What is my bottleneck?

pkw4

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Hi all, the quetions is as title states,,im a regular/hardcore pc gamer but i cant afford all new core i series and top end cards. I have ran the resident evil 5 benchmark but with the past 4 cards iv had i always get 56-59fps even with cpu overclock. my specs are in signature,,if you do recomend an upgrade plz not over $130/£100 ,.. my system is well tunned with no unnesacery stuff in back ground running,
bit confusing trying to find the bottleneck :pt1cable:

EDIT:
oops, specs didnt apear..

CPU- E5300
RAM- 2GB DDR2 667
GPU- Sparkle 8800GT O/C 512MB (Zalman vf900 cooler)
PSU- CIT 700W
 

dont_look@me

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What do you hope to accomplish, I mean 56 FPS is verly playable and I think the only thing you can upgrade is the GPU. It is about 3 generations old and much have change in gpu tech. Any of the nvidia GTX 260 and up models will do. From ati HD 4850 and up, or HD 5750 if your board can support PCIe 2.0 or 2.1. I think the nvidia GTS 250 or ati HD 4670 might even out perform your old card.

I would not upgrade the cpu because you will have to spend money on a new Motherboard and possibly new memory. In that case you will end up with a new system. Intel likes to come with a new socket each generation of chips they produce.

Check this article out as a guide: Best Graphics for the money but remember that the prices in this article changes and you might even get better deals.
 

pkw4

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my friend has a gts250 with athlon2 x4 with same ram as me and get 108fps,,.at 1600x1200 things get jerky in the benchmark.
my board is pcie 1.1. i want to get the most out of this skt 775. e5300 is pentium dual core,,would a s/hand core2 be of any use or is my card way to old for modern games? i mean, cod mw gives out an average of 75fps@16x12 but most other games can dip bellow 60, i like to keep fps fast on the cheap as i know if i bought one of the new highends it would be out of date 3months down the line and there to expensive to start with..
i would need a budget part that gives better preformance
 
You say the last 4 video cards you had have had the same frame rate? Easy to figure that one out, your CPU is the issue. It's probably not the ram, although 2 gig is almost a minimum for high-end gaming. See if you can find someone with another 2 gig of RAM to borrow, that may help.

Although as the other poster said, your frame rate is more than good enough to be playable. Anything around 60 is ideal, over that and it's all just gravy.
 

pkw4

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yes iv been through quite a few cards within 8 months (9600gt, 8800gs, 2900xt), i made mistake, i mean 3 cards and this 8800gt is the fourth.
my e5300 runs at 2.6ghz but overclocking to 3ghz hasnt made a difference, overclocked i get 62fps but i would like at least an extra 15fps. when i test the resolution only takes a frame rate dip at 1600x1200
 

dont_look@me

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Atlhon II X4 is a much better cpu than e5300. If you compare the 3d instruction set supported between these cpus, the Athlon II is generations ahead fo the e5300 and the same goes between the 8800 and the 200 series video cards. Newer games takes advantage of all those new techs it makes a whole world of difference.
 

dont_look@me

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He said the he had already OC'd his cpu to 3GHz and no diff. and besides, I think the only upgrade option for his cpu is of the same generation chip without changing the motherboard.
 
I think I see your issue as well, the cards you are trying are all in the same range, you need to get a higher end card to see faster frame rates. But I, and I think the others here, think it's a waste of money, 60 FPS is just fine for any gaming. The only benefit you will see is that when your friends get together you can say "well, I get 75 FTS, so there!".
 

pkw4

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my friend runs it at 10x7,,i game minimum of 12x10 or if gcard can handle 16x12, resolution doesnt make a difference with this game for me. well iv done some reading into the hd 4670 and havent seen higher preformance in any tests, iv also done read about the gts250 but its seems to me its an overclocked geforce 8800 and uses the same g92 core. would an gtx260 or e8400 be a good speed boost? i could only get one as there still fairly expensive.
 

dont_look@me

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how much is the e8400. I got my son the gtx260 and it works well with AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition Kuma 2.8GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Dual-Core and it plays SC2 on Ultra.

The whole setup:
windows 7 64 bit
4 GB DDR2 RAM
Western Digital 750 GB 32MB cache Hard drive
 

hasappra

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the bottleneck should be your CPU. I think RE5 supports multi core configuration. You can setup the job threads number by editing the config.ini
I'm using Athlon II x4 on 1024x768 using HD4850 MSAA 8x:
2 threads= 71 FPS
3 threads= 88 FPS
4 threads= 102 FPS.
oh, don't forget to turn off the vsync first. :).