Technical help. Upgrading PC, but what exactly?

[Marilio]

I get 80-100 FPS on low settings, which is nice, but have constant lag spikes and sieges are a big no-no for me. I don't want to be deprived of this game's awesome battles and true experience such as high settings with shadows (granted not in large battles).

This is my PC, I built it myself without experience...any feedback would be nice as well. (Low budget)
Windows XP

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814141084

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121034

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148261

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103244

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128379

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231166

Thinking of upgrading the gfx card to

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133305&cm_re=8800gtx-_-14-133-305-_-Product

[Walking Target]

Many of those components are showing as deactivated items on Newegg, so unless you plan on obtaining them elsewhere you may want to select other items. Hard to know if you are getting a good deal without pricing.

At a glance, definitely upgrade the video card from that other piece of junk. Don't go lower than an 800 series on Nvidia cards. Make sure you have a power supply that can handle the load and do your research on PSU stability. I do recommend investing in a separate power supply instead of a generic one that comes with your case.

Gigabyte make fairly sold motherboards for a good price. With no sound card, you will want to check the onboard audio. Alternative...I have this and it is pretty nice for the price:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132006

I also recommend this as a cheap but handy upgrade instead of onboard networking:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106121

Not sure how much extra you are paying for the barracuda drive, but if it is expensive, you could cut some cost there and just have a standard drive.

[Marilio]

Thanks for the reply man. Yeah, I built this more than 5 months ago.

The onboard audio is great, lots of options, and it has an hd audio output (if that is what is called). For the networking, however, I already have a WLAN card installed (forgot) that connects up to 300MPS, which is more than decent.

The graphics is what I believe the main issue. I want a cheap, yet durable upgrade. I'm not entirely regretting buying the 9400 GT, it made DF playable, but I would like to enjoy the game better. Any suggestions? Something along 70-120 dollar range, maybe?

[Marilio]

I can say for all of this I paid uner $400

[Walking Target]

Ah sorry I misread it and just skipped to the links thinking that was a build you were putting together.

First question would be, is it FPS lag you are seeing during busy fights? What does your FPS drop to? How is your ping, stable? Hate to spend money on a new card only to still have lag. The game for me is still somewhat laggy in seiges and I have the 9800GTX+. I run at default settings though (shadows off only), so with some optimization it would likely be better, I have just been too lazy to tweak yet.

That card would likely be just fine, you are getting good performance for the price compared to your current card. With the 260s starting at around $160, that card is probably your best bet if you are shooting for the $100 range.

Things to check:

* Case clearance. Some of the newer cards are huge.
* Again...power supply. Make sure you have sufficient power to run it.

[Marilio]

My ping remains stable about 90-130. My FPS jumps sometimes. The only times when it reaches 80-120 is when I'm alone and there's nothing moving but my character. Then I get FPS collapses when it lags for a bit and then resumes.

[Walking Target]

Yeah then the new card should help. Keep your settings relatively (but not super) low and you should see a much more stable frame rate. During mad chaos, with loads of magic going off, expect some lag still.

[forestchild]

For low end rig like this, only your ram is ok.

Try get at least that better videocard or your rig will suck nomatter what you do ingame.

Sorry for harsh words you prolly can't afford more but its reality about very low end rig.

[Marilio]

Lol I kind of appreciate the insight, I guess. But yeah, you're right, it is a low end right, not too low end I'd think, it runs everything nicely but DF and a handful of 3D-hardcore games.

Would you say it'd be btter a GTX 250
Gefoce 9800 GT

or that Geforce 8800?

[fatgit]

tbh the CPU isnt helping.

Sure, Quad core is nice, but it's quad 2.3GHz cores and DF wont utilise the other cores, although you can offload DF to a core on its own.

The biggest 2 performance upgrades I found were:
Ditched Vista - XP or Win7 will give a big boost over Vista
Go for a CPU at a speed of at least 3GHz per core - this was the biggest single boost to the game I had.

DF tends to get CPU intensive, my GF9600GT rarely struggled, but the 2.13GHz Core2Duo I was running turned out to be the bottleneck.

[Marilio]

So upgrading the gfx is not the way to go? or maybe both?

[Umberto]

Things to check:
* Again...power supply. Make sure you have sufficient power to run it.

How do you check this exactly?