Ancient PC upgrade

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AlcatrazSouth

AlcatrazSouth

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Hi guys..

First of all, I would like to say hi to all people out there on the forum. Now I have one question for all of you who understand the hardware, and who know a thing or two about CPU's and GPU's.

So what's the problem? Well there is no problem acctually!?
It's 2015 and I'm still using my 775 socket motherboard with a (antique) Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53.

Now the thing is, this processor is amazing, I mean it's so old and still, it's doing it's job really good. Like right now, I'm using the lastest Sony Vegas 13 withouth any problems, I can multitask withouth any problems, and yeah, sometimes I see some lag on my desktop, but nothing too much.

I'm still able to run nearly all of the games being relased right now. Like, recently my friend borrowed me his GPU nVidia 9600GT and we played Far Cry 3 on max settings, and we got about 35-40 FPS which is amazing.

The problem is that I have HD 5450, which is a horrible GPU and I can play games on it, but mostly on low settings, with the barely playable FPS.

So right now, I have a chance to get myself a little upgrade, and I thought to get myself a new motherboard and a new processor. Now keep in mind that I come from a poor country, and I'm not going to invest a lot of money, I just want to get myself a nice upgrade that will show me some results.

My motherboard is ASUSTeK Computer INC. P5KPL/1600 (Socket 775) and I have two options. To get a Core 2 Quad q6600 or Core 2 Quad q9400 withouth upgrading my motherboard. Now the second options is to get a new motherboard and get an I3 2120 3.3GHz. Now I don't know anything about hardware stuff, and I would love if someone could tell me if this i3 processor is any good? Will I be able to run like new games on it? Like GTA V, Crysis 3, Arma III, AC Unity, Cod AW, The Evil Withing and others..
And I don't want to play the on low settings, I would love to play some of them on High or even Ultra (after buying a new GPU ofc)

A lot of people and websites are saying that I won't be able to it, but I think that they are wrong, becouse right now I'm able to run some of the games on my Core 2 Duo, and I'm pretty sure that this i3 is 21421421 times stronger and faster than my current processor.

So that's it guys, I'm looking foward for your answers :)
 
Solution
Moonstick2
Yes, that sounds like it could have been down to PSU issues.

The Q9400 isn't a great deal faster than the Q6600. You're not going to able to properly overclock until you get a new PSU, but maybe that could be a future upgrade that then effectively gets you a better processor.

If 20 EUR is a lot to you, buy the Q6600. If it's not and you've no interest in getting a new PSU and overclocking in future, get the Q9400.

As for the 7750, I don't know about playing those games at high/ultra (you've never mentioned what resolution you play at) but it's the best you're going to get. As long as you'll settle for lower quality if needs be, you'll be good to go.
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ulysses35

ulysses35

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No doubt about it the i3 2120 is a much faster chip than your existing CPU. If you plan to upgrade CPU / Mobo / GPU then of course you will be ale to play more demanding games. However, performance differs from game to game.. ie you might get away with high settings on one game, and them have to go down to medium on another.

ARMA III and GTA V both "recommend" an i5 CPU for best performance
 
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AlcatrazSouth

AlcatrazSouth

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Thank you for your answer.

Yeah that is true if we would look at the official system requirements, but the thing is that they are never correct. For example, it says that the ARMA III won't even run on Core 2 Duo, but still I can run it on Medium/High with my friends GPU.

So, let's just forget about the official sys requirements and see if anybode has the same processor and tell me will I see much difference beetween Core 2 duo and this i3 2120.
 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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The i3 2120 will be a lot faster than your Core 2 duo. The architecture is the next generation up, the base speed is 3.3 GHz vs 2.5 GHz, it has hyperthreading, it has integrated L3 cache and extra instruction sets. In terms of benchmarks it'll be somewhere between 50 and 100% faster across the board.

GTA V isn't out on PC yet, so nobody can say if you can run it or not.
If you can run ARMA III on your C2D, you should be able to run in on the i3.
Here's someone claiming to play AC:U on an i3 2120. But that's at low settings, low (800 x 600) resolution.

What you haven't said is what GPU you're going to get.

To summarise, the i3 will be a lot faster than your C2D, but don't kid yourself that you're going to be able to play the latest games at the highest settings on such a low budget, unless everyone else around here has been doing something very wrong with their builds.
 
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rockie_

rockie_

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AlcatrazSouth

AlcatrazSouth

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Like I said, I'm not much of a hardware guy, so I think you know much better about it.
And is the G3258 better than the i3 2120? Becouse, here in my country the brand new G3258 is the same price as the used i3 2120?


 
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rockie_

rockie_

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[strike]get what comes cheaper i3 2120 or G3258 , + mobo.

the Pentium mobo would allow upgrading to i5 Haswell in the future . the i3 2120 - to i5 3570 eventually but then the price of 3570 will be higher than Haswell i5 .

Reportedly some new games refused to use 2 core CPUs but G3258 is still selling well . Also sometimes the old things are bad . i hope it wont happen.[/strike]

Edit : in the end , get i3 2120 + mobo or save extra for a new rig.
 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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The Pentium will be better than the old i3 but as mentioned above you won't be able to run any new games that insist on more than two cores (the i3 with hyperthreading counts as more than two). On the flipside, it'll probably be much easier to upgrade the processor in a few years time.

Do you know what RAM you're using at the moment, DDR2 or DDR3? I believe both the Pentium and the i3 won't work with DDR2, so if you've only got that you'll also have to budget for new RAM.

Edit: Just looked up your motherboard. It's DDR2 only, so yes, if you upgrade to the Pentium or the i3 you'll also have to buy new RAM. Sorry,
 
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AlcatrazSouth

AlcatrazSouth

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Yes, my ram is DDR2, and I have 4GB of it.

Well things got complicated now, and it's kinda hard to figure it out, mainly becouse I'm not willing to invest a lot of money, becouse like I said I work hard to get the money, and I come from a poor country so it's not the best thing to invest my whole pay check in a gaming pc, that I won't use that much after all.

I really have no idea what to do now, becouse everytime I asked online for a help about upgrading I get even more confused.

Anyway, I found some cheap motherboards that support i3,i5 and i7 processors, and they cost around 25, 30 euros brand new.
One that I found was socket 1155 ( Gigabyte GA-H61M-S1) for 30 euros or something like 35$ for those of you in usa. So If I was to buy that motherboard with the i3 2120 which is around 70 euros used, I would spend about 100 euros in the end and than had to pay for the ddr3 ram.

I'm really sorry if I'm wasting your time or anything like that, but please understand that I don't know much about this stuff and that I'm just looking for a best way to get my pc a nice fresh upgrade so it can run nice for a years to come, just like it did with my core 2 duo.

Maybe it would be better if I would upgrade my GPU first? And yeah, I never said that I have the MS PRO 550W, so is it any good, and will it run all of this?

 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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No need to apologise, the whole point of asking questions is to try and get answers.

You're in a similar position to mine last year, in that you've a S775 system that has lasted well for five or six years but is reaching the end of its lifetime in terms of what can be upgraded. In fact your position is better than mine was because my motherboard was older than yours, making my GPU and diskdrive upgrade options highly limited.

If you change your motherboard so you can use an i3 or higher processor, you'll need new RAM as well as a new GPU. You might even need new optical and hard disk drives if your current drives use the older PATA style instead of SATA.

Looking at this page, your PSU is far from the best which will probably mean more expense even if you were to only upgrade the GPU. It gives only 16A on the 12V rail whereas an entry level GT 730 (a level or two above your friend's 9600GT) requires 20A.

Tell us your country, your budget, the screen resolution you play at and we'll probably be able to advise the best you can do, whether it's upgrades to the existing PC or simply save your money until you can afford a complete upgrade. You have to accept though that getting to play the latest games at high/ultra settings for a small outlay on such an old system is going to be unlikely to say the least.
 
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AlcatrazSouth

AlcatrazSouth

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Thank you again.

Well the thing is like I said, I forgot how it feels to play video games and it's been a long time since i completed one. Right now I'm fighting with my drug addiction and the gaming is the only thing that really manages to keep me kinda occupied.
Also, expecting to play new games on ULTRA was too much to ask, but I didn't really mean it like that, it was more of a typo mistake. I would be really happy if I could play all of the old gen games on HIGH/ULTRA like Hitman: Absolution, Alan Wake, Assassins Creed series, Batman games, Far Cry 2/3, Gta IV etc etc..

Now I know it's not the same for every game, and some will run different than the other one but I think you get the point.
Becouse of my shitty pc I stopped gaming few years ago and missed a lot of great games that would take months to complete, so I think that I could spend a whole year just by playing the old gen games, becouse like I said, I missed a lot of games, even some of the must play ones like Bioshock Infinite, Modern Warfare series, Dead Space etc

So in the end, old gen games and some newer games, like Gta V, DA: Inquisition (I'm a big fan of DA: O and the expansion for the DA: O) Dying Light, BF4...

I could maybe try to make a deal and switch my 4GB DDR2 ram and add some money for 4/8 GB of DDR3, and get a new MOBA with the i3 CPU, and than later, when I have some more money maybe get a nice budget GPU that will run all of these old gen games on High settings. But than again, there is a problem with PSU, and I have to pay for that also, so in the end it's going to cost a lot more than I expected :/ Maybe I should just get a PS3 becouse there is a whole library of games that I would die to play, but are only PS3 exclusives.

Again sorry for the long post :)
 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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By rights your PSU shouldn't have been able to run your friend's 9600GT (18A) requirement. That it could doesn't necessarily mean the specs are bunk, more likely that your PSU would have gone pop eventually.

Either get the Q9400, a new decent PSU and the best GPU you can afford, or get a PS3. As this is all about gaming, you're not up on all the hardware and it seems that you're likely not to play games if they don't look good, you'll probably be best off with the PS3.
 
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AlcatrazSouth

AlcatrazSouth

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I don't have a way to proove you wrong on the first thing you said, but like I said, he got his old CPU 9600GT and borrowed it to me for a couple of days, and I really saw some amazing FPS improves. Like it was unbelievable, before I could run Far Cry 3 at the 800x600, everything on low with the 30 fps, and I had to face the drops every few minutes, and it would go down on 20/25 fps sometimes. After installing the 9600gt I could play the game on a much bigger resolution and everything on High (well not really everything but most of the textures were on high) so after seeing that, I could not believe how much a GPU upgrade can improve my PC. And the weirdest thing was that the 9600gt is really really cheap here, it's about 35 euros here, used ofc. But the only problem with this Gpu was it's dx, becouse it did not support newer games.

 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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I don't disbelieve at all that you were running that 9600GT, I'm just pointing out that it's borderline on what your old PSU is capable of. 16A on the 12 V rail means 190W, the card is reported as 96W, your CPU as 65W...you've now only 30W left for your motherboard, your drives...the PSU could be fine for days, weeks, months even, but then something might eventually go bang. And there are some quite brutal images out there of what a cheap PSU can do to a system when it lets go.

If you got the 9600GT and the Q9400, the CPU is 95W and now your GPU and CPU alone are taking the 12V rail near its limit - so likely to go bang even sooner.

The 7750 mentioned above is a couple of levels above the 9600GT, has DX11 and uses half the power. Coupled with the C2Q it should make you happier with your system than you are now and for not much money.
 
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AlcatrazSouth

AlcatrazSouth

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First of all I don't know how to thank you for all the help, I'm so happy to see that there are still people on the web, who are willing to help if you ask nicely, and you sure did help. (I will select your answer as the solution after this last question)

About the 9600gt and my pc going boom, I think that you have the point there, becouse I was using it for maybe 4-5 days, and first day it was all good, but the 2nd day of usage, I started noticing some pink bars on my display, and on the 3rd day my pc started restarting at random, so maybe it was giving me hints that the PSU can't take much more of it, but the bad thing is that I didn't know a thing about that.

Now about the 7750 + C2Q combination, well like I said, I can get a Q9400 for about 60 euros and the Q6600 2.4GHZ for about 40 euros, so I guess the Q9400 is a better processor?

About the GPU, the brand new 7750 is about 70 euros which is a great price, becouse I saw some gameplay videos of that card and if I'm not wrong, it can run BF4 on ultra, and Far Cry 4 on High which is more than enough for me, becouse I would settle for even lower settings in these games.

So the last question is q9400 vs q6600? I saw benchmarks on the web and some say that it's better to get q6600 becouse of the great overclock possibility, but I never even tried overclocking my CPU/GPU, and like I said earlier I have a Cooler Masters CPU cooler, but still I wouldn't risk my whole pc burning down withouth someones help.


 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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Yes, that sounds like it could have been down to PSU issues.

The Q9400 isn't a great deal faster than the Q6600. You're not going to able to properly overclock until you get a new PSU, but maybe that could be a future upgrade that then effectively gets you a better processor.

If 20 EUR is a lot to you, buy the Q6600. If it's not and you've no interest in getting a new PSU and overclocking in future, get the Q9400.

As for the 7750, I don't know about playing those games at high/ultra (you've never mentioned what resolution you play at) but it's the best you're going to get. As long as you'll settle for lower quality if needs be, you'll be good to go.
 
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AlcatrazSouth

AlcatrazSouth

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My maximum monitor resolution is 1280x1024.

I did a research about 7750 on youtube and I think that it is perfect for me, it runs all the games that I want on HIGH/ULTRA. Now I don't know if I will be able to do it with q9400/7750 combination, but still, like you said, I can settle for medium settings.

 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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