Computer dreaming

OfftheRails

OfftheRails

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Sooooo...

I might be coming into a slightly higher benefit band in the next few weeks. That money ould be spent on sensible stuff, like winter clothes or a weekend away or a haircut. But the clear front-runner is to yank my rig out of the year 2007 with a few new components. Here's what I've got right now:

MSI G41M-P28 mobo
Pentium Dual-Core E6800
4GB DDR3 (single stick)
ASUS ENGTX480
500GB system drive (WD Caviar, 80% full)
1TB data drive (Seagate whatever, 98% full)
850W PSU
Samsung Syncmaster 1440*900@75Hz TFT

She suffers in BF3, bless her. I typicaly get 15-25 FPS whenever there's something going on, and about 30 when it's just me, a corridor and a claymore in my face. I clearly need more storage space; I was thinking of a small SSD for games to live on (possibly the OS as well? How does Win7 respond when most of its program files are on a seperate directory?) as well as either another 1TB or a 2TB (long term plan is to move all this data to a media PC made from the bits I've got hanging around). More processor power is important.

What would you do in my place? And how much would you be happy to spend to bring her up to scratch?
 
Consider replacing the CPU & motherboard. Also consider finding a matching 4GB stick of RAM and of course another hard drive. The crappy part, right now, is that hard drive prices are inflated due to floods last summer. Even so, it ultimately depends on your budget.
 
CPU for sure - ram is cheap - both will run u about 200$ maybe less. I currently run an i5 quad core OC'ed to 4.0 and my game runs at 100+ fps on ultra.
 
Im sorta with Tommy boy on this one. If you throw a Core 2 Quad in this thing you should be good to go, might need the ram now that I have 16GB i never even check my usage..EVER. Problem is after that the machine is effectively done the next generation of games it wont be much use for.
 
Trying to check for you now. I am surprised how many dual cores are faring well in some of these tests. But with a C2Q 6+ GB of ram and your GTX 480 BF3 should run pretty damn well on High.

Found a foreign site that did a large test:
547120e7-e25e-43d8-aca5-86567e3a9c0e.png

Slightly close to your CPU:
f0f189d0-7d4b-4670-8f83-fbc08d5c0365.png

Looks like the Q8300 should stand up to it:
641de24e-b024-4fde-84fc-b009e6edf884.png

The card in these tests is a 590.

To be honest your E6800 should be faring a bit better than it is if you lower GPU settings. Nothing you can really do to help the CPU out, On my i5 @ 4.5 Ghz when I was using the PlayClaw overlay I could see 90% usage on the first core and around 50% on other cores while playing. What is your ram usage? The only dual cores I would even contemplate running BF3 on are i3's and I have friends that do.
 
It should. Here's an oddity: Whenever I look up the CPU on any lists, it's always listed as a Pentium Dual-Core and not a Core 2 Duo. Have I bought a lemon here? And I checked, I'm seeing about 3GB of RAM in use when BF3's running.
 
Off the Rails said:
It should. Here's an oddity: Whenever I look up the CPU on any lists, it's always listed as a Pentium Dual-Core and not a Core 2 Duo. Have I bought a lemon here? And I checked, I'm seeing about 3GB of RAM in use when BF3's running.
Click to expand...

The E6800 is a Pentium Dual Core. Pentium is just a low end brand name right along with Celeron. Pentiums like the Celerons before them are based off their high end counter parts. Usually made from cores that had defective cache and or could not reach clock speeds desired. They strip them of features such as Virtualization and sell them off as Pentiums and Celerons.
 
The bit that confuzzles me is that the E6750 and E6850 are both listed as Core 2 Duo. It's like I chose the one model number in the sequence that ain't up to scratch :(
 
Bobsama said:
Though TBH, I don't think the Q8300 will treat you that well. Leave it for a Core i5!!
Click to expand...

Yeah well depends on how much he wants to spend. Online price of an i5-2500K where he is comes to 260 USD. Even the i5-2400 is $236. Then adding in the motherboard + ram. Talking about a 500 dollar upgrade versus this. The Pentium Dual Core presents a potentially significant bottleneck to his graphics card. The Core 2 Quad should alleviate that as best as his current motherboard can do as well as get the processor to where one would like it to be. It is all limiting none the less but should play fine.

Your not blaming that buggy piece of junk you had are you :p

Off the Rails said:
Core i5, with a new mobo and RAM, would be more than I'll be able to spend for quite some time. Take a look at this deal:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 - 4096MB DDR3 - 1TB HDD) IG-650i Gaming Base Unit

Is it just me, or would I be able to riup out the processor and sell the rest off for more than I paid for it?
Click to expand...

You could. Obviously a decent deal if the parts are working. The ram might not match the timings of your current stick but it could be better than nothing.
 
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