Recommendations for how to improve my gaming performance

[IllogicalGlory]

I'm looking for something new to buy so that I can supplement my Radeon HD 7850, but I cannot use it in Crossfire with something else because I lack a second PCI-e 16x slot.

My specs:
Amd 4100 FX 4 cores at 3.6 ghz
Radeon HD 7850 2GB
Corsair 750w PSU
Empty PCI-e 4x slot
Empty PCI slot

Using those two empty slots, what options are available to me? I don't want to replace my motherboard or spend a great deal of money.

Games I play

Skyrim - down to 30 FPS in some places ("Solitude" area comes to mind) at the Ultra Preset 1600x900 (benchmarks say lowest at ultra preset should be 50-60) average around 50, not too bad, but it doesn't match up with what I was expecting.
Serious Sam 3: BFE: down to 20s during Ultra Preset in some places at 1600x900, average FPS around 45; crashes/has tons of artifacts with AMD processor overdrive on
Just Cause 2: down to 30-40s using ultra preset with lower MSAA/anistropic filtering
Mass Effect: works well sometimes, drops to 40s frequently, low MSAA/AF
Portal 2 - steady 60+, but I'm told half-life engine games are very well optimized
Deus Ex Human Revolution - usually steady 60, but can drop down to 45 +/-, high settings, lowish MSAA/AF
Neverwinter Nights 2 - runs badly
Fallout 3 - usually good, drops to 45 or so in some places, below ultra preset
Diablo 3 - usually good, drops when there are lot of effects on the screen, not sure what is internet lag and what is GPU lag, maximum settings, 60 FPS limit

Thank you

 

[KingFatty]

1. what amount of money is acceptable, and when does that become too much
2. why is your current performance limited? Could it be that your CPU is holding back your video card? This would be true if you are running a game with a high CPU demand, and using a small monitor like 1024x768. Or, could it be your GPU is holding you back? This could be if you are running a high resolution setting, or maybe multi-monitor.
3. How do you want to improve gaming performance? another way to improve gaming performance would be to use your PCI slot for a dedicated sound card, but are you more focused on increasing frames per second?

 

[The Alias]

I'm looking for something new to buy so that I can supplement my Radeon HD 7850, but I cannot use it in Crossfire with something else because I lack a second PCI-e 16x slot.

My specs:
Amd 4100 FX 4 cores at 3.4 ghz
Radeon HD 7850 2GB
Corsair 750w PSU
Empty PCI-e 4x slot
Empty PCI slot

Using those two empty slots, what options are available to me? I don't want to replace my motherboard or spend a great deal of money.

Thank you

overclock your 7850, buy a 6300,cpu cooler to oc your cpu with , ssd, and sound card that's about the best you can do

 

[IllogicalGlory]

1. what amount of money is acceptable, and when does that become too much
2. why is your current performance limited? Could it be that your CPU is holding back your video card? This would be true if you are running a game with a high CPU demand, and using a small monitor like 1024x768. Or, could it be your GPU is holding you back? This could be if you are running a high resolution setting, or maybe multi-monitor.
3. How do you want to improve gaming performance? another way to improve gaming performance would be to use your PCI slot for a dedicated sound card, but are you more focused on increasing frames per second?

1. $240 would be my ceiling, but I'd rather have <$200
2. It's not limited that much, but it's not quite at the level I'm looking for. I'm not dong anything spectacular, just using a single monitor at 1600x900.
3. Frames per second is what I'm looking for, that's all I care about because I don't do anything special with my games. Ideally, I'd just buy another 7850, but it would be severely limited/unusable with a 4x PCI-e slot.

 

[Stuka87]

If you have $240, sell your 4100 and get a 6300, and then over clock it (They over clock very well). That will give you quite a bit more performance in CPU bound games (like BF3 for instance).

For your GPU, just over clock it, they clock well, and you can gain quite a bit from it. But I am thinking your CPU is your limiting factor.

 

[KingFatty]

Agreed. But can you find benchmark performance in your preferred games for the FX-4100 overclocked vs the FX-6300? I'm currently overclocking my own FX-6300 that I used to replace a Phenom II, which made sense for me.

The issue is that maybe your game is getting low FPS because your video card.

So I'd suggest maxing out everything you have first, see if that gets you where you want to be (for free).

1. Overclock your video card. See if your FPS get where you want them. If not, or if your FPS remain unchanged, then you might be limited by your CPU.
2. Overclock your CPU and see if your FPS gets fast enough.

If not, then you want to make sure that you only replace what is causing the slow down. At 1600x900, you may be able to find a benchmark on the same game as yours with the 7850. Does your FPS match, or is your FPS much slower? Then you know it's probably the CPU.

I overclocked my FX-6300 and went from average FPS of around 45 at stock, to around 70 overclocked. This was in Starcraft 2 where I made sure the CPU was the limiting factor. I wonder if you could get a similar increase by overclocking your CPU and GPU?

 

[SPBHM]

upgrading the VGA could give you some nice gains, if you have a decent MB and cooling you can probably run the 4100 way higher than 3.4GHz!?

but, since you want to keep the MB, perhaps the 6300 or even 8320 could be also a decent upgrade...

 

[raghu78]

sell your HD 7850 for USD 120 - 130. get a Sapphire HD 7950 boost for USD 280 after rebate. 50% faster card.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_7950_X2_Boost/28.html

1920 x 1200

HD 7850 - 66
HD 7950 iceq boost - 100

even at same clocks the performance difference is more than 40%.

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=AT-7950BST

 

[MeldarthX]

First we don't even know what he's playing at......second doesn't look like anything is over clocked at all......

If he's got 7850 2g; no real reason to sell that card until he's overclocked that bad boy to the max and see just how much better it will do...

Same thing with his 4100; though honestly going with 6300 isn't a bad idea.....and then overclocking those beasts

First overclock; if still not fast enough then think about upgrade; but if he's not even touched to potential of the 7850....its silly to tell him to sell the card.

Finally op what do you play at? We need far more facts to make good recommendations before just jumping in and saying sell, sell, sell...

 

[zebrax2]

Try overclocking your current processor first. What games are you playing?

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Thanks for the help. I've tried overclocking both the card and the processor, but neither has much of an effect on anything. AMD Turbo boost causes all kinds of strange artifacts on the screen and/or does nothing to improve performance. Overclocking the video card has no effect either and causes artifacts to appear pretty quickly.

Games I play

Skyrim - down to 30 FPS in some places ("Solitude" area comes to mind) at the Ultra Preset 1600x900 (benchmarks say lowest at ultra preset should be 50-60) average around 50, not too bad, but it doesn't match up with what I was expecting.
Serious Sam 3: BFE: down to 20s during Ultra Preset in some places at 1600x900, average FPS around 45; crashes/has tons of artifacts with AMD processor overdrive on
Just Cause 2: down to 30-40s using ultra preset with lower MSAA/anistropic filtering
Mass Effect: works well sometimes, drops to 40s frequently, low MSAA/AF
Portal 2 - steady 60+, but I'm told half-life engine games are very well optimized
Deus Ex Human Revolution - usually steady 60, but can drop down to 45 +/-, high settings, lowish MSAA/AF
Neverwinter Nights 2 - runs badly
Fallout 3 - usually good, drops to 45 or so in some places, below ultra preset
Diablo 3 - usually good, drops when there are lot of effects on the screen, not sure what is internet lag and what is GPU lag, maximum settings, 60 FPS limit

It's definitely superior to my 6670, but it doesn't work nearly was well as the pinned GPU performance thread (along with other sites that gauge this stuff) indicate that it does. It should easily manage those games at 1600x900 without dropping below 50, am I right?

I'm a noob at overclocking and don't have any specific equipment to use it. I'm also cautious, since I don't know what I'm doing and always freak out when artifacts start appearing while I'm playing.

upgrading the VGA could give you some nice gains, if you have a decent MB and cooling you can probably run the 4100 way higher than 3.4GHz!?

I misspoke, it runs at 3.6 ghz.

I'm actually considering at this point, since my motherboard seems to be useless, to spend a much greater sum I'm guessing $700+ (though I don't know how much it would actually cost to have my Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2 replaced with an intel one with 2 x16 PCI-e slots) to get a new one, along with i5 3570k and an HD 7870 to use Crossfire with (would my Corsair 750 be able to handle this setup?), that way my computer would be a real beast, but that seems pretty extreme to me, but I don't know how much I'd gain by buying an FX 6300 and nothing more.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

bump

 

[lavaheadache]

That motherboard is not good at all for overclocking. I blew one up on day 1 trying to overclock a quad. There is no cooling on the powerstages of it which is bad for adding voltage and clock speed

 

[MeldarthX]

In case Illogical - I'd keep the 7850 - cause you can use trixx from sapphire to overclock it and go over what amd's standard overclock can do....

Then pick up 6300 - bump it a little and you'll see a nice boost.....but as Lava said you won't get too much overclock without some additional cooling to the mb which can be somewhat easy to set up

 

[cusideabelincoln]

The board only supports 95W processors. Overclocking is a no go, or you will just end up replacing it anyway.

Judging by the games you play and the dips you're getting, you're CPU limited. An FX-6300 will help. An Intel Core i5 would be even better, and you could go this route for around $250-300.

 

[KingFatty]

Another technique would be to see what your CPU usage and your GPU usage is during gameplay.

Something like HWInfo or Afterburner or even the performance monitor built-into windows can show a real-time graph of your CPU usage and GPU usage.

Then, watch those usages and see if your GPU hits 99% or your CPU hits 99%.

Another technique is to just have those monitoring programs log the usage info, so you can backtrack through the data and see where they hit high usage.

Maybe you are always hitting 100% on the CPU, so swapping it for something else would normally solve the issue.

But, if your motherboard can't support higher wattage, you are quite limited even if you get an FX-6300 you aren't really going to be able to overclock it much at all, I'd guess.

 

[Torn Mind]

If his overclocking is limited, the performance gains from the FX-6300 will come mostly from the IPC improvements and extra Turbo Core overhead(4.1 GHz), as its stock clock is lower than the FX-4100. Also, core scaling over 4 cores is probably minimal with those games, so the 2 extra cores probably won't help much.

http://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/serious-sam-3-bfe-pc-performance-analysis/
Serious Sam 3 seems to be GPU-intensive. A FX-4100 is practically a Core 2 Quad, just so you know.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2283699
But, other people complain that it's the CPU causing the problems.

But yes, follow KingFatty's suggestion and monitor your CPU and GPU usage. We need to know if you stand to benefit more from a GPU upgrade to the 79xx series or from an Intel i5.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

I'll test that soon and get back as soon as I finish the work I've got.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Has it been said?

Figure out if you're cpu limited or gpu limited during your low fps areas and go from there.

Given the titles in your list, cpu limit and no a 8350 isn't going to help much.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Some screenshots with CPU/GPU usage shown. Both are in the top left, CPU usage on the left, GPU usage on the right. FPS in the top right corner for Serious Sam and posted below image for Skyrim.

28 fps

60 fps

Then I rotate my camera 180 degrees into a busier area...

during a combat sequence in a similar area:

 

[KingFatty]

Hmm I wonder how the last image can be less than 50% utilization for both the CPU and GPU?

What is preventing your CPU or GPU from being used more, like 99% each?

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Hmm I wonder how the last image can be less than 50% utilization for both the CPU and GPU?

What is preventing your CPU or GPU from being used more, like 99% each?

I don't know, I have it set to high priority in task manager and it has affinity for all four cores and I'm not restricting the use either of them, not that I know of. My Radeon driver is up to date (13.1), I don't know why it does that.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Almost everyone of those screens is a cpu bottleneck, get an i5 and enjoy your video card.

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Almost everyone of those screens is a cpu bottleneck, get an i5 and enjoy your video card.

My only choice is a 6300 unless I get a new motherboard, which i'm considering, obviously an i5 is the best choice, but how well would a 6300 work?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

6300 won't do much for you at all, the games you're playing don't care about core count they want IPC and clock speed.

Save your pennies :\