8 replies to this topic

[r3pshow]

Hey !

My Friend's upgrading his old Pc. XD !..the budget ..about 300$..!

he was thinking about getting a gtx 560 ti and a Noctua NH-D14 cooler to overclock his core to duo

So I told him, he should save his money. and by a new PC later on .... but he's a big spender !! Aren't we all :D LOL!

specs :

mobo : Gigbyte P31

Psu : 650W

CPU : Core 2 duo E7400 @2.8 GHz

GPU: Geforce 8600gt 1Gb

RAM: 2G ddr2 !

Playing at 720p !
any suggestions would really be helpful, thanks in advance !

Edited by r3pshow, 26 January 2012 - 10:22 AM.

[Challenger]

That CPU will bottleneck a 560ti hugely at 720p. No point even doing it.

He really needs to do a SB and a GPU upgrade.

(null)

[r3pshow]

Challenger, on 26 January 2012 - 10:25 AM, said:

That CPU will bottleneck a 560ti hugely at 720p. No point even doing it.

He really needs to do a SB and a GPU upgrade.

(null)

SB ???!

[ExtremeGrandpa]

SB = Sandy Bridge.

I agree he would benefit greatly from moving to a 2500k or even the 2600k. Although I dont think its that much of a bottleneck as its the fact that many games these days are more cpu demanding, but even a small bottleneck and cpu demanding games could produce less than desirable results.

Tell you what I have a 3 core AMD processor and I will run some benchies on that with a 560 and then on my 2500k and see what the difference actually is, at least in static benchmarks.

[r3pshow]

ExtremeGrandpa, on 26 January 2012 - 10:46 AM, said:

SB = Sandy Bridge.

I agree he would benefit greatly from moving to a 2500k or even the 2600k. Although I dont think its that much of a bottleneck as its the fact that many games these days are more cpu demanding, but even a small bottleneck and cpu demanding games could produce less than desirable results.

Tell you what I have a 3 core AMD processor and I will run some benchies on that with a 560 and then on my 2500k and see what the difference actually is, at least in static benchmarks.

Got it ! thanks for the feed Back !

Waiting for the results ...in term if upgrading to SB is not gonna happen.! as u see the budget is roughly about 300$ !

[thinktwice]

I had the same situation with my old amd x2 dual core wich performes similar with that dual core of your friends and believe me mate upgrading only the gpu will not bring u much especially in that resolution wich needs a lot of cpu power. i had a 9600gt and upgraded to hd 6870 and i didn't see much of a difference when i upgraded cause my cpu was holding me back. When i bought a quad core phenom 2 believe it or not i was amazed how much fps increase i had and i really noticed a hugee differrence in games. So i highly recommend that your friend saves a bit and upgrade both cpu and gpu!!! chears

[ExtremeGrandpa]

I ran some benchmarks several different ways . The first run was with 2 cores enabled at the speed of your mates rig, and frankly its was horrible @ just av average of 3,400k in 3D Mark 11. I then ran my SB rig at 5.0 and got 5,546k. But then i went back and reran the first setup but OC'd the CPU and got a big jump to 4,210K on the dual core. All benchies were 3D mark 11 @ 720p

So after a bit of thinking I would say the largest gain he can get with that setup is to get a good aftermarket CPU cooler and OC that puppy if hes able. When i had that exact same cpu i was able to get a stable 3.9 OC out of it. And yes his GPU is lacking and could be improved, but I would say getting a second hand gpu such as the GTX 460 might be a money saving move and put him on his way to saving for a complete new setup.

But my warning is any game that leans heavily on the CPU will perform less than desirable until he upgrades his platform or eeks some more performance out of his CPU by OCing it.

Also as think stated getting a quad core cpu such as the q6600 would serve him better. But be careful spending to much to patch on an old rig because My GPU , Mobo, cpu, and ram I am currently running only cost 550 US to put together.

[r3pshow]

thinktwice, on 26 January 2012 - 12:37 PM, said:

I had the same situation with my old amd x2 dual core wich performes similar with that dual core of your friends and believe me mate upgrading only the gpu will not bring u much especially in that resolution wich needs a lot of cpu power. i had a 9600gt and upgraded to hd 6870 and i didn't see much of a difference when i upgraded cause my cpu was holding me back. When i bought a quad core phenom 2 believe it or not i was amazed how much fps increase i had and i really noticed a hugee differrence in games. So i highly recommend that your friend saves a bit and upgrade both cpu and gpu!!! chears

will tell him that, hopefully he will wait and save his money ! thanks for replay !

ExtremeGrandpa, on 26 January 2012 - 01:11 PM, said:

I ran some benchmarks several different ways . The first run was with 2 cores enabled at the speed of your mates rig, and frankly its was horrible @ just av average of 3,400k in 3D Mark 11. I then ran my SB rig at 5.0 and got 5,546k. But then i went back and reran the first setup but OC'd the CPU and got a big jump to 4,210K on the dual core. All benchies were 3D mark 11 @ 720p

So after a bit of thinking I would say the largest gain he can get with that setup is to get a good aftermarket CPU cooler and OC that puppy if hes able. When i had that exact same cpu i was able to get a stable 3.9 OC out of it. And yes his GPU is lacking and could be improved, but I would say getting a second hand gpu such as the GTX 460 might be a money saving move and put him on his way to saving for a complete new setup.

But my warning is any game that leans heavily on the CPU will perform less than desirable until he upgrades his platform or eeks some more performance out of his CPU by OCing it.

Also as think stated getting a quad core cpu such as the q6600 would serve him better. But be careful spending to much to patch on an old rig because My GPU , Mobo, cpu, and ram I am currently running only cost 550 US to put together.

Thank u very much Mr.EG for the help ...I think he have to wait and buy the quad core cpu get it overclocked and then buy the gpu ... thanks again, really appreciate it Mate ! cheers !

[dirtylarryuk]

There are loads of bargins out there in AMD Phenom and Bulldozer and Intel I3 I5. The joy of I5 2500k is its very easy to overclock and safe to as well but even the 4 core Bulldozer can hit 4.4 GHZ without any real issue and mobos for Intel Sandy bridge and AMD Bulldozer-phenom are cheap and many sell CPU_RAM_MOBO as a bundle even pre-overclocked with a warrenty. You just screw them in to PC case and plug in PSU and GPU!

So in the UK I find 4GB DDR3 + Mobo - Bulldozer 4 core all oc'ed to 4.4 GHZ iz £300 Same but hex core £330 and Intel I5 2500k to 4.5 Ghz from £330 as well. So even with UK prices and sales tax of 20% in the UK the jump from Core 2 duo to 4-6 cores at double the GHZ and much better mobos and faster ram etc etc (and these newer chip are still much faster than say core 2 even at same MHZ) isn't to bad and your mate will have a better time gaming with something like that + something like a 460 or better than trying to add a new GPU now, to a old system.

Of course he may say "wahhh" I don't want to save up I must buy now! And a new GPU can bring benefits of producing less heat thana OLD gpu and in GPU bottlenecked games allow him to run the same game at a higher res than before with more ingame GFX features