Upgrading with old CPU for BF3.

[GwynethPaltrow]

My father's desktop is in terrible shape, but has tons of room for improvement. I am planning on putting in a Geforce 550Ti 2GB on Friday, and the desktop has 4GB Ram, and 1TB hard drive, but the CPU is the problem. The CPU in it is a "Intel Pentium CPU G630 @ 2.70GHz"..This is very bad. if I go ahead and put in a new GPU, will I be able to max this game, as well as Battlefield 3? It's not the card I am worried about, it's the CPU.

 

[Supernova1138]

Depends on which CPU you get. Some of the large multiplayer maps for BF3 like quad core CPUs. So any of the Core i5 2xxx CPUs would be a good choice. However, that 550Ti is what will hold back BF3's performance the most. It's okay for medium settings, but anything higher than that requires a considerably stronger graphics card.

 

[jay2tall]

That CPU is still a Sandy Bridge core chip and should work quite well with BF3. BF3 does well with any modern 2+ core CPU. A CPU upgrade will literally do nothing for battlefield performance. (see link) http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120-4.html

It is your graphics card that will hold you back. a GTX550Ti will get you low settings, maybe, depending on your resolution. Just set it to AUTO and see what it gives you. I previously had a GTX580 and couldn't max the graphic settings at 1920x1080. My GTX680 does max the game and I am willing to bet a GTX670 will as well. However, the game does scale very well and even at medium settings looks really good. I would put what you can into a video card. Also, what PSU do you have? You need to make sure it will handle your card.

PS, your dad's PC is not in terrible shape. It's a basic modern PC. At least you are working with a modern CPU.