pc upgrade

terminator2k2

terminator2k2

terminator2k2

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1 Feb 2009
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620
hi there didnt know where to post this , as its a upgrade i just done and problems with games......any way here goes.......

my missus loves playing l4d 1 and 2....and she just keeps nicking my computer, which is a core i7 920 , 3 gig ddr3 , gtx280........

her computer was a sckt 478 p4 3 ghz with 2 gig ram and a x800xt, the fps on this machine made it unplayable...at around 20 fps if she was lucky lol....

i aquired a e4700 dual core i think it was 2.6ghz core 2 duo.....

so i purchased from overclockers:

Asus GeForce GTX 460 Direct CU TOP 768MB GDDR5

Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L Intel G41 (Socket 775) DDR2 microATX Motherboard

Kingston 2GB (1x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C6 800MHz Single Channel Memory Module

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler

i put this together and reinstalled windows and l4d and l4d2.....

and to my amazement this isnt much better.......still only getting 40 - 50 fps

and this with all settings on low in game.......getting a lot of slow down and sometimes down to the 20s fps....

i feel like ive waisted a couple hundred quid on upgrading this......

whats you good folks thoughts on this?

cheers chris
 
What resolution is this at?

It seems that, if anything, its a cpu bottleneck. I have the exact same gpu in my rig, and even at stock clocks I'm getting 90+ fps at 1920x1080. Maybe try overclocking the cpu a bit? I'm not familiar with C2D cpu's, but I'm sure someone on here can give you some tips and starting points.

That, or ram. Though I would have thought 2gb to be perfectly sufficient.
 
It should have set the speed to default clocks, though I have no idea what they are. I believe the multi should go up to x13, so try 200x13 to get your 2.6ghz speed.
If that works fine, it might be worth bumping up the fsb a bit too.

Like I said though, I only got into overclocking with my i7, so someone else can help more I'm sure
 
E4700 was the last of the E4xxx series. My guess is your bios didn't recognise it so defaulted to x8. Set it to x13 it will make a massive difference.

EDIT - Come to think of it there may have been a E4800 but if there was there were very few of those about.
 
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hi there, this computer is still not to my liking, the main game being played is left 4 dead 2 which still drops to around 40 fps in most parts of maps.....

what would be the main cause of this?

ive run it at :

1360 x 768 main screen and 1920 x 1080 different monitor

running on both of these monitors and the different resloutions doesnt seem to gain anything....by that i mean running @ 1360 x 768 seems to give the same fps as running @ 1920 x 1080....

is the processor bottle necking the system? would it run better with a quad core?
 
Yes, it would run better with a quad. That would set you back over £150 new for a decent 775 quad. Secondhand can be risky and you are a long way off qualifying for the Members Market here which would remove a lot of that s/hand risk.

If I were you I would look at buying an Athlon II x4 630 about £76 plus an Asrock N68C-UCC board for about £33. That board takes two sticks of DDR2 or 2 sticks of DDR3 so you could bring all your current kit across including the ram that you just bought. Its also has an oc friendly bios and should be able to reach 3.3 to 3.4Ghz even using just the stock cooler.

The improvement over the current rig will be pretty dramatic.....:D
 
I know this might be stupid but is the power setting in windows running on high performance or balanced? Mine was on balanced and i was getting low FPS but then I changed it to high performance and it went up a good 10+ FPS
 
I don't think you need to go quad core, and the 8300 is cheap because of only 4mb L2 cache. I don't think it would make much difference tbh, as most games only utilize 2 cores.

Go for the 2gb ram + overclock your graphics card. That should bring a noticable, and less expensive improvement.

Question, are you only running 1 stick of ram atm?
 
hi there, thanks for the replies....

yea 1 stick of 2 gig.....

ive clocked the cpu up to 3.2ghz, ive only played with the clock multiplier.....i was told to try and keep the ram running at 800 aswell, so ive knocked the system multiplier down i think.......

the graphics card im running @ 800 1900
 
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