Hi,

So as of now, I have:

Sony Vaio VGC-RB54G
XP MCE 2002 SP3
Pentium D (2.8 GHz)
Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT (512 Mb onboard VRAM)
1024 MB RAM

I have the second latest video driver (June 2008) because the latest (September 26 2008) causes Assassin's creed to crash. I also have the latest DirectX 9.0c. My system is also very well maintained with less than 1% fragmentation (usually less than 0.5%).

My PC should be able to support 2 additional Gigabytes of RAM, and I plan to get them within a few months. But I'd just like to make sure that the performance issues with my games that i am noticing are because of my lack of RAM. So, I'm going to use Assassin's Creed and The Witcher as examples of the symptoms.

Assassin's Creed:
-on Medium Settings, sound does not always match the animations (especially on cut-scenes)
-on medium-high settings, the fps is normal, but the game is slower

The Witcher:
-game runs ok on medium-low settings in open areas
-however, even on lowest settings in detailed city environment, HDD is constantly active and it takes a long time to be able to move after the area is "loaded" and after that the fps is still terrible

The symptoms seen in The Witcher seem to indicate that i need more RAM, but I am not sure what those seen in Assassin's Creed indicate. Can anyone tell how much my system would benefit from the additional RAM? And if I were to install the extra 2 Gigabytes, would I be able to run most new games on high settings?

also; what hardware needs to be improved to support more advanced antisoptric and atmospheric filtering and such?

Could it be your processor is struggling to keep up to the graphics card as the pentium d is a bit old now. I got a Dual Core E2160 Processor for about £30GBP so this could be a option to you.
I Would have thought a extra 1GB of ram will do wonders for the overall pc performance but wouldnt think it would cause the problem you are having.
Have you tried turning details/HDR/screen resolution down to see if it runs smoother?
Also try updating your sound drivers
Hope this helps

New processor.... it doesn't seem to really get maxed out with my games; sure I hear the fan going, but it's nothing compared to what I hear when I'm say converting a video when I can see that it's taking up like 98% of my CPU.

Yeah, I have a SigmaTel Sound Card, which doesn't really have any new drivers. (Latest is 2004)

About lowering my graphics settings; you missed the point of the thread. I want to turn them up, not down.

Possibly look to a new graphics card and a extra Gb of ram then.
The 8600gt isn't a particularly powerful card. The extra ram would not allow you to run the games on maxed settings as the gpu isn't up to the latest games on high settings

Hey man, I wanted to let you know. I too have a Sony Viao VGC-RB54G. I've put 5gb of ram, pc-5400, I ahve ati 4870, 800w power supply, 3.3tb of hd space, blu-ray drive. but I still have the stock pentium D 2.8. And I too run into the problem of the processor running at 90-100% when converting video, playing games (crysis 17 fps, cpu 100%). Vista x64 ultimate will only see 3.325gb of the ram installed because sony went cheap on the memory controller and installed a 32bit controller. Everythign else on the board is x64 compat. If you use ClockGen you can OC the processor to 3.236Ghz but no higher or system will crash, this is in x64. In x86 (32bit) you can only OC to 3.115Ghz. If anyone has a suggestion for putting a new cpu please let me know because I'm topped out on the hardware and I REALLY dont want to install a new motherboard. but let me tell you, with the ram and the 10k vr 300g hard drive, HUGE performance boost. Plus the video card of course.

the ram should not be needed , you might need more ram in your video card but not in your system, it might help some things speed up but i doubt it will help the gameing , to get your settings up higher , i believe your going to need a newer dual core processer plus maybe another gig of ram, i have a nice dual core rig and i dont even think i can play some of the crazy games out there these days as i only have a radeon x800 (a true gamer would laugh at my pc specs) just my opinion though. good luck !