Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question
Solved

Looking for some advice on a possible upgrade.

Tags:
  • Gaming
  • Games
  • CPUs
Last response: in CPUs
Share
December 27, 2013 4:47:38 PM

Hello, I've had my gaming desktop for about two years now and I think it's about time for an upgrade. Previously I've been able to run most games on Med/High with good frame rates, but I've been noticing increasingly bad lag and poorer frame rates with newer titles.

From what I've read, the graphics card is one of the biggest components of gaming quality, so I recently upgraded my Geforce 560 TI, to a GTX 780 (which should be a high end card as I was led to believe.) I've noticed some excellent performance boosts with most games, but I was bit disappointed to find that I still could not run some games on Ultra or even high settings without some serious lag. My first thought was that I was experiencing some bottle-necking due to my processor (Intel I5-2500K @3.30ghz). I asked around the web, and most people said this processor should be fine, so I'm not really sure what's causing the lag. It seems to occur most in open world games, and it fluctuates a lot (it will be running 60 fps looking in one direction, then dip to like 15 fps looking at another direction with more things going on.)

My question is, do you think upgrading my processor to something more current like say an Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz would make a significant difference in gaming quality? Or would this be a huge waste of money? If so, is there something else I should invest in? My goal is to be able to play modern games on High/Ultra with 60fps. Thanks for reading and any advice you have would be greatly appreciated!

Additional info:
Current PC Specs:
-EVGA GTX 780
-ASUS P8P67 Deluxe
-Intel I5-2500K @3.30ghz
-4 GB DDR-3 Ram

Some games I'm having trouble with:
-Witcher 2 (unable to play on ultra)
-Arkham City (fps nosedives with DX11 enabled)
-Assassins Creed IV (pretty much unplayable regardless of graphics setting)
-Max Payne 3 (Overall good, but I experience significant lag in certain areas.)

More about : advice upgrade

a b à CPUs
December 27, 2013 5:07:05 PM

Theres no reason you should be having any trouble with that setup at all. Do some debugging on your computer and make sure you have no viruses or stuff like that. Only suggestion, would be more ram. i5 2550k isn';t the newest thing in town, but its still sufficient for all of those games and then some. You can also overclock that bad boy. So 80 bucks for ram, and 30 bucks for a cooler, a hard drive format, and I think you're going to be fine with that setup, ESPECIALLY with a gtx 780!
m
0
l
a b à CPUs
December 27, 2013 5:16:12 PM

Billypilgrim07 said:


-snip-
Additional info:
Current PC Specs:
-EVGA GTX 780
-ASUS P8P67 Deluxe
-Intel I5-2500K @3.30ghz
-4 GB DDR-3 Ram

Some games I'm having trouble with:
-Witcher 2 (unable to play on ultra)
-Arkham City (fps nosedives with DX11 enabled)
-Assassins Creed IV (pretty much unplayable regardless of graphics setting)
-Max Payne 3 (Overall good, but I experience significant lag in certain areas.)



First thing I recommend:

Go out and get 8gb of ram. NOW. 4Gb in most games simply isnt enough any more, and 4gb is really holding you back. Everything looks to be fine for now, what CPU cooler do you have on your CPU?

m
0
l
Related resources
December 27, 2013 5:19:31 PM

jghaverty said:
Theres no reason you should be having any trouble with that setup at all. Do some debugging on your computer and make sure you have no viruses or stuff like that. Only suggestion, would be more ram. i5 2550k isn';t the newest thing in town, but its still sufficient for all of those games and then some. You can also overclock that bad boy. So 80 bucks for ram, and 30 bucks for a cooler, a hard drive format, and I think you're going to be fine with that setup, ESPECIALLY with a gtx 780!


Thanks for the quick reply! I thought with the gtx 780 things would be fine as well, so that's why I'm a bit concerned. I actually just reformatted my Hard drive about a week ago, so I really doubt it could be the result of a virus. I'll look into overclocking the processor and increasing the ram. Is overclocking a fairly easy process?
m
0
l
December 27, 2013 5:45:35 PM

PCDave said:
Billypilgrim07 said:


-snip-
Additional info:
Current PC Specs:
-EVGA GTX 780
-ASUS P8P67 Deluxe
-Intel I5-2500K @3.30ghz
-4 GB DDR-3 Ram

Some games I'm having trouble with:
-Witcher 2 (unable to play on ultra)
-Arkham City (fps nosedives with DX11 enabled)
-Assassins Creed IV (pretty much unplayable regardless of graphics setting)
-Max Payne 3 (Overall good, but I experience significant lag in certain areas.)



First thing I recommend:

Go out and get 8gb of ram. NOW. 4Gb in most games simply isnt enough any more, and 4gb is really holding you back. Everything looks to be fine for now, what CPU cooler do you have on your CPU?



Thanks for the advice. Just to test things out, my friend let me borrow his 16gb of ram to see if we could notice any performance changes. I did notice a slight increase in fps in the games I mentioned, but I still experienced very jarring performance stutters from time to time (same as before, when looking in certain directions). Witcher 2 was decent, but not great. Arkham was a little better, but still stutters a lot when looking at the city. Assassins Creed is still terrible, except when played on very low settings.

For my CPU, I currently have a Intel Socket 775 Copper Core/Aluminum Heat Sink & Fan w/4-Pin Connector.
m
0
l

Best solution

a b à CPUs
December 27, 2013 6:39:55 PM

Well.. thats interesting.

Are your drivers up to date?

And I assume thats an Intel stock cooler, recommend you don't overclock with that.

What temps are you getting in game?

I can only assume its a software problem at this point, the 780 is BEAST.
Share
December 27, 2013 6:56:28 PM

PCDave said:
Well.. thats interesting.

Are your drivers up to date?

And I assume thats an Intel stock cooler, recommend you don't overclock with that.

What temps are you getting in game?

I can only assume its a software problem at this point, the 780 is BEAST.


Drivers are completely up to date. How would I check my temps in-game? Do you use a program for that? Thanks again for all the help.

m
0
l
December 27, 2013 7:44:05 PM

PCDave said:
Well.. thats interesting.

Are your drivers up to date?

And I assume thats an Intel stock cooler, recommend you don't overclock with that.

What temps are you getting in game?

I can only assume its a software problem at this point, the 780 is BEAST.


I used a program called Coretemp while playing Far Cry 3 (another game I'm having issues with) it seemed to stay within 60-70 degrees, with the max being 75 degrees on one of the cores. Is this too high you think?

m
0
l
a b à CPUs
December 28, 2013 3:15:39 PM

That seems fine, especially in game...

what are your GPU Temps?

This is really abnormal, I can't really identify the issue- it is in all games or just some?

Here's a program to monitor hardware:
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Did this happen on your 560ti?
m
0
l
December 28, 2013 4:25:12 PM

PCDave said:
That seems fine, especially in game...

what are your GPU Temps?

This is really abnormal, I can't really identify the issue- it is in all games or just some?

Here's a program to monitor software:
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Did this happen on your 560ti?


Yes, this did happen a lot with my 560ti as well. It seems to only happen with some games. BF3 runs on Ultra with amazing FPS as does Borderlands 2, Just Cause 2, Bioshock Infinite, and Crysis. This is why I was thinking something was wrong with my CPU, since maybe some games are just more CPU intensive than others? I also seem to have really bad FPS with most MMO's that I thought would be fixed with the GTX780, but certain areas in those games still cause major issues like they did with my 560ti.
m
0
l
a b à CPUs
December 29, 2013 9:50:26 AM

I really doubt its your CPU's problem... this is a very interesting problem.

Try using GeForce Experience to optimize your games, see if that works.

The 2500k is more than capable to run anygame, Haswell won't make that big of difference.
m
0
l
January 12, 2014 6:23:56 AM

What OS are you running?
m
0
l
!