need a good gaming pc configuration

Debayan Moitra · Aug 22, 2014

hi,
im debayan,
i have a pretty old cpu the amd athlon ii x2 240
with motherboard asus M2N68-AM plus
and 8 gb ram
....
my question is whay video card would suit my system for good gaming ....for the latest games...
and what would the maximum power supply needed for that very card ...for games like assassins creed 4 , max payne 3 , battlefield 4 , and future games.....to run smooth ...
and i have windows xp installed

I seriously need a good advice and im ready to upgrade my cpu if needed ....
plz help me...
my
email is Debayanmoitra7@gmail.com

Darkbreeze · Aug 22, 2014

If you want to run the latest games, at high settings, you need a pretty good card which means you need a pretty good cpu or you'll just end up bottlenecked. You could run an R9 270 with what you have, although I have my doubts about how much gaming support for any recent or current games you'll have on XP, without too much trouble. If you want to get after it though you need at least an R9 270X or 280 which pretty much excludes the idea of using your cpu and motherboard. And if the system is that old you will likely need a new PSU to support the new cpu, motherboard and GPU card. Let me know if this is something you want to look at more closely.

dasulman · Aug 22, 2014

whats your budget? because with that it may just be easier to bin it all and start again... that motherboard bottlenecks graphics cards, and your PSU will need to be changed as well. then the cost of the video card on top of that... if the ram is DDR3 you can probably re-use it

Vic 40 · Aug 22, 2014

dasulman :

That motherboard supports only ddr2.

bryjoered · Aug 22, 2014

Darkbreeze :

I read some post the other day that claimed a 780ti was bottlenecked by an i72600k. Tom's hardware itself recommends nothing more than a 200 dollar I5 for gaming. "Bottlenecking" may be the most overused and most misunderstood term in PC gaming. You actually have to have like a stoneage CPU to bottleneck anything as long as it's a quad core intel you're good for the most part.

In response to the OP, for a constant 60 FPS in a game like BF4 on Ultra Settings you need a GTX 780 or R9290. You can still get great frames with the R9 280x/GTX 770. For the power supply I would recommend a good quality 700w or more PSU. You can definitely afford to just get a new generation quad core i5 and then splurge on the GPU, it's better that way anyways. This isn't to say that the nice i7 isn't better, just that it's really not worth it it's like 2-5 frames per second difference.

Darkbreeze · Aug 22, 2014

Since when is an Athlon II a four core Intel cpu? Plus, that's a 2.8Ghz dual core cpu, it's not even a slow four core. And the reason bottlenecked is used so much is because of people like you giving bad information resulting in terrible component pairings or idiots who buy high end cards on their own and install them in "stone age" systems. Stone age meaning anything without at least 3.2Ghz and four cores. Clearly you basing your statements on your opinion and not on facts. Maybe there's a reason you have no badges after two years here.

Vic 40 · Aug 22, 2014

Darkbreeze :

That's kind of a bold statement too.
With only 164 answers is it possible not to have badges and he's a "comeback kid" so he's been away for at least a year.
Don't make yourself more important because you have some badges.

bryjoered · Aug 22, 2014

Darkbreeze :

Look at the benchmarks on the very website your proud to have badges on and shut your mouth. Anything more than a $200 dollar 4-core I5 don't mean jack poop for gaming. There are also countless videos online about bottlenecking and I just watched an actual test where BF3 wasn't bottlenecked until a high end card was paired with an i3 processor. There is zero point(besides future proofing) in getting a high end CPU right now for gaming. You should know this as a CPU expert.

Yes, the OP's CPU falls under stone age, I was just trying to assure him that he doesn't need a super high end CPU to keep up with his nice GPU. He's going to need a power supply, motherboard and processor, but he could get decent quality in all of those for about 400 instead of dropping 400 on one high end CPU, which isn't needed that's all I was getting at bro, don't get your geek panties in a bunch.

Darkbreeze · Aug 22, 2014

Ok, let's start over or restate a few things. When I said "a pretty good cpu" I guess I should have clearly said "something from the last couple of years" but since I didn't have the opportunity to do that before the thread was saturated, I didn't. So my apologies to you bryjoered, I wasn't trying to indicate that only folks with badges know anything, it just is pretty uncommon for anybody who's been around here very long to not have a few best solutions. Usually, that's due to a lack of knowledge and posting of rubbish.

bryjoered · Aug 22, 2014

Darkbreeze :

Right, and I'm not a technical expert, but I do a lot of research on this type of thing. I've recently built a whole computer from the ground up and look at tons of benchmarks to back up my knowledge. I have seen people claim that in multi-gpu setups having a super high end CPU can help get the most out of it, but have never seen benchmarks that prove it.
As you know, there is a lot of prostrating and e-peen measuring within the PC building world. People that claim that the very best hardware is needed to get a top quality gaming experience and it's simply not true. The same situation exists with overclocking. Overclocking can help make an inadequate CPU adequate from a gaming perspective, but other than that I've noticed almost zero performance gains after overclocking my i7-2600k to 4.2. I've put in back on stock because all I care about is gaming performance.

The reason I replied at all was because I saw the term bottlenecking, which I see SOOO much of on the web and it's simply not the case a lot of the time. It's almost like every time someone doesn't have top of the line CPU people claim bottleneck.

Darkbreeze · Aug 22, 2014

Well, in some cases that might be true but I've seen frame rates drop by as much as 10-20fps with a half generation older cpu of the same socket type. CPU brute strength isn't always the determining factor. A combination of instruction capability, clock speed, number of cores (And accordingly, number of threads) and even cpu TDP can all play a role depending on the supporting hardware. So it occurs frequently that a cpu with a higher clock speed gets beat out by a newer cpu with a lower clock speed but more threads and a better instruction set and a more stable group of components.

Obviously an FX-8320 on an low end budget Gigabyte board isn't going to compete well with another one at the same overclock on a Sabertooth or higher board. There's a lot of variables involved but at this point pretty much anything out there is going to game better than an Athlon II. Even the Anniversary Pentium G3258 will kill it easily.

And the OP can't really upgrade just the CPU because although the board might, might, support a newer cpu, anything worth upgrading to, even at the low end of the scale, is going to want DDR3 memory installed which that board does not support.

Vic 40 · Aug 22, 2014

The difference between ddr2 and ddr3 isn't that big and something like a Phenom IIX4 960T ,supported by the motherboard, should run the ddr2 ram fine.

Darkbreeze · Aug 22, 2014

How can you say with a straight face that memory with a max clock speed of 900mhz and memory with as high as (On average) 1600-1866, which is double, isn't a big difference. A system with a newer processor at the same clock speed as a legacy processor, using DDR3 with the newer processor will usually be 20-30% faster than the system using DDR2. Especially considering the boards that support DDR3 have lanes with much faster system bus speeds for the cpu, northbridge, southbridge and generally the GPU as well. It might not be just the DDR3 that makes all the difference but added together it's observable.

And the processor he has now Vic runs the DDR2 fine, but taken as a whole it doesn't support even a mid level card nearly as well.

Vic 40 · Aug 23, 2014

Vic 40 :

Okay of about the same speed.

I'm trying to give advice that saves money.I get the idea that the o.p. doesn't have such a big budget.
If he's willing and able to upgrade his entire system is that a lot better,but until i know i'll give advice that wil save a little.
That cpu or one alike could be bought second hand,maybe something to look at anyway,also regarding the gpu.

Darkbreeze · Aug 23, 2014

That's all true. But as I said in the very first reply, an R9 270 should run fine with what he has now and would probably be the least expensive solution.

Vic 40 · Aug 23, 2014

That's one thing he could try first,but i get the feeling that the o.p doesn't have much interest in the discussion.So this will be my last post.

Darkbreeze · Aug 23, 2014

Vic 40 :

Yeah, I think you're right.

need a good gaming pc configuration

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