: , yeah hes gonna ask at christmas but hes ordering the ram tomorrow. Well sucks to work with a $100 and under budget but im confident a 512mb stick is the way to go, he has 2x 128mb sticks which really sucks, so have to take 1 out.
 

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