13 replies to this topic

[Slicer]

Hi all! I recently bought a new computer with all the bells and whistles (I5 3750k, 660 TI, 16 gb ram, SSD, i want 60 fps *********!) to replace my tough old 4 1/2 year old gal. When I first started playing back in mid Nov it actually had a tough time running MWO despite having all settings set to min as well as dropping res to as low as possible where heavy combat gives me 15-20 fps and constantly crashing left and right from mem leaks. The last coupla patches however have been a godsend in stability and performance and i miraculously got a 5-10 fps jump in heavy combat as well as being able to raise the res a coupla notches.

I was about to send my old computer off to pasture (donate it to my office to be a glorified word processor), but then i thought, "hey i can keep this old girl at home and have LAN parties, and not let my grimy employees download all sorts of viruses like my other poor donated computers." So I bring this question to you. I just spent a big ol chunk of money on my new gaming rig (round $1250), but i want to upgrade my old comp for as little as possible. I come here begging for your collective wisdom.

Here are her specs

OS - Microsoft Windows XP 32- bit SP3
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 45 nm technology
Mobo - Gigabyte EP43-DS3L (Socket 775)
RAM - 4 gigs DDR2 800 mhz dual channel
GPU - Geforce GTX 260 896 mb vid ram
HDD - 320 GB Western Digital prolly 5400 rpm
PSU - 650 i think, this is the newest part since i had to replace a burned out one 3 years back
Cooling - I've got a after market cooler, dont remember what, but my comp runs 30-32c on idle

Yea its parts are a wee bit old. Had a blast in 08-10 but obviously the march of tech goes on. Regret not getting a DDR3 compatible mobo but back at the time my tech savvy friend put everything together sans peripherals and monitor super cheap for under 850. DDR2 RAM is still so expensive why is that outdated stuff so expensive when DDR3 is out and fewer people are buying ddr2 for their comps. However i might still spring for another 4 gigs if it'll give me a big boost.

Haha still remember back in the day my friend telling me 4 gigs of ram and 320 gig hdd is more than enough, hehe.

[Eyecon69]

Hi,

I have a pretty similar setup. I did buy pretty good components when I bought mine years ago. But I have the E8500 with the Nforce 780i Board. I have a way bigger power supply (as I have about 4 hard drives in it plus other stuff I run sometimes) I have 4 gigs of SLI certified ram, and I am running 2 460GTX's. I run three screens at 5 somin by 1080 I only have medium resolution but it does me just fine.

I seriously think just upgrading your Video cards will limp you along for some time yet.

And as a side note I remember a guy at the computer store back in the day telling me if I had too much ram it would be bad for my computer... after all who would ever use 16 MEGABYTES of ram...

[Loc Nar]

Putting a faster HD and clocking up your processor is probably the only noticeable performance increases you could squeeze out of this puter without spending money unwisely.

[Slicer]

So far the top 4 idea popping around in my head in order of doing...

Buy 4 more gigs of DDr2 800 ram (60ish after tax)
Overclock the heck out of the CPU (never done OCing before and fear of burning everything to the crisp)
Buy a new 7200 RPM 1TB HDD (also 60ish after tax)
Buy a new 460 GTX or Radeon 7850 GPU (both around 160ish after tax)

Am i missing anything else, in regards to simple solutions. I'm thinking the GPU option is out since its too much and looking at benchmarks the gtx260 aint so bad in comparison to the budget cards of today, heck i got that thing for 170ish 3 years ago!

[Demoned]

i run this game on one GTX460, i don't seem to have any problems running the
game on medium settings, but it will crash if i put anything onto a high setting


atm I'd say you couldn't go wrong with the GTX460 good strong card still.

[Juicebox12]

That processor will clock to 3.8-4 ghz with good air cooling. That and a newer video card would keep it able to play most modern stuff at decent settings. as for a cheap video card to limp along maybe a 7850 or 7870.

[Flapdrol]

Slicer, on 08 February 2013 - 12:17 PM, said:

So far the top 4 idea popping around in my head in order of doing...

Buy 4 more gigs of DDr2 800 ram (60ish after tax)
Overclock the heck out of the CPU (never done OCing before and fear of burning everything to the crisp)
Buy a new 7200 RPM 1TB HDD (also 60ish after tax)
Buy a new 460 GTX or Radeon 7850 GPU (both around 160ish after tax)

Am i missing anything else, in regards to simple solutions. I'm thinking the GPU option is out since its too much and looking at benchmarks the gtx260 aint so bad in comparison to the budget cards of today, heck i got that thing for 170ish 3 years ago!

Only the overclocking will help with performance in MWO. In other more gpu heavy games you might get performance from upgrading the gpu.

Wouldn't get more memory, 4GB is fine for such a system, besides, you're not even using it all on 32bit windows.

[Torquemada]

Install a 64bit OS otherwise you're computer isn't using most of the RAM you already have. Basically given you have a 856MB GPU and 4GB RAM, your computer actually only has ~1.2GB of RAM which will be causing a lot of the issues you're seeing. A 32bit OS like you're using can only use ~2GB RAM in total, and that means adding up GPU and physical RAM. 64bit OS's can in theory address TB of RAM, although in reality depending on the version, such as the basic Home Windows 7, can only address 8GB, while others like Ultimate 7 or Windows 8 can effectively address all the RAM you have.

Also for the OS, Windows XP cannot use all of the features modern games and hardware can use. You really must get Windows 7 or 8 to make better use of your machine.

[Slicer]

Alright, after doing a bit more research as well as collecting from the community's wisdom, how about this course of action.

1. Open it up, clean everything out real well, apply new coat of thermal paste
2. Install Win7 64 bit so it can support upto 8 gigs of RAM
3. Buy a 2 gig stick of DDR2 800 ram to stack with my existing 4 gigs (plus my GPU ram thats up to 7 gigs) for bout 30 bucks
4. Learn how to OC and see how far i can go without burning out my computer
5. Buy 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD for 70ish bucks
6. Look to buy a gtx 470 or radeon 7850 somewhere cheap or used

Taking all of these steps. I'll be spending a coupla hundred bucks easy, but i should be able to run the game on high with good FPS without too much issue? Also i think i can extend the effective gaming life of this computer by about two years as well (IE run everything new on dirt low).

Is this an intelligent course of action or what would you do differently?

Another thing to ponder. I recently bought a GTX 660 TI video card for my new rig.... i could potentially return that card, get the GTX 470/7850 for temporary use until the next gen of vid cards come out for me to plop into my newer rig which i would then swap into my old rig. Would that be a clever use of resources or am i overthinking things? I'm delaying some high FPS and detail gratification, but i could use that 470/7850 to hold me over until the newer stuff comes out, and still get some good use out of it by putting it into my old gal.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Before overclocking it, get a semi decent CPU cooler to keep the temperature down, also if the PSU is aging check out its output to make sure it'll still give stable performance after overclocking.
Upgrading the HDD would be the lowest priority for me, stable FPS is going to depend more on getting more performance from that CPU.

Edited by DV McKenna, 10 February 2013 - 04:50 AM.

[Sen]

https://www.overclockers.com/forums/

http://www.overclock.net/

Here are some forums to help you get started in the wonderful world of overclocking. On the bright side, the chance of "burning something up" is almost nonexistent as long as you haven't mis-applied thermal paste or other hardware misfortune.

http://www.cpuid.com.../hwmonitor.html

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/

http://www.xtremesys...testing-program


Above are linked a temp monitoring program [Hwmonitor] and two stress testing programs [Prime95 and Intel Burn test] these are used to make sure an overclock is stable, and to make sure your temperatures are in range.

https://www.overcloc...ad.php?t=515316

http://ark.intel.com...Hz-1333-MHz-FSB

Lastly I've linked a beginner's overclocking guide to C2D/C2Q, as well as the engineering specs of the E8500 CPU. Hopefully that should be enough to get you started

As far as parts go, however, I'm not sure how much additional performance gain you'd see with that cpu in MwO. If you've got other uses for the machine, however, it's still possible to breathe new life into it. I CANNOT STATE ENOUGH HOW A SIMPLE SSD UPGRADE CAN IMPROVE SYSTEM RESPONSE. It might not give you playable frames in MwO, but it'll definitely make the machine feel a lot newer and more modern [I cannot stress the convenience of near non-existent load times]

Best of luck ^^

Edited by Sen, 10 February 2013 - 06:05 AM.

[Badconduct]

OS - Microsoft Windows XP 32- bit SP3

This won't run more than 3.5 gigs of RAM= Need to go 64 bit.

Upgrade to Windows 7 should increase performance, and drop a DX11 era card in there. The 2XX series weren't all that great IMHO, I skipped those. 4XX - 6XX are a huge leap in tech. You can probably get an ATI 69XX for around ~$100, or a low end 5XX card (550) for cheap.

Don't overclock unless you have the RAM for it.
http://www.geforce.c...0ti/performance

Edited by Badconduct, 10 February 2013 - 12:36 PM.

[Badconduct]

Slicer, on 08 February 2013 - 12:17 PM, said:

So far the top 4 idea popping around in my head in order of doing...

Buy 4 more gigs of DDr2 800 ram (60ish after tax)
Overclock the heck out of the CPU (never done OCing before and fear of burning everything to the crisp)
Buy a new 7200 RPM 1TB HDD (also 60ish after tax)
Buy a new 460 GTX or Radeon 7850 GPU (both around 160ish after tax)

Am i missing anything else, in regards to simple solutions. I'm thinking the GPU option is out since its too much and looking at benchmarks the gtx260 aint so bad in comparison to the budget cards of today, heck i got that thing for 170ish 3 years ago!

In this order.

1. Go to 64 bit (7/8) OS (before doing anything else)
2. Get a 460 or equal. It will be a boost in modern games.
3. Overclock (if the motheboard allows it) the FBS or Multiplier a small amount, like 10% but don't change the voltages. It won't fry if you don't adjust voltage, it'll just shut off or lock up.
4. Format the drive and remove anything that isn't a game. Stop all background programs, stop all launch programs.

Upgrading the Hard drive won't improve the Frame Rates, just the load times when accessing harddrive information. Most of it will be in the RAM when playing.

[Marcus Barton]

This is something to follow up on, a good guide to upgrading old comps.

Edited by Marcus Barton, 11 February 2013 - 05:33 PM.