weakpoint

[turtle]

I have been upgrading vid cards a few times in the last 4 years and RAM
but i still cant get the performance i want when playing hi end games like
half life 2.

here is what i have..

motherboard is a P4 with a celeron 2.6 ghtz processor
vidio card nvidia 7600
ram ..1 gig of pc3200 ddr ram
the mother board i baught 3 years ago for like 90 bucks its pretty cheap and im allmost convinced that it is my weakpoint.

Somebody told me that the celeron are pretty weak for gameing.

I just want you guys opinion.
I want to know if i get a better board and processor that will still run my AGP card and ram can i expect an increase in performance?

and please tell me wich componant is the weakest.

[Amos_Moses]

1 gig of ram isn't a lot.
You didn't mention what Power Supply you are running.
Watts?
Number of 12V rails
Amps on the 12V

nvidia 7600... is that the GT?
That even might be a little light for real high end games.
I've never played half life 2, but I bet you could find some info here;
http://www.computerforum.com/index.php
I read a lot there, those boys are gamin' foos. ;)

[Buzzardhut]

Also you may want to check what other programs are running in the background.
They steal from CPU and memory that could be allocated for your game.

[BloodoftheLamb]

I would recommend buying the fastest cpu your motherboard would support and popping that in.

The celerons lack of cache is hurting you.

You can also try overclocking the current cpu you have, and the vid card.

That setup should run HL2 pretty well at say 1024 res..

[turtle]

my power supply is a 450 watt.

[FranklinNoble]

The Celeron could be the weak point. Upgrading to a Pentium 4, or even Core2Duo, would help. How much RAM does your video card have? That can make a big difference.

[BloodoftheLamb]

His current mobo should support Pent 4 Northwoods grab a 3.0 and toss it in, Presscots perhaps...