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Too much bottleneck?

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  • Video Games
  • Core
  • Bottleneck
  • Games
Last response: in Video Games
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January 8, 2014 3:03:44 PM

Hey guys
I recently got a 660ti from a friend for £100, so I hastily bought it and put it in my out-dated Machine which consists of an ASUS M2N68 AM SE-2 and a AMD Semprom 140 2.7Ghz, paired with 4GB of RAM. (You can already tell how bottle-necked it is)

My problem is when I'm gaming, I've been playing games that're well optimized for single core usage, Mafia II for example is perfectly capable of being played on a single core.
(shown here: http://www.overclock.net/t/797635/mafia-ii-cpu-benchmar...)
However, after about 10-15 minutes in, the game has a tendency of freezing on a single frame or just black-screening, but the audio and everything else in-game carries on playing normally, just the actual video stops completely.
I've checked all my drivers, they're all perfectly up to date, I've done scans for the chance of Malware and viruses and finally I've cleaned up my Registry, but so far nothing seems to work at all.

Is my computer just too rubbish to play games what it should in theory be capable of playing or is it something else?

More about : bottleneck

January 8, 2014 3:12:03 PM

Personally, I think that's an awesome processor. My dad has a 145 in his uATX build and it runs solitaire like a champ! In all seriousness, do you think the power supply might be the problem? That video card uses about 140 watts at load. How does your PSU size up?
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January 8, 2014 3:13:00 PM

Its just to rubbish as you put it to play games that cpu would be at a constant 100% usage
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January 8, 2014 3:14:45 PM

allocco91 said:
Personally, I think that's an awesome processor. My dad has a 145 in his uATX build and it runs solitaire like a champ! In all seriousness, do you think the power supply might be the problem? That video card uses about 140 watts at load. How does your PSU size up?


Oh don't worry about that, it plays solitaire and Mahjong like a champ.

And my PSU is 450w, I know it's no problem, no need to worry about that.
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January 8, 2014 3:17:07 PM

firo40 said:
Its just to rubbish as you put it to play games that cpu would be at a constant 100% usage


I feared this'd be the problem, The upgrading is already due anyway, don't you think? =P
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January 8, 2014 3:19:32 PM

Firo40 is probably right. Maybe you could overclock it to maybe 3.8-4 GHz? I just don't want you to buy a video card from your friend and then realize you need to buy a new mobo, cpu, etc. to go along with it.
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January 8, 2014 3:19:38 PM

Wait, no sorry, part of me isn't thinking this 'cause I tried Skyrim on this processor (crazy right), but it never got the black-screen and worked perfectly fine, apart from the textures taking forever and a day to load in, so it can't be that, right?
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January 8, 2014 3:20:27 PM

allocco91 said:
Firo40 is probably right. Maybe you could overclock it to maybe 3.8-4 GHz? I just don't want you to buy a video card from your friend and then realize you need to buy a new mobo, cpu, etc. to go along with it.


I already got the Video card, 'cause as you know, a £200-250 graphics card for £100 is a steal no-matter what.
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January 8, 2014 3:29:05 PM

Yeah, that definitely is a steal. I'm still running an EAH4870, so I could go for a good deal right now, too. But yeah, the only other thing I could think of is maybe your hard drive, because I really don't think it's the CPU, especially when you said Skyrim worked fine and Mafia II isn't particularly taxing. Do you have a CPU program like CoreTemp that monitors individual core usage?
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January 8, 2014 3:34:04 PM

Yeah, I could run a test, but i'm assured that if Mafia II was to run at 100% then Skyrim would also run at 100%.
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January 8, 2014 3:41:10 PM

I just read on the steam forums that having AA crashed the game at random times. That could be it.
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January 8, 2014 3:43:12 PM

I'll give it a test run and if it works then the problems all sorted,
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January 8, 2014 4:35:36 PM

Yeah, sounds good. Let me know how it works out.
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January 12, 2014 3:53:21 PM

sorry about the late reply, but it saw a little improvement, but it basically just takes longer to freeze, (about 10/20 minutes later),
I managed to overclock it 7% on a stock cooler, which prolonged it by about another 20 minutes, but it's still not that great.
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!