Game runs slow on my PC. What else can I do?

[Nathaniel Wolfson]

Originally Posted by Bloody Charlie

Hello, I realize this may be old, but I have the same problem. I have 512 mb of Ram, and a Mobility Radeon 9000 on my laptop, but it goes really slow most of the time even on lowest settings. Should I upgrade my Ram or what? Thanks.

Do you have the Mobility with 32, 64, or 128MB of on-chip RAM?

Additionally, I'm willing to bet it's still caching part of it's load to system memory (check your system stats to make sure).

Remember, 512 is the minimum recommended. Most systems run the OS just fine with 512MB. But apps tend to run slower because it's competing with the OS itself for access to memory, causing more swapping to the hard drive (which has access times over 500-2000x higher than system memory).

With Windows XP, 1-1.5GB is the sweet spot (where you get maximum OS performance). 2GB it the sweet spot if you're using the system to game (unless you're talking something really heavy like Crysis).