Need help to figure out whats the bottleneck is in my pc

[jdh440]

Windows 7
AMD Athlon x2 5000+BE overclocked to 2.8ghz
Biostar a760 m+ motherboard
Kingston 2gb 533mhz ddr2 ram
IDE 160gb hdd
Ati 4670 512mb

I'm trying to figure out whats the bottleneck in my computer.
I use it mainly for gaming but its not as fast as I would like.

for example, when playing crysis with all medium settings @1024x768
I get some stuttering and drop in frame rates when destroying buildings
and blowing up stuff . by stuttering I mean video performance and sound start to skip.

another example, Oblivion and Fallout 3 stutter and drop in frames huge steps down. I don't think this should happen as half as much as it should

reviews say my video card is fast enough to play these games at mid to high settings.

I'm thinking its my IDE hard drive is the main bottleneck.
oh and I got the AMD Dual Core Otpimizer.
thanks for any advise

 

[jennyh]

Yep, it's a pretty old pc.

I mean it should run older games ok, but Crysis still kills enthusiast pc's even yet.

 

[xaira]

i dont mean to be mean, but in that pc evrything is a bottleneck

 

[jennyh]

Actually that's true lol.

I agree with the comments- that IDE hard drive *is* old for sure. The Athlon is ok and the card is still pretty decent. I'm not sure it's worth trying to upgrade, or just buying a new budget system and using the 4670 in it - that is probably the best idea.

 

[jdh440]

actually I just got the motherboard and processor off ebay for cheap about 2 weeks ago so I won't be upgrading those for now.this is my first custom built pc. I used some of the parts from my dell pc.
so the first would be to upgrade the hdd and then the memory
thanks everyone

 

[xaira]

http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-radeon-hd-4670-review/9

well the truth is you shud b getting sum good framerates at 1024 x 768, make sure every quality setting is set to the lowest possible value

 

[jdh440]

Best answer selected by jdh440.

 

[Guest]

Your RAM and your video card are your biggest bottlenecks, in that order.

Upgrade to 4GB of RAM ( 3.x if you are using a 32 bit OS ), and look for a video card in the $100-$150 price range and you should see a noticeable increase in your framerates.

Your HD is also getting long in the tooth, however, most games load all the key level data into memory first and access the files from there. You will want to replace this also soon, but I would look at the other areas first.

 

[jdh440]

Your RAM and your video card are your biggest bottlenecks, in that order.

Upgrade to 4GB of RAM ( 3.x if you are using a 32 bit OS ), and look for a video card in the $100-$150 price range and you should see a noticeable increase in your framerates.

Your HD is also getting long in the tooth, however, most games load all the key level data into memory first and access the files from there. You will want to replace this also soon, but I would look at the other areas first.

thanks, your suggestion seems it should have been the best answer.wasn't sure if inactive ment nobody could post anything,but yeah i was second thinking the HD was the main problem too.like you say, memory and GPU seem more likely.