Older PC vs. Newer Games

[k4ndle]

My problem is a simple one and I'm hoping you guys can lead me in the right direction. I built a decent machine a while back, but it's getting a little dated (specs to come). I'm experiencing fairly low FPS in games like BF3, and more recently, and more importantly to me, Star Wars: The Old Republic. I need a little help identifying my bottle neck as I am not exactly sure what the cause of it is.

Specs
OS: Win 7 Pro x64
Mobo: Asus P5N32-E SLI
GPU: Nvidia GTX 260
CPU: Intel E8500 (core 2 Duo running at 3.3ghz)
RAM: 4GB of DDR2
Resolution: 1920x1080
PSU: 700w

Comments
Okay first off, the Motherboard does not support PCI-E 2.0, but the GPU does... I don't know how much this actually affects performance, as I have read that many cards/applications do not take full advantage of the extra bandwidth. I also know that the card is a little dated for BF3, but I wouldn't think that it would have any issue with a game like Star Wars: The Old Republic. Do I need a memory upgrade? A new GPU? A new CPU? A mobo that will support PCI-E 2.0 and maybe DDR3?

I know a rebuild would be ideal and I am working on saving up the money to go LGA 1155, but as a poor college student, I can't afford much right now. Any advice on resolving this as cheaply as possible would be much appreciated.

*edit* added to the specs.

 

[hang-the-9]

A GTX 260 is not a bad card, neither is a dual-core CPU running at 3 gig. What settings and resolution are you running on? I'm thinking the video card may be a bit better than the CPU, although not by much.

 

[k4ndle]

Thanks for the fast reply! I run at 1920x1080.

 

[vitornob]

- Which are your PSU?

BTW, you should incur in some bottleneck with the following solution, but it's a fast cheap method to increase performance.
Yesterday, for $100, there was some GTX 260 in newegg. You could grab one and go for SLI (if your PSU supports of course)

 

[hang-the-9]

Thanks for the fast reply! I run at 1920x1080.

If you go for over medium settings at that resolution it will stress your system. I don't think just a video card upgrade or just a CPU upgrade will get you past that though, I think you'd need to do both.

 

[thently]

At 1080 it is your video card holding you back. I have the same one and it is not quite able to handle new games turned up any more 560 TI on the way woot. You can overclock that CPU very easy I had the one you have at 3.8 and it was stable for years till I upgraded.

Thent

 

[xtreme5]

hmm, those games are multithreaded so i would say you have a good cpu but not good for those games cause you only 2 core or 2 threads while nowaday games require quad core cpu's to run on a decent or on max setting like amd 980, 2500k you have a 4gb ddr2 memory now it's outdated you must have to ddr3 at 1600mhz to gpu is good enough but it does not have real power to run those games on good setting.

 

[k4ndle]

- Which are your monitor resolution?
- Which are your PSU?

BTW, you should incur in some bottleneck with the following solution, but it's a fast cheap method to increase performance.
Yesterday, for $100, there was some GTX 260 in newegg. You could grab one and go for SLI (if your PSU supports of course)

That's not a bad idea, but do you think that will help? I guess I'm just really not grasping the real affect PCI-E vs PCI-E 2.0 has. I'd hate for that to be an issue.

My PSU is 700watts, so that shouldn't be an issue.

 

[k4ndle]

At 1080 it is your video card holding you back. I have the same one and it is not quite able to handle new games turned up any more 560 TI on the way woot. You can overclock that CPU very easy I had the one you have at 3.8 and it was stable for years till I upgraded.

Thent

Really? I'll try bumping the voltage up a bit and see how it goes on the CPU, and do you think SLI would be the way to go?