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Which aspect of my PC needs upgrading to get better framerates?

E

extrapoints

Junior Member
My current rig specs are as follows:

Intel Core2Duo E6400 @ stock (2.13GHZ)
Corsair ValueSelect 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2 Ram
XFX HD5770 1GB @ stock
300GB VelociRaptor
Gigabyte 965-P DS3
23" Dell 2480WFP

I'm finding that I have to scale down the resolution on a lot of the latest games (SC Conviction, NBA2K10, Batman AA) in order to get a respectable framerate. I would prefer to game at 1920x1200 (native res of my monitor) with medium quality settings but currently most games are unbareably laggy at those settings.

In terms of gaming, what are some recommendations as to what I should upgrade to improve my fps? Which aspect of my system is the bottleneck currently?


Moved from PC Gaming

Anandtech PC Gaming Moderator
KeithTalent
 
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Definitely your processor. Based on your motherboard and chipset though your upgrade paths are pretty limited...basically anything in the E6XXX series without a 1333FSB.

Also, 4GB of RAM wouldnt hurt either.

Besides that though, the rest of your system is solid and shouldnt have a problem running the games you've mentioned. But yeah, the CPU is a MAJOR bottleneck in the instance.
 
extrapoints said:
Intel Core2Duo E6400 @ stock (2.13GHZ)
Corsair ValueSelect 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2 Ram
Click to expand...
I would say 4Gb of ram is the minimum for gaming these days. And depending on the game your cpu might be holding you back quite a bit. If not a full upgrade you should definitely look into overclocking it.
 
Bryf50 said:
I would say 4Gb of ram is the minimum for gaming these days. And depending on the game your cpu might be holding you back quite a bit. If not a full upgrade you should definitely look into overclocking it.
Click to expand...

This, definately look into getting 4GB, the cpu isnt that bad, it will hold back poorly coded games and console ports (like GTA IV) but for everything else its ok.
 
If you want to get the most out of that card you should seriously consider a full CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrade as that board has no upgrade path for a new CPU.
 
Interesting question by the OP.
Not to threadjack, but I too have the same question/dilemma:

AMD Opty 170 @ 2.4Ghz
DFI LAN Party NForce4
2GB RAM
BFG 8800GT 512MB
Acer AL2216W (max res 1680x1050)

I know this is all horribly outdated, but I've been OK running games up until lately. I can tell that modern games are starting to really bog it down.

I don't have the cash to do a full upgrade right now (or in the foreseeable future) but I could upgrade where I'd see the most improvement likely.

Thanks for any advice.
 
Homerboy said:
Interesting question by the OP.
Not to threadjack, but I too have the same question/dilemma:

AMD Opty 170 @ 2.4Ghz
DFI LAN Party NForce4
2GB RAM
BFG 8800GT 512MB
Acer AL2216W (max res 1680x1050)

I know this is all horribly outdated, but I've been OK running games up until lately. I can tell that modern games are starting to really bog it down.

I don't have the cash to do a full upgrade right now (or in the foreseeable future) but I could upgrade where I'd see the most improvement likely.

Thanks for any advice.
Click to expand...

I had a x2-3800@2.5Ghz and upgraded to the system in my sig, massive improvement, 2-3x fps in DoW:II. the only thing worth upgrading is the CPU/mboard/ram combo, don't use money on memory or new videocard.
 
biostud said:
I had a x2-3800@2.5Ghz and upgraded to the system in my sig, massive improvement, 2-3x fps in DoW:II. the only thing worth upgrading is the CPU/mboard/ram combo, don't use money on memory or new videocard.
Click to expand...

well hell that's the most expensive part! 🙂
 
Homerboy said:
Interesting question by the OP.
Not to threadjack, but I too have the same question/dilemma:

AMD Opty 170 @ 2.4Ghz
DFI LAN Party NForce4
2GB RAM
BFG 8800GT 512MB
Acer AL2216W (max res 1680x1050)

I know this is all horribly outdated, but I've been OK running games up until lately. I can tell that modern games are starting to really bog it down.

I don't have the cash to do a full upgrade right now (or in the foreseeable future) but I could upgrade where I'd see the most improvement likely.

Thanks for any advice.
Click to expand...

you're screwed until you can buy all new parts

s939 is long since dead, even if you did upgrade the CPU you're looking at 2.7GHz, maybe 2.8GHz max (of which I'm somewhat surprised you have your Opty 170 at only 2.4GHz). Any CPU upgrade there would also run you a lot of money. A lot of money, no gain, no option.

Then there's your ram. I'm assuming its 2 x 1GB sticks. You could grab another set for 4GB total, but that will force 2T timings although it should help a lot more than it hurts. There's also the risk of extra ram messing with your overclock (although yours seems conservative to where that wouldn't be a problem). But the biggest risk would be the motherboard not liking the new RAM or the new and old RAM not playing nice together. Plus its not cheap either, you're looking at ~$37 per 1GB of decent DDR1. Then we also have to consider operating system, without a 64 bit OS you won't be able to utilize all 4 gigs...

Really the only part you could upgrade would be your video card, but that will be severely bottlenecked by the rest of your hardware so you probably wouldn't be able to really enjoy it until you could pair the new card with a faster system.
 
If reducing detail setting and/or resolution in games alleviates your FPS issues that would usually indicate a GPU bottleneck. It's not going to take much more graphics card to shift that bottleneck over to your CPU and RAM though, even at 1920x1200.
 
I was in a VERY similar situation.
E6xxx (c2d@2.4ghz)
965P DS3
GTX 260
4GB DDR2
HP ZR24W

I put a Q6600 in it and got a 5850 and have no problem running games with everything turned on at 1920x1200.

That's about as far as you can go on that board. Some folks have been able to get some of the newer Quads to work, but the board is spec'd up to QX6800s, not the 45nm chips.

And another gig of ram wouldn't hurt. I had a stick of mine go bad, and now running 3GB instead of 4GB and haven't noticed a bit of difference.
 
zerocool84 said:
This
Click to expand...

I had that motherboard and an e6300 overclocked from 1.86 to 3gz. served me well for the 3 and half years 😀. In gtr2 the 2gb of ram really seemed to be holding me back. since the gigabyte was not the later revision, it couldn't support quadcore cpu's 🙁. so i had to upgrade to an amd based system with the 1055t, which i later had to RMA to back to AMD for a replacement!

I'd avoid buying more ram until you can get a new mobo with ddr3.
 
thats a seriously slow cpu. one of mine is 2.5 ghz and i consider it slow. it even chokes up web surfing sometimes
 
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