Gaming PC Enhancment

[AMDKing]

To Whom It May Concern;

This is the system that I have.

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
375 MB PC2100 DDR RAM
ASUS A7N8X Mainboard
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card with Boston Acoustics 3way Speakers
ATI Radeon 8500 Video Card
A Maxtor 20 Gb HDD and a Seagate 17 Gb HDD
300 watt power supply.
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

I do not know what brand the case is, but it has a window and 4 fans which blow warm air out. I built this system myself. I do not know what brand my memory is because I purchased it from a small computer retailer. It was not boxed. Anyhow, I need to know if there are any Sim City fans in here. If there are, what would you recommend out of my list to upgrade in order to make Sim City 4 Rush Hour run flawlessly. It does not do bad now, but my PC plays catch up the entire time that I play. The game does not freeze or crash at all, but the scrolling is slow and the framerates suck. If you do not mind sharing, please tell what hardware I can get to GREATLY improve the performance of Sim City (and Rise Of Nations). Thanks. :)

[PCgeek]

I never thought sim city could use so many resources. That should be able to handle most games out there. Maybe its software trouble. Do you have the latest drivers on ur hardware, and if yes, have u tested older ones? Cause newer is not always better ;) For us to recommend hardware u have to tell use to what extent you wish to upgrade, how much money and how many parts... Also have you tried overclocking?

[Ace]

Well... you don't have the most modern graphics card and upgrading it to a slightly newer one shouldn't break the bank. However, as PCGeek says, Sim City isn't exactly the most demanding game. If you could run 3DMark for us (2003 or 2001se) and give us your score, we could ensure that there isn't something wrong that's substantially decreasing the performance of your computer. You should find the files (or at least links to them) at http://www.futuremark.com

[AMDKing]

I had my video card (please don't laugh) for about 3 years. I am getting ready to spend about 800 dollars in the next 2 months to upgrade my wife's computer and mine. She wants The Sims 2. I built her computer with an ASUS A7v333 mobo, 256 MB PC 2100 DDR and an ASUS v7100 Video card. Her card is about as old as mine. I have been building systems for everyone else and neglecting mine. I read on the Sim City web site that more memory helps system performance. Someone even said thay had at least 1 GB of RAM in their computer for it to run very good. I am going to download a benchmak program this evening when I come back from the bowling alley. And post my score. Hopefully that will help with the advice. Thanks.

[PCgeek]

download 3Dmark 2001 SE and post some scores, I got around 10.7k with my 9100, but that was with a faster cpu and crazy oc on the vidcard, so 8k on 3Dmark2001 should be about right on ur pc ;)

[AMDKing]

I just ran a benchmark from 3DMark2001se. The results are as follows:


Date 2004-07-05 Project ID


7952655 Published

Compare URL


Project not published



System Configuration
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP

DirectX Version 9.0



Mobo Manufacturer ASUSteK Computer INC.

Mobo Model A7N8X2.0

AGP Rates (Current/Available) 4x / 1x 2x 4x



CPU Unknown 1537 MHz

FSB 133 MHz

Memory 384 MB



Graphics Chipset ATI RADEON 8500 Series

Driver Name RADEON 8500/RADEON 8500LE

Driver Version 6.14.10.6404

Video Memory 128 MB



Program Version 3DMark2001 SE

Resolution 1024x768 32bit

Texture Format Compressed

FSAA Disabled

Z-Buffer Depth 24bit

Frame Buffer Double

Rendering Pipeline D3D Pure Hardware T&L



Detailed Test Results
3DMark Score 8170 3D marks



Game 1 Car Chase - Low Detail 120.6 FPS

Game 1 Car Chase - High Detail 44.3 FPS

Game 2 Dragothic - Low Detail 141.6 FPS

Game 2 Dragothic - High Detail 75.5 FPS

Game 3 Lobby - Low Detail 118.2 FPS

Game 3 Lobby - High Detail 53.1 FPS

Game 4 Nature 45.3 FPS



Fill Rate (Single-Texturing) 766.5 MTexels/s

Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing) 1869.3 MTexels/s



High Polygon Count (1 light) 34.0 MTriangels/s

High Polygon Count (8 lights) 8.8 MTriangels/s



Environment Bump Mapping 109.9 FPS

DOT3 Bump Mapping 86.8 FPS



Vertex Shader 83.1 FPS

Pixel Shader 88.5 FPS

Advanced Pixel Shader 83.9 FPS



Point Sprite 27.1 MSprites/s

[PCgeek]

That seems right on... Sims must be a heavier game than I thought.
Well I guess I would start by upgrading the CPU, RAM and video card, of course that would require a new PSU. OK so here it goes:
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=17-148-001&DEPA=0">Aspire 500W PSU</a> $60
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-400&depa=0">Athlon XP Mobile 2400</a> $77 (best value CPU there is)
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-110-007&depa=0">Vantec Aeroflow</a> $29
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-209-044&depa=0">512MB PMI PC3200 RAM</a> $115
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-131-238&depa=0">Radeon 9800pro</a> $199

Total - $480 that leaves $320 for your wife :)

P.S.-You might want a new hdd too... I love my <a href="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-122&depa=0">WD 80GB Special Edition 7200rpm 8MB cache HDD</a> only $63 ;)

[AMDKing]

Thanks for the info. I will be a shoppin real soon for this stuff. By the way, I ran the same becnhmark on my wife's computer, and it scored a 3157 3D Marks. I am so devistated. I did not realize that I neglected my systems for this long. Anyhow thanks again and good night. I'm going to bed.

[PCgeek]

yeah and Im pissed cause I cant get to 20k, well as I have told a few of you guys I wont be upgrading anything for a few months, as my mom is pissed at my low grades (86 average is borderline failing for me unfortunately, as my mom fails to understand that 65 is passing, she expects 85 to be my failing grade, and she hates it when I get lower than 90.) Anywho enough of my life, If you post your wife's system we could hook her up too ;)
Dang I was just looking at the specs I gave you. You will pretty much be getting all the parts I took months to buy in one go lol. I hate having a mom who doesn't like me spending my own money on "crap"

[Avid6eek]

WOOT! I love SimCity 4 Unlimited. I play it all the time. It is an extremely demanding game on your system. There are tons of graphical details, and like the name implies, it is a Sim, and it demands large amounts of real time data calculations. It runs pretty well on my system at 1600x1200 with all details on the highest settings. This did force me to upgrade my 512MB of RAM to a gig. Now it runs much better.

Athlon 64 3000
1024MB OCZ PC4000
ATI Radeon 9800 (450/690)