What to upgrade for better gaming

neoglow

neoglow

neoglow

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Joined
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Hey everyone, Im looking at upgrading the spec of my pc but Im a little lost as to what to upgrade exactly to gain the best performance increase for a gaming machine.

Heres the spec at the mo...

Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 2.40Ghz
Stock Heatsink / Fan
Corsair XMS2 6400 800mhz 2Gb RAM
XFX nVidia 8600 GTS 256MB
Asus P5N32 SLI Mobo
Viewsonic 6:10 Widescreen TFT

I recently bought some games that arent exactly 'new titles' - for example Flatout Ultimate Carnage and Mercenaries 2 - and was suprised to find the machine struggled with the high levels of detail and a high resolution. I thought my machine is 'quite' a high spec and have had to resort to lesser quality detail and lower resolutions to get any decent frames per sec. I know its not just the hardware on a pc, but also the software, bios setup and what settings are enabled in the game but its nice to install a game and whack everything to max and it still plays smooth as silk - for example Farcry 1 runs brilliantly on max everything, yes its an older game now but I at least thought my machine could cope a little more with the other titles.

I need your advice in what to upgrade exactly to see the biggest FPS gains, for example, would doubling my RAM to 4Gb do much? Changing the gfx card or changing the CPU to a Quad core which my Mobo does support. It would be easy to say upgrade all the parts but I just wondered if I could boost the machines performance without busting the bank.

Any help would be much appreciated.

M.
 
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whats your budget?

Fristly 2 gb more of ram would be a gd idea

Secondly on most games you wont notice any increase by chnaging your cpu.
Try overclocking it to say 3ghz

The biggest boost will be from upgrading your grapics, this will be budget & psu & res depentant
but most likly a 4850/70
 
Purely as a guess figure, budget around £250 - £300 I'd say.

Interesting what you say about not needing to upgrade the CPU.

Doubling the RAM was going to be my first step I think, just wanted to confirm it would make a good games performance increase.

Am I right in thinking that when it comes to games, as the gfx card does all the game rendering, would a system that had a top notch very expensive gfx card card but an entry level system CPU, games would run pretty well cos the gfx card is doing all the work?

Cant remember what the PSU is but think its a good reliable one based upon reviews on this forum.

M.
 
Change the graphics card would be the priority. An extra 2Gb of ram is'nt going to make anywhere near as big a difference as a new card. Then get that E6600 clocked. It should easily hit 3.2 ghz and maybe even 3.6Ghz if you are lucky.
 
4 Steps:

1) Upgrade gfx to HD4870 (easy in a budget of £250)

2) Invest in good aftermarket cooler for your CPU (you haven't listed as having one)

3) Add another 2Gb RAM (make sure its exactly the same as your current ram)

4) Overclock your CPU
 
Thanks guys, have been tinkering with the CPU overclock in the BIOS. Im new to this overclocking game, all I have done - following a guide on the net to overclocking an E6600 on an Asus P5N32 SLI Mobo - is change the FSB from 1066 to 1333. Resulting clock speed was 3.0Ghz spot on according to the Bios. It seems stable, volts and temps were fine with the stock heat sink and fan. Should I change anything else?

Should the memory clocks be exactly the stated figure for the RAM, the Corsair XMS2 6400 2Gb RAM is rated at 800Mhz.

Any other tips for overclocking a Asus P5N32 SLI Mobo in the Bios would be much appreciated.

This is probably going to be an age old argument.....ATI vs nVidia, you have all recommended an ATI card (the 4850/70) Any reason for this?

Thanks guys.
 
price for performance Ati wins in the range you are looking. a 4850 or 4870 will be a huge upgrade for you, personally i think if gaming at 1680x1050 or under a 4850 will be perfectly sufficient.

that's a pretty basic overclock for a 6600 but with a stock cooler try leaving it at that and just add a 4850 + 2gb ram.

fyi i'm running a e4300 @3.2ghz with a 4850 on that mobo. i just leave ram in auto linked mode while o'clocking (4gig) and on a 1680x1050 I can play pretty much every game at very high settings.
 
Buy:

An Akasa 965
4850 512MB
2x1GB PC6400 RAM kit

Then OC your CPU to 3ghz (it'll manage much more than this but 3ghz is a nice figure to aim at for your first OC) and enjoy a much more capable gaming rig for a mere ~£170. No need to spend any more than that really.
 
DanH84 said:
i just leave ram in auto linked mode while o'clocking (4gig) and on a 1680x1050 I can play pretty much every game at very high settings.
Click to expand...

When the RAM is in Auto Linked Mode for 3.0ghz, the resulting memory clock speed is 1000mhz - 1ghz, 200mhz over the stated 800. Would this be stable under load?
 
neoglow said:
When the RAM is in Auto Linked Mode for 3.0ghz, the resulting memory clock speed is 1000mhz - 1ghz, 200mhz over the stated 800. Would this be stable under load?
Click to expand...

Depends on the RAM but more than likely not. Just set your memory multiplier to "1:1" (or 2.0 as it may be in your BIOS) whilst overclocking and then look into boosting the RAM speed once you've got a stable CPU overclock.
 
neoglow said:
following a guide on the net to overclocking an E6600 on an Asus P5N32 SLI Mobo - is change the FSB from 1066 to 1333. Resulting clock speed was 3.0Ghz spot on according to the Bios. It seems stable, volts and temps were fine with the stock heat sink and fan. Should I change anything else?
Click to expand...

As long as its stable no need to change anything else but the FSB :)

If you want it higher you will need to increase the volts on it, thats when stock coolers stop being adequite to keep it cool.

I have never pushed harder then just needing vots/FSB changes so cant help you after that :p

Nice good quick OC btw ;)
 
ukbrainstew said:
Depends on the RAM but more than likely not. Just set your memory multiplier to "1:1" (or 2.0 as it may be in your BIOS) whilst overclocking and then look into boosting the RAM speed once you've got a stable CPU overclock.
Click to expand...

Ive set the mem multiplier to 1:1 but the resulting figure still says 1000mhz. It seems stable in games. I went for:

Sapphire ATI 4870 512mb
Corsair 2x2gb 6400c4 dhx RAM (stock settings are 4-4-4-12, better than my previous 2x1gb 5-5-5-18)

What a difference it makes!!! In Mercenaries 2, full detail, 8x AA, 1680x1050 bar the 'Water Effects' enabled cos that just kills the frame rate. Runs as smooth as silk, brilliant! Gona try Farcry2 and Crysis now!

M.
 
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