Noob Cpu help

[excellsior]

Hello, I currently have a amd 3000+ and the game medival 2 keeps on pausing spiratically.

I am looking to upgrade now but dont know what to choose.
My budget is around $100 but I can buy used CPU if the seller seems trust-worthy.

I need your help to decide. I am confused as newegg has some 3800 that are 2.2 and some that are 3600 that are 2.4 (maybe not those exact numbers). The difference is however some are venice, san diego, etc.

I did also see a 2.6ghz fx-55 for 129. I dont know if that is a good deal or not.

-- On a side note, what is better to have - a dual core but lower ghz, or single core with higher?

Thank you for any helpful comments.

BTW, I am not an overclocker.

 

[Ph1l]

I think it's not the problem of the CPU but the small amount of RAM. How much do you have?

 

[o1die]

You should list your complete system specs. A video upgrade may be your best option for gaming. Have you tried overclocking your 3000?

 

[excellsior]

i have a 7600gs. i just updated the driver on that card as well and the game still freezes. i have 2 gig of ddr rame and 256 mb on the video card.

edit: i do not have the knowledge to overclock. to be honest i am more of a hands on/visual guy so unless i see pictures or have someone walk me through, then the internet read me diy wont really help as i have a hard time reading and comprehending oc techniques that way.

 

[betasub]

If reducing graphical detail to minimum settings doesn't improve matters, then you're correct that it's a CPU limit.

Medieval 2 is very CPU intensive, maintaining stats for every individual soldier (many thousands) on the battlefield and their interactions. I don't have any problems running it on my Venice 3000+ (but then it's OCed to 2.4GHz, backed by an x1800xt). I haven't seen any evidence for Medieval 2 being multithreaded, so dual core doesn't provide an immediate benefit, but like most games extra clock speed and cache can (if you're not GPU-limited).

"Amd 3000+" doesn't tell us much: is it an Athlon64 or AthlonXP? And on which socket motherboard (Socket A/754/939/AM2)? Need to know before suggesting a suitable upgrade.

 

[excellsior]

Hmm, maybe it is time I sit down and learn how to overclock my unit if the same cpu seems to be working for you. What is an x1800xt though?

I have an AMD Atlhon64 3000+ Venice that is 939 socket.

 

[customcoms]

Post your full system specs-or better yet make a signature with them in it. An x1800xt is ATI's last generation high end video card-it is around 100% faster than your 7600GS: http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2679&p=8
Here's some stuff on the 7600GS: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2825&p=9

Motherboard+ram+psu are VERY CRITICAL to overclocking. I am willing to bet that even an overclock MIGHT not be enough-it should help a ton though. Your 7600GS could become a limiting factor

If you decide to overclock give this a read: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1497607

 

[excellsior]

Ok here's my complete system.

Antec Solution Series NSK2400 Black/Silver Steel MicroATX Desktop Computer Case 380W ATX12V v2.0 Power Supply

Logitech THX Z-5300e 280 Watts RMS 5.1 Speaker

LITE-ON SK-1789/BS 2-Tone PS/2 Wired Slim Keyboard

Logitech G5 Laser 931376-0403 2-Tone 6 Buttons 1x Wheel USB Laser Mouse

LITE-ON 16X DVD±R DVD Burner W/ LightScribe and 5X DVD-RAM Write Black ATAPI/E-IDE Model SHM-165H6S

Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 w/Update Rollup Release 2 OEM 1 Pack

MSI K8NGM2-FID Socket 939 NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

eVGA 256-P2-N549 GeForce 7600GS 256MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video

Patriot 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model PDC2G3200LLK

2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3300822AS 300GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound

ZALMAN CNPS7000B-ALCU 92mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan

AG Neovo CW-19 Black 19" 4ms Widescreen LCD Monitor

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 1.8GHz Socket 939 Processor

26" HP LCD TV hdmi and hdtuner built in

300gb external seagate hd

 

[myocardia]

First, turn your TV-out output off in your video card settings; your framerate will roughly double. Second, reinstall the game, and this time do a full install: your pauses are caused by your system having to wait on your CD to spin up, to provide the data.

 

[excellsior]

Umm I didnt find any tv-out on/off option. My 26" is an LCD TV so on the unit I have to switch where I get my signal from- either cable tv, or the computer. It's basically a huge monitor. I don't know if that helps you.

I did do the full install. There is 7+ gigs of the game on my computer and the dvd activity light is never on when I play the game.

 

[excellsior]

Someone on the medieval board said the problem is that the 7600gs cards suck up a ton of cpu. The same guy said I should manually increase fan and increase gpu- no idea what that is...

 

[excellsior]

Anyone still there?

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: excellsior
Umm I didnt find any tv-out on/off option. My 26" is an LCD TV so on the unit I have to switch where I get my signal from- either cable tv, or the computer. It's basically a huge monitor. I don't know if that helps you.

I did do the full install. There is 7+ gigs of the game on my computer and the dvd activity light is never on when I play the game.

Okay, so you did the full install. Now, if you see what's on your computer monitor displayed on your TV, just by changing the input on the TV, that's your problem. Turn off the TV output in your video card's settings. You're trying to run two monitors with one video card that isn't very fast to begin with. If you had a $650 8800GTX, you wouldn't be having that problem, at least with that game.

Also, right now, your processor and video card are pretty well matched. If you were to upgrade one, the other would become your bottleneck. Of course, that game may be one of the few that are cpu-limited. If so, buying a faster processor, or just overclocking the one you already have will help. Oh, and gpu=video card.

 

[excellsior]

I didn't find any tv options on my video card. The tv is connected to the video card via DVI cable. I don't use the tv and record shows/movies to my computer so there are no other cables connected. I don't know if that is of any help.

 

[excellsior]

Ok, I manually took out my 19" extra monitor from the computer and the game runs fine now. I guess my videocard is too weak to power 2 monitors at once.