Xyst

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May 24, 2011
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18,510
Currently I'm running:

AMD Phenom II x4 965 Processor @ 3.4 Ghz

12 Gb of 1333Mhz Patriot Sector 7 Viper II ram. (x3 4GB tri channel)

Asus M4A79XTD EVO - AM2+ AM3 socket.

850 Watt Corsair silver grade PSU.

5770 HD Saphire Oced to 935 Core Clock with 1325GHZ memory.
(With a second 5770 that was dead out of the box.....)


Standard Cooling fans. 3 +CPU,PSU,GPU fans.


Now I do a lot of gaming but I also FRAPS and make youtube videos as a hobby.

Lately I've been having trouble running games like Witcher 2, Brink and some of the more recent releases while frapsing.

Now I use a completely separate hard drive for the fraps videos to go, however droping 30 FPS is really killing me.
Not only that I need to sometimes run games on low settings while turning off 90% of the pretty effects.


Now I know my specs are pretty weak however where do you think I could easily pick up some more performance?
I mean x2 5770s is not ideal, however its still a fairly strong card combo, however I think my processor is what is slowing my system down.

If you look at this chart.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

You can easily see that AMD processors are far worse then intell processors, and I was eyeing a

Intel Core i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz for a cheap $297.00

However this would require me to get a completely new motherboard, which is another 200$

However I have another tower and could likely sell my older system for a good 500$. So this brings my budget to about 1000$



Another thing I was thinking about was upgrading my cooling system, nothing too fancy just replacing the stock fans with after market fans and replacing the CPU cooler with something a little more beefy, and simply over clock my 3.4 cpu to 3.8 or 4.0 depending on the temp.

Would over clocking it make it any better? What do you think my best and cheapest upgrades would be?
 

Xyst

Distinguished
May 24, 2011
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18,510
Okay, well I game as well as render videos, however I don't really care how long that takes.

At 100% load my CPU heats up to about 52c, should I look into a better CPU cooler?

At idle it runs at 32c.



so I'd be better off selling my 5770s and picking up a new video card?
 

Xyst

Distinguished
May 24, 2011
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18,510
I guess just the way it looks, however the new egg reviews seem pretty positive, so sorry for doubting you. It just looks like a normal every day stock cooling fan. =P
 

Xyst

Distinguished
May 24, 2011
12
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18,510
Sounds great, I'll be ordering it sometime in the next few days. I have TWO fan slots on the side of my case, should I pick up two cheap fans to fill up that slot?