How do I get the most out of my nVidia GeForce 7300 LE 256MB?

Question

So my computer specs are: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86Ghz, 2GB RAM, Windows Vista (I've been told this also might be a problem; resolving it as we speak), and an nVidia GeForce 7300 LE 256MB. I spent a fair bit of money on this setup expecting it to be a decent gaming PC, but it won't even run The Sims 2, due to what must only be graphical issues (clearly textures are missing, graphics are lagging, etc.)

I've been told in the past that there's a way to increase the graphics power of this card by assigning RAM to be used as video memory. So my questions are: is this possible? If so, how do I do it? And is it worth doing it at all, or should I just buy a better graphics card?

Answer 1

Gaming performance is a lot more dependent on graphics processor architecture (number of shaders or stream processors, etc) core clock and v-ram clock. If you wanted gaming performance, you should have spent more for the graphics card instead of your Core2 Duo. A single core cpu paired w/ a 7600GT ddr3 will beat your current set up in ALL games.

There's nothing much you can do with your 7300LE's lean architecture. More ram on a slow, 4 pixel pipeline gpu won't provide significant improvement.

Answer 2

You can try overclocking it, search for video card overclocking.
But with all due respect, the video card should be replaced with something better in my opinion. If it were me at least a Geforce 7600. A 7300 should be able to run Sims2 though. hmmmmm..... did you change the settings in the game? raised the detail levels and so forth?

Answer 3

I would blame vista for you r problems as your set up is fine for the sims (nothing more demanding), switch back to xp for better preformance, vista drivers aren't optimised yet.
Try nvidias site for the latest drivers for vista.

Answer 4

vista takes over graphic cards because its crap