Upgrade questions

oxygene

oxygene

oxygene

Soldato
Joined
20 Aug 2004
Posts
3,115
Location
Bournemouth
Ok its time to show I'm an idiot when it comes to hardware lol. my spec is below:

amd x2 6000 (3.2ghz)
6gb ddr2
1gb radeon HD 4890

A bunch of games are running really sluggishly atm for me. Things have been slowing down for a while but stuff like Splinter Cell Conviction really hammered it home to me. Mainly the games I play are FPS, and stuff like Anno and Wow. Now the latter 2 have majorly slow loading times and stuff like Conviction lags ingame when loading new content on the fly.
I'm thinking this is more down to my aging cpu then to something like the graphics. I am seriously considering shortly buying the AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 965 Black Edition 3.40GHz. Its a real beauty and will more then double my current cpu power. And yes its compatible with my mobo and only £150. So what I was wondering is, is there another upgrade that would help me out as much as this will?

I'm also considering raiding my games drive, 2x sata 500gb, but not sure how much it will help.
 
Heheh. well its not really saving if I lose 200mhz!
Oh forgot to add. I have a Tuniq Tower to slap on top of it too. So will likely want to OC a bit.
 
How come? Is it a better clocker? Is it the same cpu but lower clocked for extra value? Is it a better revision of the brand? Cmon convince me lol.
 
overclocking with the black edition cpus is ridiculously easy, your hardly losing 200mhz.

because they have an unlocked multiplier, it takes all of 4 seconds to enter the BIOS, increase the multiplier by 1, and bingo 965 for 955 price.

i done it.
 
Well I'm convinced! Lol. Gonna grab that one and save a few quid. I take it people agree that the cpu is my major bottleneck?
 
Sweet, thanks. Sometimes in games I cant tell what where the bottleneck is. Although tbh fair it is usually loading times and new content appearing that kill it. Just wish there was a nice program that shows on a graph your total graphics card usage or soemthing. We can already see ram and cpu usage!
 
now totally looking forward to the cpu upgrade. Just been playing conviction with the cpu graph on the other screen and its definately the limiting factor. Stays around 90% the whole time and loadsing new areas gets to 100% and slows to a juttering crawl for several seconds.
Curious though as the AM3 is designed for DDR3 and ofc this mobo is DDR2 but still able to use it. Curious as to how much of a performance difference there is between 2 and 3 on the same system.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom