Sunday, June 8, 2014

What is more important for a gaming PC: Processor or Video Card?

Q. Hi, i have a laptop with an integrated ATI Radeon HD 3200 video card (i know you think its crap) and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-65 2.09Ghz processor,

I downloaded a Call of Duty Modern Warfare Demo and the detail was fantastic when i put all the Video Settings to the best possible , but it was very jerky..... I think thats because of my processor...

So if i upgraded my Processor would my games run smother (if the Video settings on the games were put to full).......

And if not, how would i be able to make my Gaming experience better
(without having to lower the video settings)

THANKS IN ADVANCE :)


Answer
It's hard to say, they both play a big role in gaming. For example, you could play cod mw2 with the best graphics card on the market, and a horrible processor, and the game would run slow since the computer doesn't have enough power to run the game...but at the same time, you could have a top of the line core i7 processor and a horrible graphics card (or integrated graphics) and the game would only run at 15fps with all minimum resolution and details since it wouldn't be able to render all of the game detail.
I'm not an AMD person (i prefer inter) so I don't know much about their hardware, but I can play cod mw2 on my laptop which has a core2duo@2.0ghz, 4gb ram, and integrated graphics (intel gma 4500mhd) with 128mb of available video memory+shared memory. I can play the game at a good 30~40 fps on my native resolution (1366x768) and all low graphics settings.

I would have to say that your graphics (video) card should be the first thing you should upgrade..but since thats my laptops weakness and we both have similar specs (dual core processor around 2.0ghz, integtated graphics). My processor handles the game just fine, but my integrated graphics chip really cuts back on its full potential.

Sadly, since you have a laptop, you cannot upgrade the gpu or cpu in it meaning the only way you'd be able to play the game with decent settings is if you get a budget gaming pc. Its really inconvenient but if you were to do it, i'd get a barebones kit from tigerdirect.com

Also, how much ram is in your laptop? if its under 2gb, that could also be a major flaw in game performance. Even 3gb is a little low, but it shouldn't reduce performance too much compared to 4gb+ of ram.

By the way, your integrated graphics wouldn't be able to put any game on full details/resolution. It simply cannot handle the demands of modern games. If you upgraded your graphics card (even though you can't since it's a laptop), you COULD run the games on full detail/resolution depending on the type of card you got, but it would really strain your processor.

Overall, with your kind of situation, the graphics card should be your biggest concern, and the first thing you upgrade, but you should really also upgrade your processor too or else, like I said above, "you could play cod mw2 with the best graphics card on the market, and a horrible processor, and the game would run slow since the computer doesn't have enough power to run the game"

Can I play the Alan Wake game with this video card installed on my pc?




dave j


Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS. I have seen the video card minimum requirements on several websites and they are all different. The other requirements needed that have been mentioned are pretty much all the same and my system has everything else required.


Answer
No. That video card is too weak to run Alan Wake at playable framerates. And no on the second response. You can't 'brake' a computer by running a game on a weak video card. the game will either:
1. crash on start-up
2. will run at unplayable framerates and/or video glitches.

Since a GeForce 8400 GS supports Pixel Shader 3.0 and Dx 10 graphics, it could run the game (provided it doesn't crash for other reasons unknown to us - bad drivers, DirectX or an old operating system (eg WinXP SP2 under which the game can't run) etc. I have a video card roughly twice as powerful as yours and can run Alan Wake on medium with reasonably good framerates. So you get the idea. Download a demo and see for yourself what happens




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