new video card or new cpu?

[flamingelephant]

Have a bargain machine that I built on the cheap...
-DD2 motherboard with 4 gigs or ram
-AM3 Athlon II X2 245 @ 2.9 GHz
-HD 4650 w/512mb

Which would be the better upgrade if I only could do one...
CPU to Athlon II X4 640 @ 3.0 GHz

Video to HD 5770 w/1g

Which would make generally more difference?
I'm a casual gamer who plays Starcraft 2, WIC, Battlefield 2, etc

Thanks

 

[bart1975]

I would go with the cpu. Having more cores is always good. With more cores everything will be a bit faster.

 

[fffblackmage]

If you want to play games, the GPU will make a huge difference. The CPU isn't going to get you more eye candy or better framerates, at least, not nearly as much as a GPU upgrade would.

 

[bart1975]

It really depends on what resolution the OP plays games in. The 4650 might already be good enough. Not sure if the OP is getting all he can out of his current card with the dual core cpu.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Can you try n overclock it?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Most games still only use 2 cores, so adding 2 more at about the same speed won't help much.

I'd go with the 5770 -- look for a closeout deal since it is now being sold as the 6770 (same card, new model number)

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Most games still only use 2 cores

What is your method to measure that?

My method is to run the game in a window and open Task Manager. My results, gaming Unreal Tournament III, show activity above 30-40% and > on all cores.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Perhaps I should have said "need" or "benefit from" -- Windows will assign threads to cores automatically so if a game has an audio thread, controller thread, rendering thread and AI thread it will transparently spread them to your four cores.

It will also divide up the services and processes that were already running for your network, antivirus, etc.

The question is, will UT III run any faster with 4 cores at 30-40% vs. 2 cores at 60-80%, and the answer is no.

Edit: The two that I know of offhand that do favor quad-core are Dragon Age 1 (not 2) and GTA IV.

 

[Zap]

I think the Supreme Commander games also favor more cores, but yes, basically few games benefit from more than a fast dual core CPU, while almost any game made recently will benefit from a faster graphics card. The Radeon 4650 is considered to be lower end while a 5770 is mid-range territory.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I wonder if I can disable 2 of my cores and see how it runs.

 

[mfenn]

I wonder if I can disable 2 of my cores and see how it runs.

After you start the game, you can go into task manager and set the process affinity to only two of the cores. This isn't a perfect recreation of a dual-core machine because Windows will shuffle your background processes onto cores not designated for the game, but it should give you a decent idea of the performance.