What is better? Upgrading to a 1G memory ram or upgrading to a 512mb video card?

I am a little low on cash so I am thinking what would be better to buy first. I am a gamer, and the games I play are high-end, but I am low on cash. Argh|||Sadly none of the posters truly understand how to judge a good video gaming card from trash! If i were to present to you a 256MB HD3850 and a 512MB 8400 - which would u pick?

If your answer is #1 then good for you because its memory interface is 256bit and anything lower is a waste of time for serious games trust me!To fully answer your questions we need your current specs/graphics card but if you have a 32bit OS and if adding 1GB RAM still keeps ya under 4GB then adding RAM would be the cheapest way to up performance|||video card, a lot more noticeable in performance.|||If u now got 1gb ram only.....i highly recommend u to upgrade ram

If u now got a grphs card like 8800gt or 8500gt 256mb.....i think its not necessary to upgrade.....but if u got 8400gs or lower....it is nice to upgrade grphs card|||The memory is the cheapest option if you can use 1gig ( or even better 2 gig) of mached DDR2, that is what I would do first and save my pennies to buy a decent vidio card (a 8800gt for example)|||upgrade ram|||for gamers 512mb video card will give you better gharphics...

though 1g memory will give you speed|||Having more RAM would mean you can play games better on your current system at lower settings.



Getting a better graphics card won't really help much, as the rest of the game would be bottlenecked by you having on 512MB of system RAM.



For the poster below:

He could get an 8800 Ultra and games would still run badly, as 512MB system RAM is just not enough in this day and age, even for XP. ;)|||You should get a video card.



From my experience:

I bought a stick of 256MB DDR RAM for my computer.

I installed it but hardly noticed any improvement on performance.

Need for Speed is still as laggy as before.

But when I got a Geforce FX 5500 for my computer, I noticed a large improvement.

Graphics becomes clearer.

Games run faster (PES 6 lags before I bought the Geforce FX, now at full settings in game, it goes as quick as it should be.)

And DVD movies run faster. (Geforce FX onwards have hardware rendering for DVDs, running at full speed.)



If you got PCI (the old one): Get the Geforce 6200GT (PCI).

If you got AGP (not so old one): Get the Geforce 7600GS (AGP 8x).

IF you got PCI express (the new one): Get the Geforce 8600GT (Lower performance than 8800GT to fit your budget,)(PCI Express)