What is your bottleneck?

[CrackedCrystal]

Lots of people brag about their best pieces of hardware. I was curious to hear about people's worst pieces. So when it comes to speed and power, where does your computer come up short?

For me, its my video card. I am running a GeForce2 MX (the cheepo version). Everything else is less than a year old.

 

[Rheinmetall]

Same 'ere. Time has passed my GF2. Good thing about it is that now I know excactly what it can/can't do.


BTW, have you tried to overclock that card. Memory bus is a bottleneck for MX cards so increasing memory clockspeeds can make a difference. If I remember correctly most MX cards have a memory clock of 166MHz and in most cases you can get it above 200MHz. My brothers card for example runs stable at 215MHz memory clock. And while you are at it kick the GPU clock up too.
[/offtopic]

 

[Jeratain]

My RAM. I'm running 320 mb of PC133 ram with a PIII 1 ghz.

 

[Zwelgje]

RAM too here, 64 Mb.....
I really need to upgrade, I need to do it. I wanted to buy a new computer but my current financial situation doesn't allow it.

 

[Pillager]

For general Windows things, probably my CPU. I have a pretty good graphics card for 2D, although it's only 16Mb, a Maxtor DiamondMax 20GB HD, 256 Mb RAM, but only a PII 350.

I shall be testing E-bay sooner or later I think.

 

[cgannon64]

Definetely my video card. I upgraded my drives, got a CD-RW, got 256MB more RAM, but my video card is whatever came with my computer! I'm sorry, I don't know much about video cards, but can games run without them? Because I can't tell if I don't have one or if my computer came with a simple one...either way, it runs AoM and SC4, so whatever. It works.

kinda slowly granted

 

[Perfection]

Video Card, 56k Modem

 

[t92300]

let me see
4mb vid/tv tuner card
100mhz processor
48 mb edo ram
33k modem

ypi i think i need an upgrade/new computer

 

[CrackedCrystal]

Originally posted by cgannon64
I'm sorry, I don't know much about video cards, but can games run without them?

Every computer has a video card. It tells the monitor what to display.

Most pre-fab computers come with cheep video cards. Because new ones cost about $150-$250 retail, by putting in a cheep one (say a $50 one), they reduce the cost of the total machine.

 

[Civddict]

they don't put $50 but $20 or $0 one more often - onboard VGA. i don't have bottleneck: athlon xp 1800 512MB DDR 120GB 7200 rpm, fast DVD drive, CDRW, ge force ti 4400 etc.

 

[Pongui]

Ancient CD-ROM drive. I can't play my store-bought Civ III because the game's CD authenticity checker is too aggressive for my drive.

 

[cgannon64]

Originally posted by CrackedCrystal


Every computer has a video card. It tells the monitor what to display.

Most pre-fab computers come with cheep video cards. Because new ones cost about $150-$250 retail, by putting in a cheep one (say a $50 one), they reduce the cost of the total machine.

Yep, I just found it. Its some long named weird thing. At least it works!

Oh, and I figured out my other bottleneck: my processor! PIII, 800 Mhz!

Again, at least it runs games. We'll see how it runs SC4 after I get a hundred thousand people though....

 

[damunzy]

My processor: Duron 750. I am thinking of upgrading to a Duron 1.3GHz for only 48 bucks....why not go for an AMD XP? Cause my mobo won't handle more than the Duron 1.3 and I don't have enough money for both the new mobo (55$) and the new processor (1800+ XP for about 70$).