Processor upgrade help

I really don’t know anything about the hardware of my computer, so any help will be greatly appreciated. That being said, I believe I should upgrade my processor, but I’m not sure, and if I do, what I should get. I currently have one gig of ram and a 1.7 GHz processor (I think). I upgraded my graphics card it came with videos to test its power, and they lag out, this happens often, so I think it is the processor, but I’m not sure, if anyone knows something else that might be the problem please let me know.

As far as upgrading the processor, I am really in the dark. I have heard amd athlon is good for gaming, but I don’t know the facts. What speed should I get and what brand? I don’t want to spend over 200 dollars or so, but I am open minded. I will mainly need this for gaming and such.

Again, I have no idea what I'm talking about here, so any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

We'll need to know what kind of motherboard you have; if you have a Pentium based motherboard you can't get a AMD chip w/o switching your motherboard.

 

Er, I'm away from home now, so I cant check, I think it's pentium right now, but I'm not positive. Advice on a pentium or amd or what ever is fine, which ever is better for the price range, because if the amd is better, be that the case, I might take into consideration switching, though i dont know what all the entails.

 

posting your specs will be helpful ... use everest to find them

http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181

 

I won't be home untill tomarrow night, then I will post the specs. The basics that I can remember are:

1 gig ddr ram
ati radeon 9600 xt 256mb
a 60 gig and a 40 gig hard drive
again, I don't know the exact processor, but I'll check as soon as I get home

 

this might also be a driver issue ... are you sure you removed the previous drivers completely? and what about your motherboards drivers?

 

I havn't, but I'll see what I can do when I get home. I know it is limited information i am able to give you, but do you think that a better processor would even help me?

 

if it's a driver issue, a better processor won't help because it'll still lag even with a better processor ... if you have your system finely tuned it shouldn't be laggy regardless of the CPU ... although you won't be able to play *some* games at high settings regardless simply because yours is a midrange video card ... a new CPU will help but you still need to get your PC tuned up or it'll still be laggy

 

I agree with Pyrate. Hold off on any upgrades until we go through some FREE stuff that might bring it up to speed first.

 

was your old video car on the mobo or agp/pci or what?if it was did you set the jumper pins to de activate?

 

Okay, I'm finally home. I'm using that program and the specs are:

Xp Home edition, service pack two
cpu type:amd athlon xp, 1666 mhz (12.5 x 133) 2000+
mother board name:fic au13
motherboard chipset: nvidia nforce2 ultra 400
system memory: 512 mb (ddr sdram) (coulda sworn i had a gig...)
video adapter: radeon 9600 series (128 mb)


Any advice would be apreciated,thank you for everything so far. Regarding the drivers, I ran the disk that came with the card, that was supposed to delete the drivers I think? Like I said, I'm really no good at this. Thanks again.

bstill: sorry, I sound likean idiot, but the computer was my brothers old one, and I had him put in the card physically before he gave it to me, soI dont know.

 

first off before you do anything goto ATIs site(www.ati.com) and download the latest drivers ... the ones that came with the card are outdated ...

then goto add remove in the control panel and remove all ATI software(see below) ... then install the new drivers you downloaded from ATIs site

you may want to go here --> http://www.drivercleaner.net/ and erase your old drivers before you reinstall the new ones

as for your RAM .. you probably have two 512 MB modules and are just looking at were it lists each module seperately

 

Thank you very much, I'll try this out right away.

 

well i uninstalled the drivers, and ran the program. Then I installed the downloaded driver. I also installed some of the demo videos from the ati cd, the ones that were lagging, to see if the problem was solved, but they wouldnt play, said they were missing files. Finally, I just uninstalled the downloaded driver, and reinstalled the one that cam with the card. If anything, i only made this worse I think

 

uninstall sp2...theres no point to it it just messes things up

 

sp2? I'm sorry I have no clue what that is

 

again the drivers that came with your card are out of date download this driver

then go HERE for an in depth tweak guide for your card ... now you aren't going to need all that info but it should get your card performing well

that said there are other reasons it may be lagging like programs running in the backround or spyware ... and of course your motherboards drivers may not be installed, you would have to goto your mobos manufacturers website to get them

 

you shoul have a xp pro