Far Cry makes my comp cry

Just got a copy of Far Cry and I'm dissappointed with my system. I can't remember the last time I upgraded, so I'm asking you guys, having a 200 dollar budget, what mother board and memory i should get. You can obviously see in my sig that my system is as old as my grandma.

Also, would it damage anything if i just pop in a PC2400 with my 2700?

Sorry for the newb questions, I lost all knowledge of comps when i became happy with my current system!

dont think you can mix and match ram, it can hurt performance.

suprised your system wont run it though.

is the 256 a single stick? maybe grab another stick identical to it, or buy 2 new 256 sticks that are the same.

Far Cry makes alot of systems weep, so don't feel left out. You *can* mix and match at the loss of performance. 256meg is the bare minimum for Far Cry, I run 2x512 and the game uses 980 meg of it

I am running the game on my system specs below... high AA, low details... game still looks beautiful and runs very smooth.

i found the game looks much much better with low AA and high details.

far cry will run on my comp but i just need more memory. since i cant mix and match i guess i will buy a 512 stick

ashenfang said:

i found the game looks much much better with low AA and high details.

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Sure does, but slows my system down to about 7FPS... not practical, with details on low I get about 25-30FPS now.

aabighead said:

far cry will run on my comp but i just need more memory. since i cant mix and match i guess i will buy a 512 stick

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You CAN mis and match. But take this:

If I buy a PC2700 stick of RAM, and a PC2100 stick of RAM, and put them both in the machine... the PC2700 will only be at 2100 speeds to match the other stick.

masitti said:

Sure does, but slows my system down to about 7FPS... not practical, with details on low I get about 25-30FPS now.

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I've gotten the same results with my rig. I dialed up the AA and set details to medium. I still get a stagger in the rates, but it seems at the oddest times, indoors with limited distance. The outdoor scenes run with nary a hiccup, even the fight sequences. No clue.

Just hypothesizing, but I've seen several people with EAX-enabled cards report framerate loss when indoors (myself included). I'm wondering if the EAX isn't being used more indoors, and because FarCry keeps defaulting back to 28 hardware voices I'm betting it's trying to do it all in software.

My onboard EAX chip only uses 32 hardware voices, so 28 isn't far enough off for it to make a difference to me But you guys with the Audigy 2 might get some benefit out of using all available 64 hardware voices.

Sorry, back to the original subject:

FarCry loves ram, LOTS of ram. Try this here: http://www.komusa.com/51ddrpc40sta.html You can get a 512mb stick of PC3200 memory for $80 shipped, or a full gig for $160. That fits WELL within your $200 budget, and will probably make FarCry love you twice as much as it does.

Your processor and video card should be plenty for Far Cry. If you're not overclocked then all you need is pc2100 anyway. Just get another stick of 256 pc2100 and see how that does. Your computer "shouldn't" have issues if you're not running them in duel channel. I can pair my sticks of crucial pc2100 and mushkin pc3200 np. It just runs at pc2100. Then again, the price differance between pc2700 and pc2100 is pretty insignificant so you should try and get the same brand that you have now if it's possible.

I think you could do a pretty good upgrade for $200.
If it was me I would sell the 9500 pro on ebay. You should be able to get $100 for it. Pick up a 9800 pro and 512mb of RAM and your good to go. You should be able to swing that for $300 no problem.

And you can mix and match RAM speeds, I got a stick of crucial PC2100 running alongside a stick of PC2700 both at 333mhz. But I think I got lucky with that stick of PC2100 and I havent tried to overclock it any further, I doubt it could do much more