Hey can you tell me what makes gaming performance greater on a computer?
Like the graphics, latency (lag), speed and everything else. Also what i am asking for is if it is RAM improved or the hard drive space or whatever. Thanks for your help i appreciate it ;]

Graphics card is prio one, and to have a good graphics card you need a decent motherboard.
RAM is a memory where you can access any memorycell directly and without having to read through other parts of the memory, unlike the memory what is read sequentialy. ram significally speeds up your computer.

Abit hard to explain the ram though, i could if i was allowed to speak swedish, so i pretty much tried. haha.

Haha, thanks for your help bro

u would also need a good processor, u could have a million gig of RAM but it wouldn't make a difference unless u have a good processor. RAM only stores data while the processor works out what to do with it

Games. Probably the toughest thing most people do to their computers.

1. If Dxdiag says your graphics processor was made by Intel, 99% of the time that's why it runs slow. Intel's best GPUs are shit compared to any self respecting graphics card from ATI or Nvidia. This is the biggest, absolutely most important part of determining how well a graphically intensive game runs, definitely.

2. RAM. Without a decent amount of RAM, even an otherwise awesome computer will fail in modern games. Note that this shouldn't be overdone on a 32-bit system -- anything beyond 4 GB will never, ever, ever give you any performance boost there. 64-bit systems don't have a problem with this, the addressable memory space is comparable to the size of all knowledge ever collected by humanity by some estimates. Still, 20 versus 200 GB of RAM won't make a huge dent in performance. RAM is only a problem if you have too little. Such as 512 MB trying to run Vista.

3. CPU. Definitely, definitely, definitely less important than it looks. However, it is still the major limiting factor as to what your RAM and graphics can pull off. Most of the heavy and hard computations in games now-a-days, though, are actually performed on the GPU. Which is another reason why the graphics card is indispensable.

4. Internet speeds. Definitely the most expensive part of your computer to upgrade, and the least impressive overall. It's not even guaranteed to prevent lag from ruining your day in online games. You can have the best internet connection in the world, and it means absolutely nothing if the other guy has 56k.

5. Hard drive read/write speeds. A bit more of a controversial subject, but if for some reason you do run out of RAM, the hard drive is what ends up pulling the weight. It's really a pity that good read/write speeds and "lasts a long time" appear to be somewhat mutually exclusive. If there's a respectably sized SSD that doesn't decay with extended writing, point me at it. Or at its price tag.

That's about all you can do to make games run faster, I think.

Reitterating what Suo said in my own words and opinions;

1. GPU is the most important. Mid tier cards are best performance/cost, and can do everything required of them now.

2. Ram is pretty important - to a point. 2-4gb is recommended, after that it's more or less just for fun.

3. CPU is WAY overrated, most games can ONLY use 2 cores, so quad core is wasted. Most games will happily use 2.0ghz or less, so anything above a dual core 2.0ghz is wasted (2x2.0ghz is considered very low, so its not like this is a big ask. Most gamers will pick a quad core 3.0ghz i7 when it is really 10x more than they will use)

4. Harddrive - to an extent. Harddrive speeds are like paying your bills, its not a big deal so long as it all happens in a timely fashion. If your harddrive is too slow then your whole computer will suffer. Of course, a 64gb SSD (which is plenty for what most users would need) will set you back just under $100 (@Suo: I recently bought a 64GB Crucial RealSSD C300 Solid State Drive (265MB/s, TRIM) for $80. Decent, no?). If you have plenty of RAM then you can map it as a harddrive and mirror things in to the RAM disk for great speeds, but a bit of hassle. This won't be too helpful for most people, but it is useful once you hit the 'soft upper limit of upgrades' for CPU, GPU and RAM.

5. Network speeds are very important, make sure your network card is up to scratch (it shouldn't be too hard, with network cards being easily in the range of 50-100MB/s whilst internet speeds being in the range 5-10Mb/s), and you get a good internet provider.

6. Keep your computer clean - just because you have all the latest hardware doesn't mean squat if your harddrive is 90% fragmented and 90% full, and you run 120 programs on startup which sit on your CPU burning 1-0.5% each, and you fail to optimize your performance and keep your drivers updated, and your computer disinfected of viruses. Just remember to do a de-fragmentation once a month (a week is better, but whatever), and a full system virus scan (once a week is better too), and keep your drivers up to date, and kill any programs that autorun that you do not use.

Do you think that 3megabytes/ps is a good enough internet speed? Also thanks for all you help guys now i know what type of computer to get and know what is good and what isn't. <3

I am not too flash with network speeds, It is highly dependant on each game. And there is more to it than just raw speed (although for most people raw speed is all that matters...).

For an old game it may only need less than a mb, for a newer game it may need more. I honestly doubt that getting a speed of over 2 or 3 mb/s will impact your gaming performance, unless you are playing with other people who are close to you.

The thing is, the network speed that your ISP say you have is just the speed between you and your ISP (and only when yours is at its best at that). Data from a game server may be coming at way slower, WAYYYYYYY slower. In practical terms, any speed over about 2mb/s does not make you transfer faster, but lets you transfer more at once. Think about it like this, your ISP is a big bucket, your network speed is the rate that bucket can be poured in to your computer (your computer likes water. Is there a problem with that?). However it doesn't matter if the bucket can pour at 1 million litres per second, because we still have to put water IN to the bucket. Data from all around is poured in to the bucket, generally through quite small pipes, possibly maxing out at as little as 500kb/slitres per second. So being able to pour faster (without overflowing) just means that you can have more pipes at once, not that you can draw faster from a single pipe.

Hopefully that metaphor was more helpful than it was confusing!



(Also there is a sticky in the computer sub forum about computers!)