What PC component should I upgrade?

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moozilbee

moozilbee

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Jul 19, 2013
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So I wanted to know when I upgrade my computer, does anyone have any advice on which component would be bottlenecking it, and what I should upgrade it to. I do gaming on a single monitor at 1360 x 1024, and would like to get 30fps on most modern games if possible. I mainly play games such as far cry 3, saints row 3, crysis and other similar titles, and currently get 20fps on max in far cry 3 and about 20-25 for crysis 1, but for some reason saints row 3 only runs at about 15fps on full settings, which is pretty unplayable, and even on lower settings still gets about 25fps at times. I would like to have something that is future proof for a good few years because the next gen consoles are coming out and games are going to get a lot more system intensive :) Here are my specs: CPU: amd phenom 2 dual core 550 3.1ghz Memory: 4gb OS: Windows 7 ultimate 32bit GPU: AMD ATI radeon HD 4850 Hard drive: 500gb 7200rpm seagate Not sure what model my case is but it's pretty big so should fit most new parts. motherboard: Gigabyte M52LT-D3
not sure what my power supply is so if anybody could tell me how to find out that would be great. Thanks for the help :)
 
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coastie65

coastie65

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May 26, 2010
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Even if he can unlock the other two cores, those crads may still be bottle necked not only by the Processor, but the PCIe 2.0 bus as those cards are 3.0, and yes, it does make a difference. More so than running a 2.0 card in a 1.0 bus. If he wants to upgrade and keep the Cost down. Personally I would just upgrade to a Phenom II x4 BE 9xx. Not sure of what the PCIe bus is on that Motherboard, but probably PCIe 2.0 which will in itself bottleneck the card ( as those cards are PCIE 3.0 ) to some extent. I went from a Z68 ASUS MOBO & Intel i7 2600k processor to an ASUS Z87 MOBO and i7 4770k processor. I am running aN EVGA GTX 680 Card which is 3.0. When I moved form the 2.0 Mother board to the 3.0 motherboard, there was a noticible diffrence.
 
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coastie65

coastie65

Splendid
May 26, 2010
3,293
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21,465


That's some good stuff and surprising. I have a Gateway FX6800 -01e Running a stock i7 960 with a GTX 560Ti card. It benches somewhere between 19,000 and 20,000 on 3D Mark Vantage. This build running the i7 4770k OC'd to 4.6 Ghz and running a GTX 680 card is between 37000 and 38000 ( think it was 37473 ). Again, that is some good stuff if someone wants to take the time to read it. Very Interesting.
 
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moozilbee

moozilbee

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Jul 19, 2013
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So you think I should unlock my processor and upgrade my gpu? Okay, but what exactly IS unlocking, does it just let you use more cores? If so, could anybody explain how it works exactly, and why you can't use those cores from the start? Also, I would have thought my processor was one of the most powerful parts of my PC, because even if it's just 2 cores it's still 3.1ghz, and most gaming pcs I have seen seem to be about 2.5ghz or less. Thanks for the info anyway :D
 
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spentshells

spentshells

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Apr 1, 2006
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GIGABYTE’s Core Boost technology provides an easy way for users unlocking the CPU’s hidden cores via the EasyTune6 utility. Without any complicated setting needed in BIOS, users can experience a phenomenal performance upgrade right away.
*The ability of unlocking the hidden CPU cores might vary by different processors.
 
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moozilbee

moozilbee

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Jul 19, 2013
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Are you sure overclocking would be a good idea? I am worried that my processor might get too hot and break. What are the dangers of overclocking? I have read from multiple people that Easytune is awful, and automatically sets your processor to the max recommended value which will cause it to overheat. Is this true? Also, I have no experience using the BIOS. My processor temp goes from about 39 degrees when Idle with just Firefox and a few background programs to 49 when playing a game like just cause 2 on full settings, probably higher with more intensive games.
 
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spentshells

spentshells

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Apr 1, 2006
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You can't actually break them anymore, there are fail safes that prevent overheating. if you are able to unlock the cores you might want to look at getting a new cooler before you load up the cpu with games, a little extra voltage may needed but just try to post (boot) with the cores unlocked if it will. they have the unlocker built in to the motherboard to at least try to unlock the cores so you might as well.
 
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