so what should I upgrade for smooth performance on cmt's a50.yelo my specs are

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3300+
2.41ghz,1.50gb of ram
NVIDIA Geforce 6600
400 watt power supply
Edited by Spark on Jun 30, 2012 at 04:52 AM

That's a tricky situation. with most parts compatible with what you have being out of date, it will be hard to do a decent upgrade without using refurbished parts. Though I can say with some certainty that you should be able to upgrade your graphics card as well as your ram most likely.
I think the ram is most likely the biggest pressing concern as 1.5 gigs of ram, in today's world, is hardly anything. I would recommend looking at what packages of 2 sticks of 2 GB ram are available for whatever frequency your board can handle. If you are not sure what your board can handle, you can check it's model online. Just find the model name written on the board and google specs for it.
Another thing you can do is get the program "speccy" by piriform. It will give you, first off, the model of your board so you don't have to open your case, the current frequency of your ram, as well as the type(most likely DDR2 is my guess).
As far as your processor goes, unless you plan to put a good deal of money into upgrading, you are boned. When you upgrade a processor, if you are smart, you should and most likely will need to, upgrade all 4 of these parts to be compatible together.
Processor
Motherboard
RAM
Power supply ( not ABSOLUTELY needed depending on your power requirements, but people who do NOT get a new power supply when they do a processor upgrade are REALLY testing fate)

But like I said, ram and graphics card I am sure are probably easily replaceable on your machine, and if you do one, I would say do the other or you will most likely only receive a minimal increase in the overall graphics processing power of your machine.

First off, what is the maximum res of your monitor?

I have a 3870T, and it has always been an amazingly stable card. I blew out a 350watt power supply with one before upgrading to a 585watt :)

If you have a PCI-express slot, go ahead and get this card here: Radeon HD 3850(oops lol, I said 4850 by accident) and a power supply with at least 500 watts.

The 3800 cards are pretty good at keeping stable, and should hold you over until you can affor a new cpu(I doubled my performance just by getting an new processor :D )

and don't worry, 1.5GB of ram isn't going to make that card stutter, unless you are using something slower than DDR2
Edited by OrangeJuice on Jun 30, 2012 at 06:55 AM
Edited by OrangeJuice on Jun 30, 2012 at 06:56 AM

1280 by 960 pixels,the game actually runs very smooth in the interior of the ship even with all graphical settings on high.its the outside that needs the settings lowered.also is there a way to lower the amount of specular effect without turning it completely off?

Edited by Spark on Jun 30, 2012 at 07:01 AM

It all depends on your budget. You can build a rig for ~$500 which would be plenty for modern games. I would not recommend an old card like the 3870, for $15 more you can get a previous-gen 6670 which should be plenty for OS. As far as the processor, stick to Intel, they outperform AMD at almost every price point. 4GB RAM at MINIMUM. Unless you're overclocking or using a high-end graphics card, a 500W power supply is the most you'll ever need. I'd give this guide a look, as well as sites like Tom's Hardware or AnandTech for reviews and recommendations.

my ram type is DDR
FSB:DRAM CPU/24
DRAM idle timer 16 clocks
motherboard manufacturer is ASUSTeK Computer INC> Model K8N-E
Edited by Spark on Jul 1, 2012 at 05:37 AM

Your motherboard is exceeded ...
You need to change for a motherboard with a support DDR2/DDR3 Ram