Upgrade Suggestions?

[DreamSlave2112 0]

I have an HP Pavilion 751n with a 1.8 Ghz Pentium 4, 256 MB RAM with no after-market hardware upgrades. The OS is Win XP SP2 and I have a SyncMaster 150MP LCD screen (not the best for games, I know)

The main issue is when I play SimCity 4, in the bigger cities, zooming in takes awhile and the buildings look blocky at first and take some time to show finer resolution. Also, U-Drive-It missions are herky jerky in built areas.

If I want to do a light upgrade, what would be the best option? Memory, chip or graphics card (which I'll bet is integrated into the motherboard and prob. uses sytem memory). Any particular brands or types?

thanks.

[+Guest]

Looking at your specs your memory sucks so go buy a few sticks and all will be fine.Goodluck

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If your HP system is anything like mine it has an on-line manual (PDF) that you can download and print.  Do so, and see what memory upgrades are available.  256MB is really minimal.  If you can , go up to at least 1GB.

[dadyrghluv 8]

yes definitly go with the RAM upgrade. windows xp sp2 will run on 256mb but not well. if u do as suggested by NOB, and go with a 1gig stick, u will see a vast improvement on load times for your game, especially when zooming in and out. the game is a resource hog, i have 2 gigs RAM and i experience slowdown here and there. especially in the larger city tiles. if need be, change the config file that comes with DL'ed maps for medium tiles, by changing the color value to all green instead of blue. green being the color SC4 see's for medium tiles, and blue being the large tiles.

hope this helps some! goodluck