i5 system bottleneck

Joe P · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:37

I've been itching for a small upgrade for a while now but not too sure what to do first. My last upgrade was a 60Gb OCZ SSD which imo was probably the biggest waste of £120 so far. But less of that..

Basically i was wondering where the bottleneck is in my system, i.e do i need to OC my CPU / GPU or buy more RAM etc.

My system is in my sig

Thanks for looking

EDIT: every component is as it came out the box, completely std.

matt1 · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:43

I think the key question here is what do you do most that causes your system to "bottleneck".

RJC · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:44

Your system is pretty good as is, you could overclock your cpu to 4ghz and add another 5850, need to check your motherboard for speed on the PCI-E slots.

Sorry to hear you were disappointed with your SSD, using that in on my system and pretty pleased with it.

Edit:

What motherboard are you using, as the one in your sig is socket 775 and I assume your using the i5 760?

Liampope · 26 Jan 2011 at 20:46

Very similar to my spec minus the SSD, and I certainly experience nothing I'd call a bottleneck. Pretty well balanced system for gaming. Give more details of your 'bottleneck'.

Joe P · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:14

sorry for the lack of info. im not sure what motherboard it is (im at work so cant look

) heres a pic if that helps

my system can play most of the games i want to play at full apart from the naval battles in Napoleon TW. also fallout NV stutters a bit on max.

i appologise for the crap explaination but it seems like my system only needs a little push to play these games on full with a good frame rate. so what i wanted to know is my GPU to blame or the CPU or RAM or is it the whole lot.

i was going to buy a new CPU cooler more RAM or a new GPU cooler but atm cant afford them all so would like to know which component is slowing me down the most.

hope this helps you help me

EDIT: its only really used for games and internet i'd just like the games i play to run a little bit smoother

EDIT 2: thought i should mention i play on a 22" TFT @ ???? x 1050 through VGA and on occasions i play through 37" @ 1080p

Mick-1965 · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:26

Your board looks like an Asus P7P55D and you should easily get 3.8 to 4.0 GHz with that combination and a good cooler something like this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-005-PL&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395.

Should give a healthy boos in games.

Liampope · 26 Jan 2011 at 21:45

Ew get rid of that stock CPU cooler and overclock to 4GHz - that'll help most. GPU stock cooler is fine really (that's all I have and see my overclock in sig) for a bit of GPU overclocking if you still want more.

Joe P · 26 Jan 2011 at 23:22

Mick-1965 said:
Your board looks like an Asus P7P55D and you should easily get 3.8 to 4.0 GHz with that combination and a good cooler something like this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-005-PL&groupid=701&catid=57&subcat=1395.

Should give a healthy boos in games.

Liampope said:
Ew get rid of that stock CPU cooler and overclock to 4GHz - that'll help most. GPU stock cooler is fine really (that's all I have and see my overclock in sig) for a bit of GPU overclocking if you still want more.

so if i buy and fit a CPU cooler is it easy enough to do myself without blowing out up. Im not too sure what you mean liam

Liampope · 27 Jan 2011 at 19:20

Yep easy enough to overclock the CPU yourself once you've got a decent cooler. If you've not done it before search out a few guides/videos, look in the CPU or overclocking sections here, and maybe start your own thread.

Sorry - the point I was making above was that you can overclock your GPU on the stock cooler. That's what most people would do. I was referring to my sig as that reveals my 5850 runs at 975MHz core and 1275MHz memory, which is about a 30% overclock, on the stock cooler. Just requires tweaking the fan speed settings to keep it cool. I'm lucky - my 5850 is a good example to clock that high - your experience may differ slightly.