Some advice needed

akount · 22 May 2010 at 08:45

Hello, i'm wondering if anyone can give me some advice. I recently bought a Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1GB, but have been getting pretty low FPS in all games. I don't know if this normal, but playing games which have a lot going on around me seem to lower the fps by a massive amount. I was thinking this was due to my old AMD Dual Core 4200+ socket 939 CPU/Motherboard, and only 1.5gb DDR RAM.

I'm confused on if it's the old specs holding my new card back.. or if it's just the card itself (Pretty confused, since I thought the 5770 was a pretty decent card). I'm willing to upgrade to an AM3/DDR3 setup.. or possibly just a AM2/DDR2 setup, but I only have around £150 (max) to spend.. which would be the CPU/Motherboard/RAM. Any advice is appreciated, thanks

akount · 22 May 2010 at 20:21

anyone?

stulid · 22 May 2010 at 20:27

its the old components, was in a similar situation early last year, with a GTX260, AMD 3800X2, 4gb ram.

once I changed to a phenom 955, new motherboard and 4gb DDR3, it was like unshackling the graphics card, everything was HUGELY improved.

luckily for you, your old 4200X2 CPU and other parts fetch good money on ebay.

the price the chips sell for may surprise you, so you can afford to spend more.

Redmint · 22 May 2010 at 20:35

Which games do you play? Doing an AM3 upgrade on £150 is pretty tricky unless you go for the budget end dual core (Athlon 245) and 2GB RAM.

cmndr_andi · 22 May 2010 at 20:38

luckily for you, your old 4200X2 CPU and other parts fetch good money on ebay.

He speaketh the truth! s939 stuff sells really well - it may even be possible to fund the CPU and motherboard upgrade (AMD Athlon II X2, AM3 760G board) just using the money made from selling the new stuff (unfortunately both DDR2 and DDR3 RAM are now insanely priced - so you would need to spend some of your own money on that). If you want to get a quad core like a Phenom II X4 955, a decent AM3 board and 4GB DDR3 RAM - you may well be able to do it with your £150 and the money you make from the sale of your old kit.

Out of interest, what is the make/model of your motherboard?

akount · 22 May 2010 at 21:41

The motherboard is an Asrock 939NF6G-VSTA.. and i'm surprised to see the old 4200+ x2 still selling pretty good, perhaps it would be wise for me to sell them.. and fund a new CPU/Motherboard instead. I'm into gaming, but not on the 'extreme' scale, just mediocre. A basic 2GB RAM and a dual core would satisfy me.. just as long as I get rid of this stuttering in the games, which hopefully it would. Thanks for the replies guys.

stulid · 22 May 2010 at 21:48

akount said:
The motherboard is an Asrock 939NF6G-VSTA.. and i'm surprised to see the old 4200+ x2 still selling pretty good, perhaps it would be wise for me to sell them.. and fund a new CPU/Motherboard instead. I'm into gaming, but not on the 'extreme' scale, just mediocre. A basic 2GB RAM and a dual core would satisfy me.. just as long as I get rid of this stuttering in the games, which hopefully it would. Thanks for the replies guys.

get the CPU, motherboard and ram up in the auction site asap.

then come back with your new budget, but 4gb of ram is almost a minimum these days, and many games love quad core cpus.