Am i bottlenecked? do i need to oc my cpu, and how much and how??!!

[wayoftheroad]

hi everyone!

recently my 8600gt died on me im not a major gamer, but the games i do play id like to play maxed at 1680x1050

so i went out and bought myself a shiny gts 250 1 gb ddr3

it plays all my current games maxed out and fine, to be expected but i know its a fairy powerful card, never having a high end gfx card before i expected it to run newer games a little better? i get unsmooth looking around while playing neuxiuz maxed out, and dead rising plays at 40 fps maxed out 1680x 1050 4 x aa and looks choppy at times. is this how its suppose to be, or am i bottlenecked??

i have a 700w powersupply, 3 gb shitty ddr2 ram (dunno extact speed), and a intel dual core 2 duo E4500 @ 2.2 ghz. and a gts 250 obviously, this was a dell inspiron 530 from 07 before i upgraded most of the parts, cept the cpu.

now i know the cpu isnt the best in the world, but surely a dual core cant be a bottleneck??? or can it

do you think i need to overclock it or buy a better one??! am i even bottle necked at all? thanks!!! is my gts250 being held back?

 

[wa1]

For 1680x1050, GTS250 is quite enough to handle most of games with HIGH setting.
For your CPU, you will gain extra performance if you Overclock it a little, let's say 2.7GHz or more (watch the temps, make sure it stay cool).
For RAM, how many sticks did you have installed? If you have 3 sticks then you will better with 2 sticks (Dual Channel Mode).

 

[wayoftheroad]

i have 3 sticks of ram lol bought at best buy, very crappy ram id imagine different brands 2

how do i check the temprature of the cpu? and how do i safely overclock it? ive never done any overclocking in my life??

thanks for the fast response!

 

[wa1]

Use this to monitor all of your components:
http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.16-setup.exe
As for RAm, like i said before, 3 sticks installed won't run dual channel mode, so you will better when just 2 sticks installed.

You can OC your CPU from BIOS. Look at Overclocking section on this forums, there's guides for you to OC, it's easy and fun, even beginner like me can do that alone.

 

[wa1]

^
From where did you know that the OP PC is DELL?

Congrats, after rolli59 and jyjjy, now you have it...

 

[wa1]

Forget what i said, i miss the OP statement...
Quote:
"this was a dell inspiron 530 from 07".

Sorry...
For OP: Since you have DELL, you can't OC your PC...

 

[wayoftheroad]

well thats very disappointing...

*** dell i bought a computer let me do with it what i want!!!

 

[wayoftheroad]

is there any workaround? a cracked bios or something?

i know its easy to flash and install a bios i updated my bios a few times