Mau1wurf1977 wrote:All you need is a second hand CPU, RAM, Mainboard bundle. Something based on AM3 with DDR3 should be very cheap to source. On eBay look for the group "Component Bundles".
All I could find were new motherboard+CPU combos, which kinda helps but I'm still left with the problem of updating the RAM, the OS, the graphics card... >_>;
We're still looking at 2 to 3 years of saving or 2 to 3 months of fasting. :P
Mau1wurf1977 wrote:I am still surprised you are going well with 2GB of Ram. Ages ago I had a machine with an Athlon X2, Geforce 9600GT and it was struggling with games. Ram is cheap as chips at the moment.
Being on 32-bit Windows XP still there's little reason to go above 2 GB of RAM. Few programs will be able to address the extra amount. :P
2 GB is still plenty for most games, contrary to popular belief. Graphics are typically uploaded to the video card's own RAM, leaving sound, music and game data for the system RAM. Windows also virtualizes and prioritizes memory better than might be expected, and will syphon anything that hasn't recently been accessed into virtual to make more physical RAM space available for active programs. (Though there are options you can set to alter this behaviour.)
Mau1wurf1977 wrote:Do a sponsor thread, if each of us donates you 10 bucks you will have your upgrade soon
XD
Truly, I don't want to make myself out to be a beggar or anything. I make do with what I got; it's the way it's always been for me. That's why I was still writing Windows 98 software when Windows Vista was just coming onto the scene.
Being a game programmer, it really bothers me when I see a game that should have no difficulty running on my system given what it's doing and how it looks, and yet its framerate manages to elude common sense. And then I see other people with the same problem and no solutions and I have to wonder what the heck is going on. I investigate, try to come up with explanations, see what people think... and often still don't get anywhere. x_x;
I did a test awhile back and calculated that given my own system qualities, using the latest hardware-accelerated Allegro Game Programming Libraries, I can render 10,000 sprites to the screen at once and still maintain 60 FPS. So I'm building my next game with this in mind in order to minimize the number of sprite draws that have to be made in one frame. If everything works out, the absolute most my game should ever have to handle in a single frame will be about 2,000, five times less than what my system can handle.
luckybob wrote:Also, skyrim on 2gb of ram? I'll admit, I was shocked to hear that.
Windows XP doesn't have nearly as huge a RAM overhead as Vista/7, plus 32-bit addressing requires less of a memory overhead than 64-bit addressing, so if you're on a 64-bit system or using Vista or 7, 2 GB of RAM wouldn't be enough. :P
On 32-Bit XP though, 2 GB is plenty. Besides, due to limitations in how XP works, it's hard to really do any better. >_>;
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