Upgrading. help.

[sicknasty19]

Hello, my name is Randy and I am looking to upgrade my processor and video card. My general purpose for my computer is gaming. I have an e7400, 4gb of ddr3 ram and a gts 250. I am looking to upgrade because at the moment I get choppy game play in CoD - Black Ops and I would like to play battlefeild 3




My computer as it is, has an LGA 775 slot for my processor and I was thinking about upgrading from an e7400 to a Q8400, also considering a Q9400. At this point in time I have a Q8400 on ebay for 145.00 and all of the Q9400 are 239.00. I'm cheap, how much performance increase will I get with the Q9400 over the Q8400?

 

[Guest]

This topic has been moved from the section Opinions and Experiences to section Systems by Grumpy9117

 

[geofelt]

To help clarify your options, run these two tests:

1) Run your games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.

2) Limit your cpu, either by reducing the OC, or, in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%.
If your FPS drops significantly, it is an indicator that your cpu is the limiting factor, and a cpu upgrade is in order.

It is possible that both tests are positive, indicating that you have a well balanced system, and both cpu and gpu need to be upgraded to get better gaming FPS.
I suspect that this is your case.

As a rule, it is the graphics card that is most important for gaming. If you upgrade your GTS250, make it a significant jump, say to a GTX560ti. About $125.

Also, few games can make good use of more than two cores, so upgrading to a quad might not be as good as a E8600.

Still, I don't think I would invest much more in a 775 based system. It is already two generations old.
You can get a sandy bridge 2100 cpu for $125 that will run most games very well.
But, you must add in $100 or so for a motherboard, and $50 for ram. Less what your old parts will bring.