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Looking for a cheap upgrade... Right. I'm thinking of giving this baby a small performance boost, as she doesn't quite live up to my expectations (or needs, anyway). Specs: Pentium 4 540 3.2GHz OC to 3.5GHz AsRock 4CoreDual-VSTA motherboard Asus nVidia EN7900GT 256mb 2 x 1GB DDRII ram 2 x 160gb 5400rpm harddrives I got XP home ed. installed on one harddrive and Vista Ultimate on the other one, using XP for gaming only. I haven't tried running all my games on Vista, just CS:S which was kinda laggy on a server with 30 latency and all maxed settings - and TF2, which for some odd reason runs pretty well at all maxed. On Xp, I run Crysis at about medium settings, Battlefield 2/2142 at all high except AA which is just 2x, CS:S and TF2 all highest and FSX at about medium settings too... So, is it just me, or should it be able to perform a little better? I think my CPU might be bottlenecking, but I really don't know enough about this stuff, so... Does anyone know how I can boost her up for a minor expense, as I'm about to buy a rather expensive laptop soon, and I don't have that much money? Clink! :beer: |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... The best upgrade is to a dualcore CPU, check if your mobo support C2D and get one if yes |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... I would bung a better gfx card in it and then a faster cpu later on. |
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Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... So, right now there's no excessive bottleneck in my setup? I'm going to get a hell of a gaming rig sometime when I can afford it, but right now I just want to upgrade this one, so it's very unlikely that I'm going to throw in stuff more than this one time. :) Oh, and I forgot: It'd be great if you could recommend some specific parts. I may be wrong, but I can imagine it'd be very stupid to go out and get a 1.8 GHz C2D, when this is running at 3.5Ghz? I don't see how that should run anything better - but then again, I may be wrong. You don't have to waste your time getting links, I'm from Denmark, and all those sites such as Newegg and BestBuy don't ship to Europe... Which I think is stupid! |
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Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... CS:S runs fine, I don't need it in Vista, but it'd be very nice to get BF2142 on the highest, and some better graphics in Crysis/FSX But a better gfx card - that'd mean at least a 8600 wouldn't it? I know all 8xxx's got DX10 which is better than DX9 - but the chip isn't necessarily faster, right? |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... Actually, a 7900GT is really good, and trust me, the upgrade to a C2D is well worth it. I used to run on a P4 524 with 1GB DDR400 and my 7900GS, then when I upgraded to a C2D E6600 with 2GB DDR2800, my performance shot up a lot; albeit, I did get an extra 1GB of RAM that was twice as fast... but that wouldn't have given me the up I got. Even though your P4 runs at 3.5GHz, it is a single core processor that runs extremely hot. If you got a C2D, even at 1.8GHz, you would have more L1, L2 cache, and faster FSB, and better technology and architecture... meaning that more data can be processed at lower frequencies and a lot lower temperatures. You just have to make ultra sure that your mobo supports a C2D, some LGA775 socket motherboards do not support above a Pentium D. If you really want to run Crysis at high settings, a good 8600 or any 8800 is the best, but like arcade stated, an 8800 will definitely be bottlenecked by the P4 most likely causing your fps in Crysis to suffer A LOT; and besides, with a C2D and a 7900GT, you could tweak Crysis to run at high... and it's the only way you'll be able to play BF2142 at higher settings. |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... One thing you can do to test what Epic is saying is to go to this site, http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest ...and see for yourself where you fall short on requirements. There are a lot of games that will say you pass on minimum reqs but fail on recommended reqs due to not having a good dual core CPU like the Core 2. That isn't to say you couldn't also get quite a boost from a better GPU, but when you're looking for cost effectiveness in upgrading you replace the weakest link first. Now that a lot of games make use of multicore CPUs that is often the processor. |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... Right, I did the scan on BF2142, which I've done before but I don't think I saw the recommended tab, and it says I got 2 processors running? Is that the HT thing? Also, it says I have a cpu speed of 3.52GHz rated at 5.28GHz? HT again? I don't know anything about all this so I'm sorry if my questions are kinda dumb. EDIT OH HEY IT'S AN EDIT: I found this C2D E4500 2.2GHz - it's the cheapest one out there, at least here it is, at more than 2GHz. Might give it a go, at least the value of my computer won't drop by doing it. |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... I don't know about why it rates it at 5.28GHz, I don't really know what that means. But yes, it says you have 2 processors because of HT :p I went through the same confusion. |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... thought so. The console in steam games does the same. But it doesn't work twice as fast as a non-HT P4 does it? |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... no, but having two execution cores on your processor dosen't mean your PC would run at twice the speed. |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... I believe it's a way of comparing different processors with the same clock speed. An early(ish) P4 (e.g. one with a Northwood C core) clocked at 3GHz is going to be far slower than one of the most recent models clocked at the same speed (e.g. the Cedar Mill P4 HT 631). In the same way, an AMD 6000+ or an Intel E8400 is going to beat either of them silly...but all these processors are clocked at 3GHz. The numbers don't mean a huge amount (hell, if an old P4 worked at over 5GHz then it would probably be one of the best processors around), but at least it gives you a vague idea. |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... So, more than the clock speed, age/technology is a thing to keep in mind when fumbling around in the cpu market? |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... Yeah, pretty much. I upgraded from a 3.4GHz P4 to a 1.8GHz Pentium Dual Core (a cut-down C2D). Just over half the clock speed of the P4 but it's a far quicker processor (and overclocks to hell and back, but that's not the point). |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... How do you tell if it overclocks well? Computer doesn't crash during boot up or...? Also, is there a way to tell before getting it? |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... Really just see whether other people have had good results with it. If you Google for reviews and/or overclocking articles on particular processors then you should find something. Most Core 2 Duos do overclock well, as long as you've got a decent motherboard and RAM to go with it. |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... Right. Thanks a bunch |
Re: Looking for a cheap upgrade... Best way is to check the temps., voltages, and run a stability test(Prime95) as long you don't get crush, restart, BSOD and the temps are ok than the overclock is well done |
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