Will an E5400 bottle neck a GTS 250?

[alhanelem]

i have a Pentium dual core E5400 at 3.3 Ghz (OC) and i just recently bought a Palit E-GREEN GTS 250.
i started to play a few games like Blur, Last Remnant and Split second and i noticed the performance wasn't great. i know the e-green has the clock and memory settings lowered but i oc'd them back to normal settings but my performance still isn't great.

PC specs:

Pentium e5400 OC @ 3.35 Ghz
2 GB ddr2 ram
1 TB HHD
MSI G31 series motherboard
Great Wall 550 Watt PSU
and palit e green gts 250

and i play at a resolution of 1280 X 1024 at high settings , AF and AA off

 

[Maziar]

Your FPS should be fine with that rig,how much FPS do you get exactly in those games ?

 

[alhanelem]

Your FPS should be fine with that rig,how much FPS do you get exactly in those games ?

well in blur i get about 40-50 fps
in split second i get 20-30 fps
and on last remnant im not sure it varies

 

[Maziar]

Do you have other games to test too ? (mostly graphic intensive games)

 

[jyjjy]

OCed to 3.3ghz you should be fine I would think but considering you aren't using AA/AF there's an easy way to test it. Applying AA/AF doesn't really tax the processor, just the video card. So if you are being bottlenecked by the CPU you shouldn't lose any performance by turning on AA/AF.

 

[alhanelem]

Do you have other games to test too ? (mostly graphic intensive games)

well on l4d1 and 2 i get 60 fps easily, dead space i can get 60+, on furmark i get 40 fps average and on 3dmark06 i got a gpu score of 6200

 

[alhanelem]

im thinking of getting an extra 2 gigs of ram, plus getting windows 7 (i have xp SP3) and getting a quad core.
BUT i dont know if my motherboard and/or psu can handle it

my mobo is a G31M3 http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=prodmbspec&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=170&cat3_no=&prod_no=1449
and my psu has about 32 amps on the 12v

 

[wh3resmycar]

you shouldve:

1. stick to xp
2. add the money you're supposed to get win7 for and get a 5770
3. spare some money prepping to oc that e5400.

 

[Maziar]

to alhanelem
Your FPS in L4D2 and Dead space is fine,i did a google search and found that there are some users having low FPS in Split second,also a friend of mine gets 30 FPS steady with a GTX 260M(so i think its not very well optimized).

to wh3resmycar
I think an E5400 @ 3.2 is fine for almost all games,also a GTS 250 is sufficient for playing at 1280x1024

 

[wh3resmycar]

^ i know, but changing OSes wont magically give you performance boost in games.

 

[mactronix]

You will be perfectly fine with that set up. W7 gave me a boost in some games but it isnt a reason to upgrade to it. just one of many.

If you go looking for a restriction in certain games then you may find one. For everyday gaming you really have no worries.

Mactronix

 

[alhanelem]

^ i know, but changing OSes wont magically give you performance boost in games.

but it will let me play games on dx 10 like just cause 2

 

[jyjjy]

im thinking of getting an extra 2 gigs of ram, plus getting windows 7 (i have xp SP3) and getting a quad core.
BUT i dont know if my motherboard and/or psu can handle it

my mobo is a G31M3 http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=prodmbspec&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=170&cat3_no=&prod_no=1449
and my psu has about 32 amps on the 12v

Adding two gigs of ram will not seriously effect the amount of power your system needs so your PSU should be fine for that and looking at the page you linked for your motherboard it can handle 4gb. It does only have two slots though so if both are full already then you will need to ditch the ram you have now in order to upgrade.
There's no reason you can't use Win7 if you want to. I would recommend the 64-bit version so you can actually use all of the 4gb of ram you plan on upgrading to. On 32-bit versions of Windows the system only 3 to 3.5gb will actually be usable.

 

[alhanelem]

Adding two gigs of ram will not seriously effect the amount of power your system needs so your PSU should be fine for that and looking at the page you linked for your motherboard it can handle 4gb. It does only have two slots though so if both are full already then you will need to ditch the ram you have now in order to upgrade.
There's no reason you can't use Win7 if you want to. I would recommend the 64-bit version so you can actually use all of the 4gb of ram you plan on upgrading to. On 32-bit versions of Windows the system only 3 to 3.5gb will actually be usable.

ok, i only have 1 ram slot full so i have room for 2 extra gigs but do i really need to get the 64 bit one?
also can my motherboard and/or PSU support a quad core?

 

[Mudit Sathe]

You should be fine with that OC.

 

[jyjjy]

ok, i only have 1 ram slot full so i have room for 2 extra gigs but do i really need to get the 64 bit one?
also can my motherboard and/or PSU support a quad core?

You don't need the 64-bit version but like I said on the 32-bit version your ram upgrade will not actually be completely available to the system. You will add 2gb but only 1-1.5gb of that will be usable by windows. They cost the same I believe so there's no reason not to get the 64-bit version.
Your motherboard can handle quadcores;
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=prodcpu2&prod_no=1449&maincat_no=1
With 32 amps on the +12v your PSU should be able to handle a quad and a GTS 250. I would recommend updating to the latest BIOS before installing a new processor;
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=downloaddetail&type=bios&maincat_no=1&prod_no=1449