Is it worth upgrading my PC?

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KamilSG

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Jun 28, 2013
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Hey, i want to upgrade my computer's graphics card, i have a £200 budget so i looked around a bit and i found a Nvidia GeForce 660 Ti, the problem is that i dont know if it will run on my computer and will run games to max settings (i play games such as minecraft ARMA 2 COD Black ops 2 assassins creed ...), so i came here for some advice and to ask you guys for some help. Here are my computer specs:

Operating System: Windows 8 32-Bit
CPU: Phenom X3 8550 Toliman 65nm Technology
Triple-Core processor (3 CPUs) 2.2GHz
Ram: 4.00 GB Dual channel DDR2 @ 399MHz (6-6-6-18)
Motherboard: Pegatron corporation viola (CPU 1) PCI-E
Graphics Card: 256MB GeForce 9300 G (60Hz)

(i know that i need a new power souce since mine is only 300W, so i found a Powercool X-Viper 650W 80+ 650W)

Overall i just want to ask if this will run on my pc and if its even worth doing, and if it is will it run games to max settings?

Thanks. KamilSG
 
"Max settings" is going to vary between each game, etc, and also what you consider to be max settings as there are other variables such as Anti-Aliasing involved that largely come down to user preference.

There shouldn't be anything that would prevent it from running. That Phenom however is not very great and will become the bottleneck after you upgrade your card.
 
You need to ditch the toilmen(i had one of those years ago btw) and get deneb 940 and up no less than 920
(what i just put to the side) and get a 7850/7870 or gtx 660/ti and yes upgrade the psu.and you will be set for a while until next year at least
 
aha okay thanks, and i just want to play games at high FPS, so do you guys think its worth upgrading the graphics card or is it better to just build a new PC from scratch.
 
Does the motherboard have a pci-e slot? Tom's claims that the nvidia 9300 is an integrated chip. I would strongly recommend buying a new pc if that's the case.

I'd also be concerned about finding a bios that would recognize a phenom ii if you upgrade your cpu.
 
yeah, sorry OP, but it's not worth putting ANY money into that comp. It's far too outdated.
 
Greetings

I concur with the first reply, the CPU is underpowered and overclocking it to something like 3.0-3.5 Ghz might help. Even with a more powerfull video card you might not get the full value out of it, for example I have a friend with a Q6600 overclocked to around 3.3 GHZ who also has a GTX580 and his frame rates are about half that what they otherwise would be with a more modern CPU and motherboard but since he can play COD more or less OK on it he is currently happy.

What I suggest you do is find a friend who has a comparable video card to the one you want to buy together with a newer CPU/motherboard, then temporarily get them to

(a) go into the BIOS and lower the CPU multiplier so that their effective CPU speed will be around the 2.2Ghz of your current system, and

(b) when it fires up then get them to play a game you are interested in, bring up task manager and set the affinities so that the game's running process only uses CPU's 0,1 and 2 and deselect all the others, this will mean that only the first 3 cpu's will be used, this will emulate your current 3 CPU machine.

Now continue to play the game and see how much performance has been reduced, FRAPS before and after should show this, then see if there are any improvements when you start de-selecting eye-candy or not.

I think you will probably come to the conclusion that your machine will most likely need to be upgraded.

KamilSG said:
aha okay thanks, and i just want to play games at high FPS, so do you guys think its worth upgrading the graphics card or is it better to just build a new PC from scratch.
Click to expand...

In that case you have no choice, you will have to build a new rig AND get a new graphics card. I'll give you some examples as I primarily play BF3 at 1920 res on High settings, my target is 100 FPS, why you may ask? well its because when it gets intense like if a tank explodes in front of you then the FPS drops by half and in my case that will be 50 FPS but it will still be smooth. If you start with 50 FPS then it halves it will be jerky on 25 FPS.

When I had my stock I7 920 and GTX570 then playing Ziba Tower was a bit of a problem as people close by would pass in front of me and I wouldn't see them move across clearly (they sort of flickered across), when I upgraded the GTX570 to a GTX670 the FPS increased by only about 10 FPS but more importantly this problem went away as I could clearly see them move in front of me in a fluid manner.

My next rig I chose an I7 3820 CPU and I also wanted a performance of about 130% that
of a GTX680, the cheapest way to do this at the time was to go SLI with two GTX660Ti's, I adjusted the settings from high to Ultra and the lowest FPS I have ever seen on any map is 59 FPS, it normally sits on around 100 FPS but varies between 80 and 120 but has zoomed up to the maximum 200 when its quiet.

The I7 920 still plays BF3 well so I don't perceive it to be slow and neither do I perceive the newer machine to be better, so once you've got adequate performance you just get on with playing the game, much like you take electricity completely for granted until you happen to have a power failure.

That's about all I can help you with your problem.

Cheers
 
Thanks HobatTas that really helped, i guess i have no choice but to build a new pc from scratch, therefore what are some of the stuff you guys use, eq motherboard, CPU/processor, ram and graphics card(s). Im not exactly the best at pc stuff so i need some help.
 
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