Help a virgin!

[C0ldf1re]

Having attracted your prurient and salacious attention... yes, I really am a virgin at this problem!

My friends think of me as a "computer expert", but I just work with PC's and don't play games.

This 14-year-old boy is coming up to his 15th birthday. He is the Leader of a "clan" playing Fallen Earth, an MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) game with a lot of graphics. Here are the specifications for the game.

He complains that the game goes too slow on his PC, and wants a "fix" for his birthday.

It is an old Dell E520, but upgraded to 3GB RAM and 32-bit Windows 7, with a new mid-range graphics card some 2 years ago. The internet connection is a standard home one.

The CPU he has is an Intel Core™2 Duo Processor E4300 (2M Cache, 1.80 GHz, 800 MHz FSB), which meets the minimum specs for the game. I don't think the CPU is the most important thing in this problem, but am I right?

His mother (who knows about as much about computers as I know about the anatomy of a penguin) is determined to "fix" things by buying him a new notebook for about $500. I think that, far from solving the problem, it would make things worse, because a notebook would have an inferior graphics card to his present one.

The boy is guessing that a better (and far more expensive) broadband connection would solve things, but I am not convinced. SpeedTest shows Ping 19 ms, Download speed 15.08 Mbps and Upload speed 0.86 Mbps. I think that that sounds OK for an on-line game, but am I wrong?

My guess is that a very good new graphics card would be the best answer. The game specs recommend nVidia GeForce 8800GTS. He has a GeForce9 9500GT installed. I'm afraid the graphics card specs mean nothing to me! Is 9500 better than 8800, or is GTS better than GT? Or do I have it all wrong?

Please help with impartial advice! None of my social circle will ever respect me if I get this wrong.

[rah]

It could really be a couple things, but more than likely it's the hardware. While you meet the minimum requirements, you will get the stuttering unless you drop all in-game settings to as low as they will go. What settings is he trying to run the game at?

(Side Note) Unless his mother buys a 1K+ gaming laptop any normal one probably won't do. It'll be worse than the desktop he's currently using.

<edit>
Also I'm fairly confident it's the processor itself in combination with the low amount of ram.
</edit>

[deepsand]

Have you personally witnessed the reputed slowness so as to discern its nature?

While graphics processing power is generally the issue here, such is not dependent on the video card itself.

How much free space on the HD? What applications are running in the background? (Firewalls and anti-malware apps., for example, can cause a performance hit.)

Have you looked at any of the performance related info. at Fallen Earth: Knowledge-base?

[deepsand]

Unless his mother buys a 1K+ gaming laptop any normal one probably won't do. It'll be worse than the desktop he's currently using.

Strongly concur.

Also I'm fairly confident it's the processor itself in combination with the low amount of ram.

From What are the minimum system specs needed to play Fallen Earth?:

The minimum and recommended system specs for Fallen Earth are:
OS: XP SP3, Vista SP1 and Windows 7
Free hard-drive space: 10 GB
DVD Drive
DirectX: 9.0(XP) 10 (Vista)
DivX Codec
Internet Access see *

Minimum:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz or Athlon 64X2 2.4 GHz
RAM: 2 GB for XP, 3 GB for Vista and 2 GB for Windows 7
Video Card*: nVidia GeForce 6600/ATI Radeon X1300
RAM (dedicated): 256 MB
Free hard-drive space: 10 GB

Recommended:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.40 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 3 GB for XP, 4 GB for Vista and 3 GB for Windows 7
Video Card*: nVidia GeForce 8800GTS/ ATI Radeon 3870
RAM (dedicated): 512 MB

From this, RAM seems to be okay; but, CPU may be dicey.

[C0ldf1re]

... Unless his mother buys a 1K+ gaming laptop any normal one probably won't do. It'll be worse than the desktop he's currently using...

Thanks for all the advice. It's a relief that you agree on that laptop point!

Have you personally witnessed the reputed slowness so as to discern its nature?... What applications are running in the background?...
Have you looked at any of the performance related info. at Fallen Earth: Knowledge-base?

Doh! No I haven't looked at it! Doh!

I'll ask him to try running Task Manager while the game is running to find the CPU load.

And I'll ask him to try the performance hints from the website knowledge base.

Very many thanks. I owe you a double at least.

[deepsand]

I'll ask him to try running Task Manager while the game is running to find the CPU load.

Should also look at Memory usage and HD I/O.

[C0ldf1re]

Should also look at Memory usage and HD I/O.

Yes, I'll ask him to do that too.

[SteveGerencser]

I used to work in the game industry.. Minimum specs mean it will run, mostly.. Meaning it will load, you will see and hear things, but don't expect to actually be able to play the game very well..

I'd make sure he kills all unrelated tasks before launching the game, but it sounds like he is in need of a fairly serious hardware upgrade..

[LD]

With Win 7, isn't 1GB RAM the absolute minimum requirments with 2 recommended for general computing but 4GB for any type of gaming? I personally wouldn't run it with any less than 4 and actually am now using 8. However, I don't pretend to know that much about PC's and how OS's manage memory but even though Win 7 is supposed to be good at alocating and giving back memory (opening and closing apps), is there a lot of scratch disc activity with 3GB ram, no?

[deepsand]

With Win 7, isn't 1GB RAM the absolute minimum requirments with 2 recommended for general computing but 4GB for any type of gaming? I personally wouldn't run it with any less than 4 and actually am now using 8. However, I don't pretend to know that much about PC's and how OS's manage memory but even though Win 7 is supposed to be good at alocating and giving back memory (opening and closing apps), is there a lot of scratch disc activity with 3GB ram, no?

The game provider's RAM recommendations are

RAM: 3 GB for XP, 4 GB for Vista and 3 GB for Windows 7

.