8 replies to this topic

[Nurgle256]

My Phenom II X4 @3.6ghz runs at about 70% utility in the game on max settings with a 6970 Gfx card. My son has a HD 4770 running at 1024*768 on low settings and still has a low framerate to be jerky++. I noticed the CPU (Athlon II X2 at 2.8 Ghz) is maxed by the game. I have access to a Phenom X3 that will overclock to 2.3 Ghz. Does the assembled expertise think this extra core versus older architecture and 700 MHz loss will make for a better framerate?

Edited by Nurgle256, 09 December 2012 - 08:12 AM.

[Lyteros]

It wount. With the CryEngine 3 requirements no 4 year olt cpu / graphic card will work satisfying. Even if you upgrade the CPU to a way newer / better one, the graphic card will bottleneck everything and you have no change.

€dit: great, forum bugs and ate my edit...

You'd be better of investing 600-800 and get a relatively new rig, which will be fine for the next 1-3 years.
If you have something that old, "upgrading" will not help.

Edited by Lyteros, 09 December 2012 - 08:17 AM.

[StainlessSR]

It couldn't hurt to try (well it could if you do not have a secondary hard disk so you do not lose the setup you currently have). I would say give it a try, see how it does and please post and let us know. 2 cor vs 3 core you would be losing a little in cpu speed but gaining a whole extra core to run, so I would say you could lose about .25 the speed and still be comperable in performance going from 2 to 3 core (newer arch helps also, I am not informed in amd chips but logically you should see at lease some improvment)

[ho1mes]

I was running an Athlon II x2 260 @ 3.5GHz that struggled to run this game at 1280x1024 at low/med settings. Just upgrading to a quad core Phenom II x4 965 was a huge benefit. Running the CPU at stock (3.4GHz), but it's like night and day. I think the extra cores could be a benefit and the L3 cache on the phenoms. Either way, I say give it a shot. If you're able to overclock it the benefit would probably that much better too.

[ho1mes]

Previously I was getting 15-20+ average fps on mostly low settings. Now average 30 - 40 fps on high settings. Specs:

- AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE, 4GB RAM, AMD Radeon 7850 2GB, Win7x64

[MahKraah]

the phenoms do have generaly higher performence than their athlon counterparts per core.
in your case its questionable as you intend to replace a athlon2 with a phenom1 . in my experience athlon2 are roughly eaqual to phenom 1 in performance. but that phenom has one more core but slightly lower mhz.... difficult to say witch one will perform better. possibly the 3rd core will take care of the unavoidable backround processes and will make the game run better.
all in all the difference in performance will be verry small. sorry to say but with the current cpu hungry game it wont be enough.
3 cores and 3000 mhz i do considder as the lowest playable setting(phenom1) if it is a athlon2 it needs 3 cores and 3300 mhz.
the gfx card will work ok as long as you stay on lowest gfx settings, aka no effects whatsoever espechialy no aa!
upgrade the driver to catalyst 12.11 beta , its stable and makably improves performance over the last version.

[Nurgle256]

Gents, thanks for the replies. I think F9 brings up the fps counter, I'll have an experiment and report back.

[Nurgle256]

I have now swapped the dual core for an Athlon II X3 core (same Ghz). The phenom sadly was not socket compatible. However, the move from dual to triple core in the same architecture and speed makes an unplayable game playable. The CPU is using 66%, which I take to mean 2x maxed cores and 1x relatively idle. The overall performance charts at Tomshardware have the phenom X3 at about 400 points and the Athlon II X3 at around 700 at 2.9 Ghz. My guess is therefore that the phenom X3 would give a smoother framerate but likely below the cut off for playability.

[DisasterTheory]

Nurgle256, on 09 December 2012 - 08:11 AM, said:

My Phenom II X4 @3.6ghz runs at about 70% utility in the game on max settings with a 6970 Gfx card. My son has a HD 4770 running at 1024*768 on low settings and still has a low framerate to be jerky++. I noticed the CPU (Athlon II X2 at 2.8 Ghz) is maxed by the game. I have access to a Phenom X3 that will overclock to 2.3 Ghz. Does the assembled expertise think this extra core versus older architecture and 700 MHz loss will make for a better framerate?

The Phenom should be faster but the core clock being lower might make it a dead even tradeoff. You can spend 90 bucks on newegg for a 3.6Ghz Phenom II Quad and be dont with it. The 4770 however is a slug and would need replacedment aswell. You could get a 7770 Ghz edition with the Phenom quad and gain a ton of fps over your current hardware without spending a ton of cash.



Graphics card -- $124.00 http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814127664

CPU -- $99.00 http://www.newegg.co...N82E16819103727

Edited by BLOODREDSINGLE, 19 December 2012 - 10:11 AM.