Adding more RAM memory or changing the video card?

[danielj]

Well,I tried tha 8k texture for Moon and didn?t work very well.With a 4k "moon4k.jpg",the average framerate is 25 fps,but when I added the 8k "moon8k.dds",the framerate go below 15 fps.So with my configuration,I can?t handle 8k maps.I don?t know if the fact that I was using 8k texture with 4k normalmap contribute to the slow frame rate.
My computer is a Athlon XP 1800,256 mb ddr 256 and VGA Geforce 4 MX 440 SE 64 MB.
What should I do now?Add more 256 MB RAM or change my video card?Which one would offer the best result in terms of frame rate?Knowing that I can?t do both and the maximum video card I acn afford is a Geforce 4 Ti 4200.I only know that memory is cheaper.
Interesting that games makes us wanting better and better video cards and know Celestia NEEDS MEMORY,LOTS OF MEMORY!

[Redfish]

since memory doesn't cost a fart it'd say buy some mem now.

You could buy something like a ATI 9700 that would do nice. All depends on how much you want to spend.

[Darkmiss]

Celestia would handle bigger textures better if you had a 128meg video card.

So if you could get that GF4 ti 4200 with 128mb ram, then do

[John Van Vliet]

I have the same vid card as you and 8k pngs are very slow
The best compromise iv'e found is (for earth ) 8k .dds tex with 4k png normalMap,and 4k.dds night tex and 2k.dds cloud
or all 4k .png with no compresion

[Sum0]

For a really low budget graphics card upgrade, for ?50-?60 ($80-$100) I'd suggest seeing if you can find a OEM Geforce FX5200 (DirectX 9 compatible) or a Radeon 9000 (faster than the FX5200, cheaper, but you won't get the benefits of DirectX9, not as compatible with Celestia). I'm thinking of replacing my old Geforce 2 with a second-hand Radeon 9000 for ?35.

Of course, Geforce 4 Ti's are getting cheaper, so it's probably best to get one of them if you can.