In Need of Advice

[Sinspawn]

Well, I just bought a new RAM chip, boosting my previous 128MB to a nice 640MB. I thought that this would help me to at least move about in the world, but with no such result. While I was able to take a couple steps at last, the lag eventually overtook me and I was forced to shut down the program.

Would anyone know why the lag is still affecting my gameplay? Here is my comp info:

1.7 GHz- Intel Celeron
640 MB- DDR SDRAM, with up to 32 MB
allocated to video memory.
40 GB Hard Drive (16 GB free)

I am thinking that it is something with my video memory, yet am not certain as to what. Any suggestions? I have been hearing great things about this game, yet have not yet had a chance to sample it.
I want in!

[Moogie]

What kind of graphics card do you have? I\'ve been told that anything less than 128mb will suffer, but I\'m not very technical minded myself so I can\'t really offer anything more than that, I\'m afraid.

Good luck though.

[Sinspawn]

I don\'t think I even have a graphic\'s card. (Is video card the same as graphic\'s card?) I think that my comp just draws the memory it needs for video from my RAM.

Either way, it is only 32 MB. Anyone else know anything about this?

[Moogie]

Some examples of Graphics/Video Cards are: Voodoo, Radeon, GeForce. What OS (operating system) are you running on? For example, Windows98 or 2000 or XP, or something completely different such as Linux?

If you\'re on Win98 or Win2000 I can give you some instructions on how to find out if you have a graphics card or not without pulling the case off your computer.

[Abemore]

Sinspawn\'s graphics processing is built into the motherboard.  It is often called \"on board video\".  The 32 MB of video memory is shared/stolen from the system RAM.  Voodoo, Radeon, and GeForce are typical add-in cards, not typical on board video.  Typical on board video manufacturers are SiS (silicon integrated systems) or Intel.

Adding more system memory will only improve performance when it is your memory that is the bottleneck.  512 MB of RAM is typically enough for most anything, so I am not surprised that you did not receive increased performance.  The true performance bottleneck on your system I\'m guessing is probably your on board video.  On board/shared video is notorious for having poor 3D performance.

You might try running PS in software rendering mode, or go buy a new add-in video card assuming you have an AGP (accelerated graphics port) slot--its a brown slot.

good luck.