My Mysterious Gaming Rig

Sharpy42

Sharpy42

Sharpy42

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Joined
10 Jan 2010
Posts
40
Hey guys, I was wondering if you could help me out with something. Ive got a good system that I paid a lot for about 2 years ago, I upgraded the graphics card from a Geforce 8800 to a ATI 4800 Series last year and Upgraded the Ram to 4gig 1.3 ghz speed from 2 gig 800mhz but my games still run at a very average performance.
I need to put left for dead to all the lowest settings to just get a steady 60fps and this dips to 30 in the hotel fire lobby, modern warfare 2 is perfectly smooth (on all low settings) apart from a few places on certain maps where it drops to about 15 for no apparent reason. I just got the global Agenda beta and its only smooth on all the lowest settings. This really shouldnt be happening with my current system.

AMD PHENOM™ X4 9600 (2.3GHz) 4 x 512K L2 Cache (Socket AM2+)
Radeon ATI 4800 Series
4gig Ram 1.3 ghz
SATA 80gig HD 7200 RPM Western Digital
ASUS M2N32-SLI DELUXE: DUAL DDR2, S-ATA II, 2 x PCI-Ex, 2 x PCI
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic 7.1
700W Quiet Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
ASUS SILENT KNIGHT II PURE COPPER ULTRA COOLER

Ive overclocked the graphics card by about 15% and the processor by 10% and everything still runs very average or smooth only on low graphics. Ive got all the updated drivers, latest direct x etc etc as ive been PC gaming for about 10 years so i know a fair bit. But this has me stumped.

For windows performance index it gets the following

Processor 7.1
RAM 7.2
Graphics 6.8
Gaming gfx 6.8
Primary HD 5.7

This is decent? Anyway I was wondering if anyone knows a solution to this, or failing that whats the main piece of hardware i should replace on the system? I was considering an upgrade to a 3.40ghz quadcore black edition.

Anyway thanks in advance for the help! :D
 
At a glance i would say the CPU is the problem, i'd definitely look at buying maybe a 940BE (AM2+) as these can be picked up for under £120 if you shop around.
 
:o there is something up with that system it is underpreforming very badly , i have a worse system than that and play most/all games at high res and settings.
 
When you next launch the game, CTRL+ALT+DEL out to bring up the Tasl Manager, find the application name, right click and click "Set Affinity..." and only tick one of the boxes then try playing the game. If that is causing problems look in the ingame Options menu for Multi-Core Rendering (or words to similar effect, can't remember exactly what it is) and try enabling / disabling that and see how you get on. :)
 
Well what resolution are you running at?

And when you say 4800 series? Which one, because you get the 4850 and 4870.
 
Running at 1024 Resolution, its an 4870. Multicore rendering is on for all games, when its off.... eugh its horrid! In the catalyst control panel, everything is set to Performance too.

No viruses, its been like this continuously since even before a fresh windows 7 install 2 months ago.

So a faster HD and perhaps an upgrade to a new MB and Athlon x4 phemon 3.40 black edition, the graphics card and ram are okay? Hmm money is tight, what do you think is the most limiting factor? HD or CPU?

Btw thanks for all the replies!
 
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Whoever says the CPU is limiting him has no idea. It's good enough, you can play pretty much any game up to date fine with 3ghz dual core.

Either must be messed up OS or some faulty bits.

Easy way to check up if its CPU just bring up task manager while gaming and see if the cores are used, I doubt they will be used more than at 60% tbh.

Fiddle a bit with different FSB / timings for cpu/mem, try bumping up volts a bit more and see how that works. Also do a full memtest and other stres tests to check out temps etc.

This rig can't be holding you back, it's not an option. NOT ON THAT RES. You can play that res on 3870 with e2200... and that's like half slower.
 
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