I have a AMD Athlon II X2 245 2.90 ghz
2gb ram of which 1.87gb is usable
a ATI Radeon 2100
If I want to play some newer games at moderate settings (Planetside 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Arma III), will a change in graphics card be enough or is my CPU and/or ram gonna hold me back? If so, I would probably build a new computer. But I'd rather just buy a top tier card like GTX 670 or 680.
I don't know much about that CPU but you really need more RAM, I'd say go with 8, but 4 would do
[QUOTE=cqbcat;40731676]I have a AMD Athlon II X2 245 2.90 ghz
2gb ram of which 1.87gb is usable
a ATI Radeon 2100
If I want to play some newer games at moderate settings (Planetside 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Arma III), will a change in graphics card be enough or is my CPU and/or ram gonna hold me back? If so, I would probably build a new computer. But I'd rather just buy a top tier card like GTX 670 or 680.[/QUOTE]
Dang. That is a pretty weak rig, not going to lie.
A new GPU is definitely going to bottleneck the rest of your system, unless it's a worthless piece of crap. And you'll definitely want some more RAM, which fortunately is fairly cheap compared to other upgrades.
I'll give you three recommendations depending on your budget:
For a budget under $300, just get a cheap video card, like the 7770 GE or 7790. Those are under $200, but anything much higher will be held back too much by your CPU. This will let you play older games at good settings, and maybe play new stuff at low. Maybe toss an extra 2GB of RAM in there.
For a budget of $300-600, I would keep most of your current rig, but get a much more powerful CPU from the same series - you can get a Phenom II X4 for under $100, or a Phenom II X6 for $200 if you look hard enough. Then I would get a more modern video card, but not as high-end as you were thinking - a 650 Ti, 660 or at most a 660 Ti. Then spend whatever you have left on RAM - 4GB is good, 8GB better (assuming you have a 64-bit OS, which you need to use more than 4GB). This should be enough to run many games at moderate to high settings, and to run punishing games at medium-low-ish. This would be an acceptable rig, definitely a vast improvement over what you have.
For a budget above $600, I would look into getting a whole new rig, perhaps reusing some components (maybe the case, hard drives, and optical drives, depending on how good each is).
[QUOTE=gman003-main;40731873]Dang. That is a pretty weak rig, not going to lie.
A new GPU is definitely going to bottleneck the rest of your system, unless it's a worthless piece of crap. And you'll definitely want some more RAM, which fortunately is fairly cheap compared to other upgrades.
I'll give you three recommendations depending on your budget:
For a budget under $300, just get a cheap video card, like the 7770 GE or 7790. Those are under $200, but anything much higher will be held back too much by your CPU. This will let you play older games at good settings, and maybe play new stuff at low. Maybe toss an extra 2GB of RAM in there.
For a budget of $300-600, I would keep most of your current rig, but get a much more powerful CPU from the same series - you can get a Phenom II X4 for under $100, or a Phenom II X6 for $200 if you look hard enough. Then I would get a more modern video card, but not as high-end as you were thinking - a 650 Ti, 660 or at most a 660 Ti. Then spend whatever you have left on RAM - 4GB is good, 8GB better (assuming you have a 64-bit OS, which you need to use more than 4GB). This should be enough to run many games at moderate to high settings, and to run punishing games at medium-low-ish. This would be an acceptable rig, definitely a vast improvement over what you have.
For a budget above $600, I would look into getting a whole new rig, perhaps reusing some components (maybe the case, hard drives, and optical drives, depending on how good each is).[/QUOTE]
Would those AMD cpus need a new motherboard? If I can keep on using the same 'skeleton' that I'm using now, but add better 'organs' would be great.
Lol, yes my system is weak. The best game I can run on mediocre settings is Half Life 2. I got FEAR to run, but I turned the settings down so low, it looks like Nintendo 64 game. As long as I can run newer games at 30 fps or better, I'll be fine.
[QUOTE=cqbcat;40731986]Would those AMD cpus need a new motherboard? If I can keep on using the same 'skeleton' that I'm using now, but add better 'organs' would be great.
Lol, yes my system is weak. The best game I can run on mediocre settings is Half Life 2. I got FEAR to run, but I turned the settings down so low, it looks like Nintendo 64 game. As long as I can run newer games at 30 fps or better, I'll be fine.[/QUOTE]
The ones I picked should run fine, as they're essentially the same design as your current CPU, just with more cores, more cache, and higher clock rates. You may want to check that your power supply will handle the extra load, though. And it couldn't hurt to check whether your motherboard specifically supports it, just in case.
Does dual channel ram mean you can only use two sticks of ram? A motherboard I'm looking at says it supports up to 32gb ram, but is dual channel.
Planetside 2 is really CPU heavy. You really need a newer i5 to run it properly. A phenom x4 will sink down to 20 fps in big battles, regardless of settings.
That being said. PS2 is probably the most cpu intensive game there is at the moment.
[QUOTE=cqbcat;40735353]Does dual channel ram mean you can only use two sticks of ram? A motherboard I'm looking at says it supports up to 32gb ram, but is dual channel.[/QUOTE]
Dual channel means it can use two sticks simultaneously. It has two memory "channels" that can be used. However, each channel can access multiple sticks of RAM (usually two). If the motherboard has four slots, you can fill all of them with no problem.
The main thing to know with dual-channel is that, if you only have two sticks of RAM, put them on different channels. That lets the two channels work independently, giving you more memory bandwidth.
PS2 will just murder your CPU. My q6600 at 3GHZ can only manage low/medium settings
[QUOTE='[EG] Pepper;40740975']PS2 will just murder your CPU. My q6600 at 3GHZ can only manage low/medium settings[/QUOTE]
If you have a good GPU try the ultra fix.
You get way better graphics and FPS when everything is on ultra (exept some CPU stuff).
E8500 @ 4ghz and amd 6950 went from 20-60 fps to 30-100.
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