Please advise on best upgrade

[Link]

My Current rig is

Asrock Dual 939sataII
X800gto2 unlocked and overclocked to equiv x850XT PE
1.5 gig generic 4200 RAM
AMD 64 3000+

I have been playing the 2142 beta and I find it fairly jerky. However, a friend of mine runs it at higher res/settings with a smoother frame rate on

x800gto2 stock speeds
2 gig name brand RAM in dual channel
AMD 64 3500+

Given that his card is effectivly lower than mine, it suggests my systems bottleneck is either my RAM or my CPU. Now, I realise upgrading both would be ideal, but I can't afford both at once, so I am looking for which would provide the greatest boost. Either upgrading the CPU (Prob to an X2 4400) or upgrade to 2 gigs of matched RAM.

Which would provide the greatest improvement?

 

[giant384]

you dont have a bottleneck that would cause problems. also when you say "matched ram" are you saying your current ram is different speed,different brand?? different speeds can be the problem but ill wait for your response.

 

[Asus]

I don't think it's the amount of ram. 1.5 would give you very similar to 2gb for performance. But you are probably running in single channel mode and not dual channel since you have 3 sticks of memory (not paired). I'll have to check reviews and see how much the CPU is holding you back when I get home.

Having more than 1GB of memory helped a lot with Battlefield 2 so you probably won't want to go back to 1GB (2x512mb) just for dual channel memory.

Maybe sell your old parts to make up for what you buy?

 

[Link]

By matched pair I mean 2 sticks of ram that are pre-tested to work in Dual channel mode. At the moment I have 2 generic sticks, a 1gig stick thats 3200 and one 512 stick that may be 2100 (But would have to open up the PC to check that), which are indeed in single channel.

If I went for a memory upgrade, it would be 2 * 1gig sticks of matched, so I would get faster ram, as well as a half gig more of it.

Appreciate the help guys.

 

[giant384]

im sure its in single channel and the 512 stick is slowing down your gig stick to pc2100. im sure if you took the 512 out you would notice a performance change. you could buy a gig later.

 

[Asus]

google search cpu-z.
Run that program and see what it says for your memory timings and speed.

To run dual channel mode all you need is 2 sticks of the same size. Obviously you would want them to be the same speed and have similar timings (latency) for best performance but that isn't required to get them to run in dual channel.

Giant brings up a good point. You don't need to buy a new matched set. If it's cheaper I buy the memory individually rather than matched sets. Product is the same. Just get another 1gb stick that matches the speed etc.

 

[Link]

I was rather under the impression that 2 sticks had to be a rather exact match to run in dual channel. Are you saying they should work as long as they are the same size and speed?

Cheers again guys.