Parts of the computer that effects game performance

[averyroberson]

What parts of the computer matters in game performance?
vid card,cpu,motherboard,ram?

 

[ddwaldon]

All of them do but mostly the gpu.
then the cpu(a close tie in some games)
And ram also in some games. example bf2 likes more ram.
some games like fear or even oblivion ram doesnt make much difference.

 

[MattC]

The hard drive can have a huge impact ... most notably on load times. The previously mentioned components often have the biggest impacts (in general order of importance: GPU, CPU, Memory, HDD, .... motherboards), however.

 

[leo2kp]

Hard drives only have an impact on load times, so I'm not sure if that's necessarily "huge" but I personally run a RAID-0 main drive and love it My friend, who only has a single disk, is only slightly slower than me in load times. For overall gameplay, the impact is very minimal to have faster disks unless you have little RAM (using your pagefile a lot).

But you're right in that order of importance

 

[systemlord]

Having a fast HDD reduce's in-game shuttering. When ever you system requests data and has to pause that creates shutter/game pause. If its about money then the biggest impact on performance has to be the CPU & GPU. Spend you money there. Don't go cheap on the power suppy.

 

[averyroberson]

im sorry im completely lost whats a gpu?

 

[alia83444]

graphics processing unit aka graphics card

 

[grieve]

1. video card (gpu)
2. processor (cpu)
3. Ram (memory)

Each of those contributes greatly to game performance, in that order.

 

[super777]

Put most simply I think grieve said it the best. Just so that you understand though, there are multiple factors that go into each piece of hardware that make it better than another piece.

For example, GPUs have both speed an memory factors that you need to take into account when shopping for one. CPUs have speed, number of cores, and front side bus speeds that highly affect it. Finally, memory has speed and obviously, sheer numbers (4gb>2gb).

If you are looking for an upgrade, the easiest way to do it is by keeping in mind the following things:

1. Is it compatible?
2. Is it coming from a respected company (ex. Asus)
3. Is it in my price range? (If you don't know a lot about PCs, one of the easiest way to figure out if you are getting a quality item, is how it stacks up to the rest in its category as far as price goes)

Also, I would like to mention, that for upgrade purposes, RAM (memory) should probably be your first thing to look into. Often times it can be an easy and affordable upgrade, and will spawn some great rises in your FPS.