Would my performance increase with gpu upgrade?

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unknown101

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Jan 11, 2013
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Hi,
I have
AMD Athlon II 640
4GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 4830 512mb
XFX 450w PSU

In games I like to play at 1280x720,native.
In skyrim on medium setting w/o antialias I get about 40-60 fps
On high setting with anitaliasing, I get about 30fps.
Ideally, I would like more on high setting
Is this a graphics card problem (which I am going to replace anyway), or a cpu problem. If it is CPU, will performance improve if i OC to about 3.3Ghz
Hoping to upgrade to Radeon HD 7770 or Radeon 7850

Thanks
 
Solution
JRAtk94
Graphics card will help, although Skyrim is famously CPU-bound.

An upgrade of either the CPU or GPU will help in Skyrim, although it is better to upgrade GPU, as it better improves performance in other games too.

And I wouldn't bother OC'ing that X4 640 - I used to have one, got it to 3.3ghz, but it was extremely unstable and didn't help at all in games - it might be worth a try, but don't hold your breath.
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JRAtk94

JRAtk94

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Graphics card will help, although Skyrim is famously CPU-bound.

An upgrade of either the CPU or GPU will help in Skyrim, although it is better to upgrade GPU, as it better improves performance in other games too.

And I wouldn't bother OC'ing that X4 640 - I used to have one, got it to 3.3ghz, but it was extremely unstable and didn't help at all in games - it might be worth a try, but don't hold your breath.
 
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unknown101

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Thanks for the advice. I will probably not try overclocking, and get the 7850. Do you think this will be the best graphics card for £137?
Thanks :D

 
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JRAtk94

JRAtk94

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Yes, either that or a GTX 660.

For the 7850, I recommend Sapphire, Gigabyte and ASUS. Make sure you avoid XFX like death - their GPUs are awful.

Also, the 2gb version of the 7850 would be best - not the 1gb version.
 
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unknown101

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Thanks for that! Didn't know that XFX were bad :O
Will get Sapphire
:D Thanks
 
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mapesdhs

mapesdhs

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Yes, definitely the 2GB version.

I'm surprised you had problems oc'ing the 640 though, they have a good reputation for oc'ing.
I've not sorted the oc of my 640 out yet, but I was able to get my Athlon II X2 250 to 4110MHz
with ease, and a standard 6000+ to 3440.

To the op, note that as long as you still only play at that low res, some of the potential of a modern
GPU will be wasted. Newer cards show their strengths to a larger extent when running at a higher
resolution. I've not yet tested an Athlon II X4, but I have done tests with an Athlon II X2, both
stock and oc'd, with various cards (4870 and 5850 so far), perhaps the data may be useful. See:

http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgi.html#PC

I'll be testing the 640 with the same cards later, and a Ph2 X4 965. Ditto these cards with
various Intel CPUs from a basic P4 up to a 3930K.

I do wonder about your PSU though. I wouldn't run a modern GPU with less than 600W.

I also suspect it may help if your main RAM was somewhat higher, for games like Skyrim.

Having an SSD might help too - loading times, etc. I bag them off eBay when I can, 120GB
units go for reasonable prices, though watchout, sometimes people bid silly amounts vs.
just buying something new.

Note though of course that beyond a certain point, multiple changes to a system are probably
less sensible than just doing an all-new build, even if that entails using 2nd-hand parts (I've
done this many times, most recently winning an i5 2500K and Gigabyte Z68 board off eBay
for good prices, and last week a second GTX 580 3GB aswell).

Ian.

 
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JRAtk94

JRAtk94

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Maybe I drew the short straw in the silicon lottery :(

Either that or my old motherboard hated overclocking.

And don't worry about the PSU - it's XFX - he'll have no issues, XFX PSUs have a superb 12v rail, and usually output about 70W to 90W more than their advertised wattage. Which begs the question - why do they not advertise them as a higher wattage? Strange.
 
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unknown101

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Yeah planning to upgrade RAM too, if I have money left after the steam sale :p
I was told on here that my PSU could run anything up to the GTX 760
I play at 720p at the moment because of my old Radeon 4830, it is only 512mb.
Saying that, it has been reliable, and surprisingly it still plays new games on medium :eek:
I may raise it when I get a new gpu, but would that not be when the CPU bottleneck starts kicking in?
Thanks for your help :)
 
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unknown101

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Ah, ok. Thanks for that. :D
Never had XFX gpu. Only had HIS, and Sapphire
 
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unknown101

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hahaha :D
Thanks again
 
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