Help on old pc upgrade

Beeg

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Apr 24, 2011
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Hi guys, I decide to start upgrading my old pc a bit and I've bought myself the Asus gts 250 512mb and I have problems which according to all the benchmarks should not be problems. I've still got old LCD screen so my resolution on games are always just on 1366 x 768. On most games I get really laggy gameplay. according to benchmarks, games like new MOH, COD BO and NFS Shift, the gts 250 should run them just fine on high settings. But I don't have that luck. I think it is my CPU but just want to ask and make sure before I upgrade.

System Specs:

CPU - Intel E2140 Dual Core @ 1.60Ghz
RAM - 3gb DDR2- 667
GFX - ASUS GTS 250 512mb
PSU - 450W Coolermaster
 

tomskent

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Nov 25, 2010
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you have a 65nm core 2 duo with 1mb of cache, it is indeed holding you back, however it should still push those games adequately at 1366x768.
make sure you have the latest drivers from nvidas site.
I personally would save everything I need off the hd, reformat and reinstall the os and all the drivers and try again.
 

Beeg

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Lol ja im not gona oc anything but thanx 4 the help you guys. am going to upgrade soon. and getting faster ddr3 RAM. will that increase performance aswel?
 



your motherboard only takes DDR2 RAM .

Te only tool that will let you install DDR3 is a hammer , and if you do that the board wont run faster
 

calguyhunk

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Jul 6, 2010
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Hi beeg, DDR3 won't let you go any faster. But as tomskent said in the 1st reply, download the latest drivers (GPU and motherboard), upgrade your BIOS, backup your data and clean install your OS after a reformat.

A GTS 250 is definitely good enough for those games @1366X768.

What board are you using? In any case, as I said, DDR3 ain't gonna help you. If you're on 64 bit Windows, an extra Gig of mem might, but DDR2 only.

Also, your PSU on paper is good enough to support OC'ing your CPU upto 2Ghz+ on stock. Not sure, but it'll prolly go upto 1.8-ish on stock voltages as well, but you'll have to check that by trial and error for starters.

If you wanna know more on that, you can always Google :)
 

JKatwyopc

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Not likely since they are actually keyed differently. Some CPU's can support both but not in the same motherboard.

As Outlander_04 said, "The only tool that will let you install DDR3 is a hammer, and if you do that the board won't run faster." <grammar corrected>
 

americanbrian

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I personally am not recommending anything I wouldn't do myself. I have an old base unit with an E2180, the mobo has no OC options and I will be doing the 800->1066 FSB pinmod.

It could be that his MOBO has OC settings in the bios and hence this would be irrelevant. I just think it could help squeeze some free performance from an aging PC.

And that CPU is probably worth like $10 or something. Its not a huge financial risk is it?
 


I might be wrong about that .
There were some intel mb's that had slots for both ddr3 and ddr2 . I think they made about 7 of them , so its possible [ but very unlikely ] the OP has one .

But just to repeat [ just in case] DDR3 sticks will NOT fit in DDR2 slots without the use of a hammer . Ideally a very large hammer .
 

calguyhunk

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Funny, but factually incorrect.

Some chipsets on LGA 775 do support that, but you cannot run both at the same time. But there ARE motherboards which have both slots in a single board like this one.

Here's the tom's review.

That's why I asked for his mobo model.

EDIT: outlander posted while I was typing LOL.