Upgrade for Black Ops

Evil-I

Evil-I

Evil-I

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Joined
20 Apr 2003
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Gloucestershire
HI All,

A friend of mine is struggling with black ops, apparently frame rate is painful even at lower than native screen res.

His spec is:

ATI Radeon 3800 series gfx card
4 g of ram
AMD Athlon 7850 dual core processor
Motherboard is a ASUS M4A78L-M
Windows 7 32bit

Any thoughts as to what is the main issue? I'm not familiar with AMD cpu's these days so no idea whther thats the problrem, I'd say his gfx card is definitely due an upgrade.

Any advice appreciated (I think his wife is offering to spend some pennies to upgrade for his xmas present). And no, I've no idea what thier budget is, I'd say probably £300 max.

Ta,

E-I
 
graphics card :) dont need to spend 300£ notes but maybe a new PSU to make sure its powered properly but something like a gtx460 will probably be more than enough
 
As your motherboard is socket AM2+, I'd get yourself a newer processor like the X4 640 (or 630, or whatever's in stock/cheapest).

The GTX 460 is a beast of a card so you won't be disappointed there, and obviously as you say I'd check the PSU. Almost certainly worth an upgrade there though, as it's within budget.
 
Evil-I said:
Thanks for the replies,

So if I suggested:
Quad core CPU
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-227-AM&tool=3
and
New gfx Card
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-242-AS

And just check if his PSU is butch enough for the job?

Thanks,

E-I
Click to expand...

That Phenom is rubbish, don't go for that. The Athlon X4's are much better as the first gen Phenoms were bad. The Graphics card choice is good tho. What Power supply has your friend got? Make and wattage.
 
I would wait man for the patch for black ops to be released. Black ops is a very heavy CPU game. Although you might need a new graphics card, it say wait for the dual core patch to be released, see if it gets any better.

I would recommend a new cpu not just for black ops but other games too and maybe a cheap gpu, My HD5670 runs black ops fine along with a E6850 CPU @ 3.6ghz. I do have stutter now and again and my fps is only 60-80 but it works :)

PS: if your fps is that bad, try dual booting a copy of windows xp and see if it helps, a lot of users have posted some very high FPS gained (40-50fps increase) over using xp to in 7
 
Last edited:
Zaim said:
That Phenom is rubbish, don't go for that. The Athlon X4's are much better as the first gen Phenoms were bad. The Graphics card choice is good tho. What Power supply has your friend got? Make and wattage.
Click to expand...

Power supply is an OCZ 600watt, so unless he's got 12 hard drives instralled in this machine (which I'm checking). He should be okay.

I'll check out the Athlon X4's

Thanks for the advice,

E-I
 
Zaim said:
That Phenom is rubbish, don't go for that. The Athlon X4's are much better as the first gen Phenoms were bad.
Click to expand...

X4's are socket AM3, his mobo is AM2+? I'm not familiar with the AMD CPU range these days, my last AMD CPU was a Athlon XP Barton but I'm guessing an AM3 CPU is not going to work in an AM2+ motherboard?

Thanks,

E-I
 
Evil-I said:
X4's are socket AM3, his mobo is AM2+? I'm not familiar with the AMD CPU range these days, my last AMD CPU was a Athlon XP Barton but I'm guessing an AM3 CPU is not going to work in an AM2+ motherboard?

Thanks,

E-I
Click to expand...

Hi mate, just checked the asus Cpu support list for the ASUS M4A78L-M it supports all the current am3 cpus apart from the X6 1100T, it will require a bios update depending on what cpu you get (I'd do it before you install the new one).

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

That power supply is fine mate :)
 
Last edited:
Zaim said:
Hi mate, just checked the asus Cpu support list for the ASUS M4A78L-M it supports all the current am3 cpus apart from the X6 1100T, it will require a bios update depending on what cpu you get (I'd do it before you install the new one).

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

That power supply is fine mate :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for that mate,

Looks like the x4 is definately the way to go then. I';ll pass that on!

Best,

E-I
 
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