Cheap upgrade.

ludakot

ludakot

ludakot

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Hey there, my PC is becoming really updated nowadays but I can't afford to upgrade for a long time, but I'd like to be able to play some of the newer games, even on low. Here's my setup:

Asus M3N72-D
Geforce 9800 GT
AMD Phenom x4 9950 BE 2.6ghz
2x1gb Corsair DDR2 (800mhz i think, without checking)

I think the cheapest upgrade would be to get another 9800 GT and run it in SLI, but I only have a 500w power supply. Now some people have said with a decent power supply it'll be fine but others have said it wouldn't work. Here's my power supply:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-034-CS&tool=5

Do you think this would manage it? I was also planning on grabbing another 2gb of ram. This seems like the best option unless people think I can't run the SLI or can think of a better upgrade (£60-80 budget)

I realize my PC is pretty terrible nowadays but I need to upgrade something and a new pc is a long way away!

Thanks!
 
I'm fairly certain a 9800gt can run all new games on at least lowest settings but a 6870 or similar would be a pretty good upgrade. I know the original phenoms were bad overclockers but if you could get it to 3ghz it would be beneficial. Another 2gb ram would be a big boost too.

I don;t think SLI is worth it with an older card like the 9800gt when you can get far more powerful single cards. You could sell your 9800gt for £25 and put it towards a better card.
 
synixx said:
I'm fairly certain a 9800gt can run all new games on at least lowest settings but a 6870 or similar would be a pretty good upgrade. I know the original phenoms were bad overclockers but if you could get it to 3ghz it would be beneficial. Another 2gb ram would be a big boost too.

I don;t think SLI is worth it with an older card like the 9800gt when you can get far more powerful single cards. You could sell your 9800gt for £25 and put it towards a better card.
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I've been playing SWTOR recently and I get very low fps in large areas and warzones, with lots going on I can drop down to <10fps and it becomes totally unplayable for me. Unfortunately I can't overclock my phenom because it's already running at 60c load, those stock coolers are terrible! Like you said it's also a bad overclocker and I haven't had much luck getting it over 2.8 anyway. :(

The only reason I thought about SLI is because I could just get a cheap 9800gt rather than going for a more expensive card. I doubt I could get a newer card along with some ram and I need the ram for the newer MMO's which I play a lot of.
 
Crossfire/SLI typically sees a larger CPU impact than an equivalent GPU. Also, SLIng that card and running it in modern games probably isn't the best idea.

My speculation would be, that in SWTOR at least I imagine that the cause of those slow downs is the CPU. Adding another card in SLI will just harm your overall FPS.

I'm not sure you could do with that budget. Personally I'd consider replacing that CPU with (for example) a second hand Phenom II 740 and buying a cheap aftermarket cooler to overclock it. The 9800gt isn't really THAT bad especially for a MMO. It definitely shouldn't have any problem on low settings. If you do that then you can later replace the 9800gt with something else.

Ram is probobally quite a big deal, honestly, considering you only have 2gb and you play MMOs. You may be able to get an additional 2 1gb sticks second hand for a reasonable price, bearing in mind that DDR2 is rather expensive.
 
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Daichin said:
Crossfire/SLI typically sees a larger CPU impact than an equivalent GPU. Also, SLIng that card and running it in modern games probably isn't the best idea.

My speculation would be, that in SWTOR at least I imagine that the cause of those slow downs is the CPU. Adding another card in SLI will just harm your overall FPS.

I'm not sure you could do with that budget. Personally I'd consider replacing that CPU with (for example) a second hand Phenom II 740 and buying a cheap aftermarket cooler to overclock it. The 9800gt isn't really THAT bad especially for a MMO. It definitely shouldn't have any problem on low settings. If you do that then you can later replace the 9800gt with something else.

Ram is probobally quite a big deal, honestly, considering you only have 2gb and you play MMOs. You may be able to get an additional 2 1gb sticks second hand for a reasonable price, bearing in mind that DDR2 is rather expensive.
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How would a Pnenom II X2 540 fair? Can't seem to find anything else in a similar price range. I could hopefully overclock that from 3 to 3.3/4.
 
Some of them unlock although I'm not sure what you can do with that motherboard. Without it unlocked, I'm pretty much certain that you'd be better off with the cpu you have, honestly.

I know they aren't brilliant overclockers but overclocking it is probably your best bet unless you have more money to spend. I haven't really heard of many that won't hit 3ghz (although often they won't go very much higher). I'm guessing you need better cooling.

You might be able to overclock that graphics card a little too, I guess?
 
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Daichin said:
Some of them unlock although I'm not sure what you can do with that motherboard. Without it unlocked, I'm pretty much certain that you'd be better off with the cpu you have, honestly.

I know they aren't brilliant overclockers but overclocking it is probably your best bet unless you have more money to spend. I haven't really heard of many that won't hit 3ghz (although often they won't go very much higher). I'm guessing you need better cooling.

You might be able to overclock that graphics card a little too, I guess?
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I guess my only option is to buy some better cooling and try to OC the CPU. When ever I tried I would blue screen with anything more than a 100mhz OC, which is nothing. I admit I'm pretty new to overclocking though. Already OCed the GPU by about 15%, didn't make much of a difference!
 
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Hey people, posting yet again! I was wondering if anyone could help me out with this. I was OCing different components to see if I would get an FPS increase so I could figure out what's bottlenecking. I was using SWTOR to test due to me being obsessed with the game ;) I overclocked my GPU from 600/1500/900 to 725/1650/975. I didn't see a performance difference at all. Even changing the game resolution from 1650x1280 to 1280x1024 and putting everything on low didn't really make a difference.

So I thought, must be the CPU! Even though it's already running hot I managed to get it to 3ghz from 2.6 to do a quick test. I still didn't notice a performance increase. This has left me to think that it's the 2gb ram that's causing most of my issues, it just isn't enough anymore. However when looking at the task manager I see that SWTOR is only using 1.2gb, Windows XP uses about 150mb, leaving 650mb of ram so it sounds like it's not the problem. Am I just not understanding how ram works? I'm not very knowledgeable on ram to be honest.

Thanks, sorry for the long and winded posts, I'm obsessed with getting old computers to run well!
 
Honestly, 3ghz vs 2.6ghz isn't huge and probably won't make that much of a difference.

Lack of ram tends to cause freezes and stuttering in my experience. More ram might help. Games typically just use as much ram as they can up to a point. An extra 2gb probably will help but not with low FPS, just overall smoothness.

If you want to find out what the bottleneck is, install MSI Afterburner and play a game for a bit. Alt tab out after a while and take a look at the graphs. If you have low GPU usage and high CPU usage then you have a CPU bottleneck.

When I had an Athlon 620 at stock it bottlenecked my HD5750 whilst playing WoW. That is a fairly similar situation.

MMO's rarely run well in situations with lots of players and enemies.
 
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Daichin said:
Honestly, 3ghz vs 2.6ghz isn't huge and probably won't make that much of a difference.

Lack of ram tends to cause freezes and stuttering in my experience. More ram might help. Games typically just use as much ram as they can up to a point. An extra 2gb probably will help but not with low FPS, just overall smoothness.

If you want to find out what the bottleneck is, install MSI Afterburner and play a game for a bit. Alt tab out after a while and take a look at the graphs. If you have low GPU usage and high CPU usage then you have a CPU bottleneck.

When I had an Athlon 620 at stock it bottlenecked my HD5750 whilst playing WoW. That is a fairly similar situation.

MMO's rarely run well in situations with lots of players and enemies.
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Interesting, my GPU is running at 100%. CPU is lower, around 40-70%. I thought after overclocking the GPU a decent amount and seeing zero performance increase that it wasn't the problem, now I'm not sure.
 
the 550ti is between a HD5770 and a GTX460 (but more towards a HD5770). The 6850 is between a 5830 and a 5850, so it is better. the 6850 is about on par with a GTX 460.

perfrel_1680.gif
 
ludakot said:
Interesting, my GPU is running at 100%. CPU is lower, around 40-70%. I thought after overclocking the GPU a decent amount and seeing zero performance increase that it wasn't the problem, now I'm not sure.
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Just to be sure, that is in laggy areas?

My recommendation would be:

OcUK ATI Radeon HD 6850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £107.99
(£89.99) £107.99
(£89.99)
Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
(£21.66) £25.99
(£21.66)
Sub Total : £111.65
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £24.08
Total : £144.48

That graphics card is the only one OCUK sell which is a fair bit better than the 9800gt. It's pretty much the only option. I added the Gelid Tranquillo although that makes it quite considerably over budget. If you can afford the Tranquillo as well, get it, because I imagine that overclocking your CPU will improve performance once you have a new graphics card.

It's interesting that SWTOR isn't CPU limited. Every single MMO I have played has been CPU limited in laggy areas on my old, fairly similar PC.

@Sasahara I used WoW as a comparison because it's well known.
 
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