4870 Low FPS Ram, CPU, or GPU?

[HaGGardSmurf]

Hey guys, I'm playing mafia II, and am using all settings set to high, AA off, and physx off.

I have an old asus m2n-e board, (non sli) and an amd athlon x2 2.21 ghz. I have 1 gb kingston ram, and 4gb of some no name ram my brother bought online.

I've looked at a bunch of people playing mafia II with the same card, same settings and they all get 50-60 FPS max and ~40-45 min.

Now using frap's I get about 35 max, and like 15 min.

So what I'm wondering is, what the problem is... I am only running the game at 1280 x 960, and all these guys are running at higher res's.

I was thinking it was my CPU at first, since its only 2.21 ghz and dual core, but most games dont take use of extra cores very well anyhow.

So now I'm thinking its either my GPU (being pci-e 2.0 in a 1.0 slot) but I am not sure the pci-e bandwidth would be maxed out? Maybe it is?

A friend suggested it's my ram, and hell it may be, I dont know the speed of it, and I dont know the max speed my board can run, I dont know if my ram would even effect the game performance?

Anyhow, I'll leave it to you experts A constant 25 fps would be nice There is sometimes a momentary lag (fps drops to like 18) for a half second every now and then.

 

[insanet]

it is the cpu.

if i understand you right you are in almost exactly the same situation as me, 4870, M2n-e, the same processor, and 1 gb of ram that is my computer!

it is an awful balance, mine was created by lack of funds half way though upgrading(the video card half). i would be cautious about putting that stick of ram in the mobo. the m2n-e is an am2 slot compatible with only ddr-2 and most commonly sold ram now days is ddr-3. i would recommend upgrading cpu and motherboard to the modern AM3 socket type (phenomII, anthlon II) or intel"s lga 1156(i3, i5, i7 8**) and if that newly purchased ram is ddr-3 putting it in there.
here is something more about sockets. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-motherboard-guide,2546-5.html

the 4870 is still competitive with modern solutions, so there is no need to upgrade the gpu.

 

[lucuis]

Yup, totally the cpu. Mafia likes to use lots of cpu, and 2.21 ghz dual core just isn't enough.

 

[HaGGardSmurf]

it is the cpu.

if i understand you right you are in almost exactly the same situation as me, 4870, M2n-e, the same processor, and 1 gb of ram that is my computer!

it is an awful balance, mine was created by lack of funds half way though upgrading(the video card half). i would be cautious about putting that stick of ram in the mobo. the m2n-e is an am2 slot compatible with only ddr-2 and most commonly sold ram now days is ddr-3. i would recommend upgrading cpu and motherboard to the modern AM3 socket type (phenomII, anthlon II) or intel"s lga 1156(i3, i5, i7 8**) and if that newly purchased ram is ddr-3 putting it in there.
here is something more about sockets. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-motherboard-guide,2546-5.html

the 4870 is still competitive with modern solutions, so there is no need to upgrade the gpu.

Sounds about right, mine is also an aweful balance =D

I built this computer like 10 years ago, it was awesome back then but slowely started to suck. I upgraded to win 7 64 bit and its like a whole new cpu... I had a couple friends that kept wanting me to play pc games, but my 7900gt wasnt enough, so I upgraded to the 4870 (recommended through the forum).

As for the ram, its DDR-2 I know that for sure, I'm pretty sure my brother looked up the spec's of the kingston ram I have, and he found the closest match on ebay and bought it. The ram seems to function fine, ive used it for like 2 years. I was just wondering since its no name maybe that could be the issue?

Well I am going AM3 for sure, no doubt about that, but I plan on upgrading when the bulldozer chips start to come out, I'll probably go AM3 around then, use my phenom in that board, and wait to see if the bulldozer's are a fail like the Phenom 1's. (Kind of an amd fanboy )

Thats the reason I bought the 4870 because it seemed to be quite good in modern games still, I didnt want to spend $300 on a high end graphics card in this rig, that'd just be dumb, I'd be bottlenecked pretty bad, and I dont know if the card would fit anyhow, my 4870 is almost too long.

Yup, totally the cpu. Mafia likes to use lots of cpu, and 2.21 ghz dual core just isn't enough.

So would a phenom II x4 810 be enough =D

I also noticed when I play team fortress 2, if there are lots of people &/or sentry's dispensers or just items in general my fps will dive. Is this CPU also? TF2 doesnt seem like a very graphically intensive game to run, mafia II with full settings seems MUCH more strenuous than tf2...

 

[lucas1024]

The 4870 is a quite capable card. I am using it to play Fallout NV, Mass Effect 2, DAO, etc at 1920x1200 with AA and AF.

Certainly, you can use a faster CPU. But what you reported on your RAM looks weird to me: you said 1GB Kingston and 4GB noname - are you saying you have 2 sticks in there? If so, then they are not configured in in dual-channel and this will affect the speed dramatically.

 

[HaGGardSmurf]

I have 2 512 mb Kingston sticks. And 2 2gb no name sticks both are dual channel.

I'm thinking of upgrading my RAM but I can't figure out what the fastest speed my motherboard can support. It's an asus m2n-e maybe you guys can figure it out.

Also would better RAM also help? I'll be buying a new CPU in December ish.

 

[HaGGardSmurf]

Best answer selected by HaGGardsmurf.

 

[Maziar]

This topic has been closed by Maziar