Do I need to upgrade? (lost touch with components)

Clipsey

Clipsey

Clipsey

Soldato
Joined
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Near Windy City, USA
Fellas,

Built this system I wanna say 2years ago now and at the time it was certainly no world beater. This is a rig to play games on :) Over the past couple of years it has ran COD series and BFBC2 just perfectly (not maxed out - but still runs real smooth).
Question is, would a new graphics card or more RAM make it that much better?
Not looking to spend a whole lot (if any).
What do you guys think?
List:
Win XP
AMD Athlon X4 2.8ghz
ASUS M4A78 Plus mobo
MSI Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128bit
WD Caviar black 500gb 7200rpm
4GB RAm

Any tips or suggestions would be welcome.
Also, would it be a good idea to install Win7, or would that slow things down?

Thanks :cool:
 
If you have money to spend then yes your system is looking abit underpowered but if money is tight why don't you test the games you want to play on your system first and see how it plays them. You could always crossfire your graphics cards etc.
 
Yeah I was thinking of waiting (but you know how it goes - want to be ready!)
If I were to upgrade, what would be the first on the list?
 
1uke said:
If you have money to spend then yes your system is looking abit underpowered but if money is tight why don't you test the games you want to play on your system first and see how it plays them. You could always crossfire your graphics cards etc.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately his motherboard will only support X4 on the second PCI-E so Crossfire is out of the question.

Going to Windows 7 64-bit will mean you can utilise all 4GB as opposed to just 3GB with a 32-bit OS. So that would be a good upgrade. Increasing to 8GB wouldn't be worthwhile, games don't use more than 4GB at present.

Have you tried overclocking your CPU at all? If you can overclock to 3.5GHz your CPU shouldn't be holding you back and shouldn't be too much of a bottleneck for a higher end card.

Best upgrade you could do would be to get a new graphics card to boost gaming performance.

What make and model PSU do you have? Budget for upgrade.
 
Clipsey said:
Yeah I was thinking of waiting (but you know how it goes - want to be ready!)
If I were to upgrade, what would be the first on the list?
Click to expand...

I'n no expert but I would say upgrade your graphics card and overclock your cpu as much as you can safely and see if that gets you what you want. If that fails you can always take the graphics card with you to a total new build.
 
shadow_boxer said:
Going to Windows 7 64-bit will mean you can utilise all 4GB as opposed to just 3GB with a 32-bit OS. So that would be a good upgrade. Increasing to 8GB wouldn't be worthwhile, games don't use more than 4GB at present.
Click to expand...

I'm not convinced that's totally right as going from 4gb with lots of stuttering in games to 8gb with no stuttering helped me a lot with my resolution of 2560x1600.
 
shadow_boxer said:
Unfortunately his motherboard will only support X4 on the second PCI-E so Crossfire is out of the question.

Going to Windows 7 64-bit will mean you can utilise all 4GB as opposed to just 3GB with a 32-bit OS. So that would be a good upgrade. Increasing to 8GB wouldn't be worthwhile, games don't use more than 4GB at present.

Have you tried overclocking your CPU at all? If you can overclock to 3.5GHz your CPU shouldn't be holding you back and shouldn't be too much of a bottleneck for a higher end card.

Best upgrade you could do would be to get a new graphics card to boost gaming performance.

What make and model PSU do you have? Budget for upgrade.
Click to expand...
Think I'll have to have a look at overclocking CPU first off (is this easy?), then look to upgrade gfx - not really set a budget - if there is a decent card out there, I'll get one (to match the rest of my system)
Pretty sure I have a Rosewill 600w PSU.

1uke said:
I'n no expert but I would say upgrade your graphics card and overclock your cpu as much as you can safely and see if that gets you what you want. If that fails you can always take the graphics card with you to a total new build.
Click to expand...

As above I guess, seems most logical.
Then get more RAM and load Win7
Thanks chaps
 
1uke said:
I'n no expert but I would say upgrade your graphics card and overclock your cpu as much as you can safely and see if that gets you what you want. If that fails you can always take the graphics card with you to a total new build.
Click to expand...

+1 to this. Exactly what I am doing. Just ordered a 560ti to give my system a boost. Then I can do a full upgrade if I see fit later next year. When the new series of graphics cards will be out for ATI and Nvidia
 
I was surprised how well my 2yr old build handled bf3 beta. So I'm also waiting for next gen stuff now. But hoping to get a full water setup case setup and ready for it ;-)
 
Just used AMD Overdrive, and I think I cranked it up a little? Seemed far too easy :p
Went from 2800mhz to 3017mhz - didn't really mess with anything else as I'm unsure.
You guys recommend anything? Can probably crank it higher?
 
Rather than doing it from AMD overdrive, go into the BIOS and change it from there. Just as simple but often it is more stable.

What CPU cooler are you using. Even with the stock cooler and reasonable airflow you should be able to hit 3.2-3.4GHz.

Download a programme to monitor temperatures (realtemp/coretem/hwmonitor).

Download and run Prime95, run it for a four hours (minimum) whilist monitoring temps to make sure the overclock is stable.
 
Ok thanks Shadow, I'll try that later tonight.
That Overdrive seemed to work pretty easy and well, my benchmarking improved loads :)
Currently at 3.2 (I think lol) but will have a look at the BIOS later.

Cheers
 
Like shadow boxer said keep an eye on your processors core temps. I use hwmonitor software. Not suure what max temps are for your chip but im guessing anything over 70c is getting abit to hot?
 
Tested o/c'ing a bit in the BIOS, going from CPU frequency 200 to 240 - was not stable and wouldn't boot into windows (went from 2.8 to 3.3ghz). Currently at 215 (3.01ghz) and is fine. Pretty sure I'm not doing it right though, as when I use AMD Overdrive, goes up to 3.2ghz easy and stable?
 
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