zyphen

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hello.

i am really annoyed with not being able to play games at reasonable frame rates.
as you may know a new game, Tribes Ascend is in beta. I did get in! but even on the lowest settings
i only get around 20fps.
for as cheap as possible i would like to be able to play it without it looking bad and at a good framerate

my specs so far:

CPU: AMD athlon 64 x2 Dual core @2.5Ghz
GPU: ATI Radeon 2400 pro (512 mb)
HDD: 500gb ( new)
PSU: 550w

now at the moment i dont yet have a budget ( hopefully getting money for Christmas.)
but i imagine it will not be over £200

please could you give me some ideas of what i could buy/do to make my games playable.

thank you! Merry Christmas :D
 

Stardude82

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What's your motherboard and RAM? I think a 6770 for about £75 is a good place to start. You should be able to pick up a G840, a budget H61 and 4 GB of DDR3 for about £130. I'm pulling these prices off scan.co.uk.

That should be a very decent machine with your existing parts.
 

Stardude82

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The CPU barely makes the minimum requirements. So yes. I don't know if I'd get a Nvidia 440, though. I'd look at a 450 or a 5670/6670 at least.
 

xaira

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the major bottleneck in your machine is your ancient gpu, even a 6670 will show major improvement, if you get 20 fps now, you might reach as high as 80

how are you in terms of memory?
 

zyphen

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well my motherboard is old aswell. its a MSI ms-7309 i think its a am2 socket so i cant realy upgrade my Cpu without buying a new one.

i have 2gb of ddr2 ram atm but i definitely upgrading to 4gb.

at the moment i am kinda looking for a cheap way to be able to play games.

even if i want to run TF2 it has to be turned to use dx 8 to be playable.

for skyrim i have to play at a extremely low settings and resolution and i get 17 fps

Its frustrating :(
 

zyphen

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also. my motherboard is locked so i cant overclock that i know of. but is there ANY way i could overclock?

i have overclocked my gpu a little and it has increase performance a bit
 

Stardude82

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It really is your GPU holding you back. Also, the price of DDR2 is steep, so you should consider a new motherboard and GPU.

You can certainly get one of the newer Regor Athlon X2:

http://www.msi.com/product/mb/K9N6PGM2-V.html#/?div=CPUSupport

That should support a 6770 nicely.
 

zyphen

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but if i was to get a new motherboard surely id need a new cpu because i dont see any am2 new motherboards around. in that case what would be a fairly good choice of cpu for me?
 

Spoony

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if your budget is 200 quid then get a 6950 at the max end of your budget. and any posts up and says you cant get one for that price is a tool and needs to search harder and look at ebuyer.co.uk or scan or aria in the UK they are all doing 6950 for £185/225

but if im honest that system couldnt run minesweeper never mind games like BF3 or Skyrim.

you could always look at ebay for something like a 5870 pick one up on there for like 50 quid and upgrade the rest of your system with the saved cash. OR BEG and i do mean BEG people like me to give you *** for free like spare ram i have on my desk or hard drives in a box doing jack or maybe even a pair of 5770's

it is xmas after all ;)
 
for under 200 pounds you should be able to get a new intel sandy bridge cpu pentium G620 + socket 1555 motherboard + 4gb ddr3 ram + video card (something like a 6670). All that will set you up nicely to play recent games and you will have a very balanced system with low power consumption so you wont need a new psu.
 

Wucked

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Spoony, PLEASE! LEAVE BRITNEY ALO... Oh Wait.

zyphen needs help! Tribes Ascend cannot go on without him / her / it (just trying to cover all the bases here, you never know)! I would help you myself, but honestly I gave all my spare hardware away recently, including a U2410 which I'm starting to regret. BUT it is Xmas, a season for giving...
 

donkeywax

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for two hundred get phenom ii 940 which am2+ so it will go in your motherboard and gtx 460 1gb that combo play anything at moment on medium settings
 

please dont recommend AMD FX cpu's for gaming, they are not good. Either a phenom II x4 or an intel core i3/i5. An 8 core AMD CPU is currently putperformed in every aspect by intels quad core i7 2600. Get your facts strait and dont recommend crap.
 

zyphen

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ok so far for christmas i got £125 now tomorow i am buying a sapphire radeon hd 6670. now how much of a difference will i see? for example tribes ascend at my native resolution i run at 7 fps so obviously i have to run it a a extremely low resolution. now with the new graphics card what would i expect to see? its has 1gb of gddr5 memory 800mhz core clock 4000mhz memory clock speed
 

you tell us, your buying it, so let us know how it goes. you should see a fair increase, although in many games you will be extremely CPU bottlenecked.
 

zyphen

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well this is kinda weird your supposed to be helping me. should i buy it or not i just wanna play games at my native resolution with decent fps!
 

Stardude82

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125 quid should be enough for a 6670 (or a 6770 if you shop around) and a second hand CPU (look at compatibility list I posted above). You should be able to play games well enough with just the 6670.