Upgrading CPU Questions

[Cry Havoc]

Exactly, but I think the whole insane framerate notion is dumb. Its gets to a certain point where differentiating level of gameplay is not possible.Technically everything over 60 frames will will appear as smooth as anything, but as you play graphically intense games like Crysis it is nearly impossible to maintain a stable framerate, which is why you watch all the intense gamers try to set records for fps.


This is on high res / max settings with 9800GX2 QUAD SLI. Now that is just about the epitome of graphical power which I'm sure most people won't need.

I don't think the OP is in that category though. From what it sounds like, he has a pretty old system and needs an upgrade to even achieve basic playable framerates.

I'm in agreement with you, per say, but keep in mind that even that quad SLI rig will probably not be able to play games at full detail/resolution in 2010. Systems get old, and high framerates are a way of assuring that your PC is future-proofed. If I can crank out high FPS on today's games with maximum detail, I know that I'm probably set for the next generation of les as well.

[MajorMike]

This is everything I bought. I chose newegg because of a combo of cheapest overall price in conjunction with shipping and good return policy.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150352
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139009
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820161161
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103228
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835103050
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835150007

I hope the PSU fits and the chip is compatable.

[sook]

Bravo on your gfx card! Thats a beast but I really wish you would make the switch from AMD to intel.

The core 2 gen blows them away

[Cry Havoc]

Bravo on your gfx card! Thats a beast but I really wish you would make the switch from AMD to intel.

The core 2 gen blows them away

Most of the differences are overstated, I think. I mean, faster is great, but an extra 2-3 seconds on many tasks isn't that big of a deal.

That said, I have an Intel Quad Core and love it.

[MajorMike]

What about just buying a new system instead?

These both have a 9500 GT in them
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229095

[MaNuMaNiAc]

What about just buying a new system instead?

These both have a 9500 GT in them
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229095

I'm confused... didn't you say you bought the equipment already?

for whatever its worth, ATI's 4870 is quite a few times the card that the 9500GT is.

I'll still insist that you're better off buying DDR2 RAM, but that would probably require you to buy a better MB, and that is perhaps a bit too expensive for what you were thinking. Either way, your previous setup (the one you bought from Newegg) is more than enough to run most games out there. It'll certainly run the out of WoW.

[Cry Havoc]

What about just buying a new system instead?

These both have a 9500 GT in them
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229100
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883229095

A 9500 GT will play CoD4 on minimum settings with some stuttering.

A 4870 will play CoD4 on maximum detail.

[MajorMike]

I don't play CoD. I play WoW; that's pretty much it.

[Cry Havoc]

I don't play CoD. I play WoW; that's pretty much it.

I'm not sure how well a 9500 GT would run WoW, but it would probably get you medium detail settings and framerate. A 4870 would run WoW completely maxed.

[sabar]

A lot of bad information in here. Time for a little lesson. Gaming wise, your bottlenecks are

GPU>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>CPU>>RAM>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>MOBO BUS>>others

An an example, I have a radeon hd 4870 with a single-core amd athlon 3700, 2gb of ddr2 ram and PCI express 1.0

I can keep a frame rate of over 30 on everything I play maxed. Most people would say my CPU is a bottle neck, but the fact is:

1. Very few programs run on multiple threads
2. CPU performance peaked several years ago

CPUs pushing deep instruction pipelines and utilizing the latest in ILP reached a plateu when the pentium 4 debacle occured. Instruction count becnhmarks were increasing much slower than things like GPU processing power. Fact is, there were no more breakthroughs and deep pipelines had many problems. Enter multiple cores. A solution with a new problem in that taking advantage of it is difficult. Multi-threading applications is considerably more painful to program than single-threads. Consequence: almost all programs can't take advantage.

For those wondering, my rig had this upgrade:

2005 mobo, 2005 CPU, 2005 GPU, 2005 RAM: 15-22 FPS on games released from 2007-2009

2005 mobo, 2005 CPU, late 2008 GPU, 2005 RAM: 30-120 FPS on games released from 2007-2009

There are bottlenecks, but you really need to know how a computer works architectually on a hardware level to know how much of an upgrade does what.

Other tiny improvements as far as gaming is concerned:

RAM - newer ram is faster, but not on any significant scale
MOBO BUS - PCI express 2.0 can push more data, but nothing uses that much bandwidth in the first place
HDD BUS - has significant speed ups on newer drives, but few games load large amounts of data from the disk in the first place
HDD read/write speed - same as above
IPS - games have trouble with matrix operations, which are performed on the GPU in parallel, not in sequential normal instructions
ethernet MB/S - unless you are on dial-up, you have enough network bandwidth for any game

The fact is simple, games need to perform complex operations on 3d and 2d data. These takes enourmous amounts of time on a CPU. Almost every issue with frame rate is related to the GPU not being able to calculate how an object should look fast enough. Very few CPU bottlenecks exist. The largest one right now is probably calculating complex physics, but most games use havok and have no problem with these simple calculations, even on 2002-2004 CPUs.

The more you know!

[MajorMike]

So... what are you saying, exactly?

[Cry Havoc]

A lot of bad information in here.

I hope you're not talking about me.

Time for a little lesson. Gaming wise, your bottlenecks are

GPU>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>CPU>>RAM>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>MOBO BUS>>others

No, it's GPU>>>>>>>>>RAM. His system is new enough that I doubt he's going to have bottlenecks beyond that, especially for WoW. You don't need more than a 2.2 Ghz dual core to run WoW. For Crysis, yes, his CPU might come into play, but he said he only wants to run WoW.

An an example, I have a radeon hd 4870 with a single-core amd athlon 3700, 2gb of ddr2 ram and PCI express 1.0

I can keep a frame rate of over 30 on everything I play maxed. Most people would say my CPU is a bottle neck, but the fact is:

1. Very few programs run on multiple threads
2. CPU performance peaked several years ago

But games that ARE optimized for multi-core support will affect your frame rates. And 30 fps is NOT smooth. You want 60 fps to have a completely smooth gaming experience. I have the same GPU as you do, and a 2.4 Ghz Quad Core + 4 GB of RAM, and I rarely see my frame rates dip under 50.

CPUs pushing deep instruction pipelines and utilizing the latest in ILP reached a plateu when the pentium 4 debacle occured. Instruction count becnhmarks were increasing much slower than things like GPU processing power. Fact is, there were no more breakthroughs and deep pipelines had many problems. Enter multiple cores. A solution with a new problem in that taking advantage of it is difficult. Multi-threading applications is considerably more painful to program than single-threads. Consequence: almost all programs can't take advantage.

Except the more programs that are developed, the more they are likely to utilize multi-core support, since nearly all computers made today have at least two CPUs.

For those wondering, my rig had this upgrade:

2005 mobo, 2005 CPU, 2005 GPU, 2005 RAM: 15-22 FPS on games released from 2007-2009

2005 mobo, 2005 CPU, late 2008 GPU, 2005 RAM: 30-120 FPS on games released from 2007-2009

I guarantee you that system will not run Crysis or GTA4 maxed at 30 fps. No offense, I'm just pointing out the inconsistency.

There are bottlenecks, but you really need to know how a computer works architectually on a hardware level to know how much of an upgrade does what.

You're basically telling the OP that he has no chance of knowing how to upgrade a computer. That's silly. I don't need to know a lot about cars to know that a bigger engine and a turbocharger will make it go faster. He's asking for simple advice, not a course on how FLOPS and pipelines function.

If he's choked on RAM, it will affect his frame rate a LOT more than his processor. He has a dual core 2.2 ghz. That's a fairly decent processor, especially for WoW. You need more RAM to store all the textures than you do processing power.