Improve Gaming performance

Hi,

My son has a PC built by his friend :-

Motherboard: Asus M2N68-LA, bus type AMDK10
Graphics Card: Radeon HD 5450(1024Mb)
CPU: Triple core AMD Athlon II x3 43S 2900Mhz
Ram: 6GB

He is having trouble running some of the new games.. He was looking at adding a new graphics card ( NVidia GEforce GTC 400 ) but then other people have said he should change to quad core but I dont even know if his motherboard supports that..

Any suggestions

Thanks

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to smallzoo

smallzoo wrote :

Hi,

My son has a PC built by his friend :-

Motherboard: Asus M2N68-LA, bus type AMDK10
Graphics Card: Radeon HD 5450(1024Mb)
CPU: Triple core AMD Athlon II x3 43S 2900Mhz
Ram: 6GB

He is having trouble running some of the new games.. He was looking at adding a new graphics card ( NVidia GEforce GTC 400 ) but then other people have said he should change to quad core but I dont even know if his motherboard supports that..

Any suggestions

Thanks

The only thing holding game performance back is the graphics card.
IF you pair that triple core processor with at least a Nvidia 460/560 or a AMD radeon 5770/6770 ( The 6770 = a renamed 5770), 6850. He should be able to play everything he wants on nice settings.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to justme1977

justme1977 wrote :

The only thing holding game performance back is the graphics card.
IF you pair that triple core processor with at least a Nvidia 460/560 or a AMD radeon 5770/6770 ( The 6770 = a renamed 5770), 6850. He should be able to play everything he wants on nice settings.

sorry, but i think the processor will bottleneck the GPU if you decided to use 460/560 or 6850..6770 will not be bottlenecked/ing

i suggests the TS to buy HD6770, HD6790 for AMD Radeon or GTS450, GTX550 Ti for NVIDIA..

those cards wont bottleneck the processor or vice versa. those cards requires minimum powers of 450w PSU..can you tell me the maker (manufacturer)/model of the PSU? just to make sure you have a proper PSU for GC upgrade

Reply to didhot123

I think 6850 will run on that CPU just fine.

Reply to acerace

Best bang for the buck!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102948
or
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produ [...] 6814131378

the "Graphics Card: Radeon HD 5450(1024Mb) " is basically a 2D card with lots of video ram, so the windows experience is good, but the game play is awful.

The 6850 card is pretty decent comparatively.

5770/6770 - 800 Stream processors
6850- 900 ish
6870 - 1120 - Currently use.
6950 - 1400

All i know is with AMD, more is better. Going from each one is marginal performance gains. From 800 to 1120 i noticed a huge gain.

All depends on how much you want to spend.

Reply to nao1120

Um, realized i submitted the CDN prices.... Cheaper on the www.newegg.com - Search 6850 or 6870
Also, note they are larger cards in comparison, couple inches or more longer compared to the 55xx card.

Reply to nao1120

I would start with a new GPU.

Right now the slowest part by far is that video card. The key here is to replace the slowest part. If you replace the GPU with a 6770 or a 6850 the improvment would be huge. You would see a 3-4x increase in frames per second. The slowest part would then be the CPU. A 6770 can be had for around 120. If you on a budget newegg has a 4870 for around $55.

Reply to bucknutty

If he's playing 2011 games, a 95watt Phenom II X4 will help out greatly in addition to a 6850/6870. Get one quick though, AMD has stopped making them.

This one is my planned upgrade after Xmas - great price, and will boost performance in gaming, especially.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819103940

Message edited by jessterman21 on 12-07-2011 at 04:46:03 PM

------------------------------ Dell Inspiron 546 MT - Athlon II X2 250 - HIS IceQ X HD6870 - 4GB DDR2 800 - 750GB Hitachi Deskstar - Antec Earthwatts EA-500D - Windows 7 Pro 32-bit - ASUS LED Monitor @ 1440x900
Reply to jessterman21

need to know what of Power Supply ..how many watts ? and who makes it if possible plz ? ..this will determine if you can even upgrade anything at all

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to ltrazaklt

ltrazaklt wrote :

need to know what of Power Supply ..how many watts ? and who makes it if possible plz ? ..this will determine if you can even upgrade anything at all

That's true - you'll need a good 450-500w PSU to run these graphics cards - can be had for about $50-60 on Newegg.

Also, what's the budget range?

Message edited by jessterman21 on 12-07-2011 at 04:12:03 PM

------------------------------ Dell Inspiron 546 MT - Athlon II X2 250 - HIS IceQ X HD6870 - 4GB DDR2 800 - 750GB Hitachi Deskstar - Antec Earthwatts EA-500D - Windows 7 Pro 32-bit - ASUS LED Monitor @ 1440x900
Reply to jessterman21

Things we need to know are. What resolution is the Monitor and what is the make and rating of the PSU in the PC. Also what is your budget ?

The CPU wont bottleneck most cards mentioned here so don't worry about replacing that just yet. As people have been saying the Graphics card is very low powered and the increase you will get by upgrading to even the lower end of the recommendations you have been given would be huge. somewhere in the region of 4/500%.

This review of your card will show you what sort of improvement to expect

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews [...] 50/29.html

Mactronix

------------------------------ Barbah and Bottsie Boodles
Reply to mactronix

The triple core Athlons are still very good chips and are capable of doing great things when paired with the right graphics card. The 5450 is mainly a business/productivity card, and is mainly used by big businessmen to make pretty powerpoints and run 2 monitors. There is no gaming potential in that card at all save for maybe some older games.

With a regular 300W or so power supply I would say that the 5670 (or 6670, badge engineering) would be the best bet you could get; it can run most of todays games on decent and smooth settings. It is the best in the budget range that can run on a 300W or so power supply, beating out most of Nvidia's offerings.

On a good 400W-500W power supply, I would highly recommend getting a ATi Radeon 5770 (6770) or a Nvidia GTX460. They still play most of todays games on very high settings and will hold up for another 2 or 3 years of demanding gaming.

Reply to Deemo13

Thanks for all the replies so far..

Just got back so will check the PSU and post the details in a bit

Reply to smallzoo

- Do not bother about PSU Total Wattage, the most important aspect of a PSU today is the total wattage in combined 12v rails (or you could check the total combined amperage in these rails)
If you describe the model too would be awesome.

- Max monitor resolution.

- Games that your son plays.

------------------------------ Core i7 2600k, Asus P8Z68 Deluxe, 16GB Patriot DDR3, 2TB HD , SLI GTX 460 1GB, XFX 750W BE, 3D Vision, CM 690 II Advanced
Reply to vitornob

http://educations.newegg.com/tool/psucalc/index.html
after what number W you get + 150W is correct PSU what you need.
350W + 150W = 500W some thing like this.

i hope this web site will help you to choose correct power PSU.

After upgrade GPU "6xxx" will helps alot.

and this web site
http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] ,1928.html
will give you clear idea.

good luck~~

Reply to andywork78

The power supply says

Model No: PS-5301-08HF
Watts: 300

My son hasnt chosen the monitor yet but he is after a monitor like :-

Ilyama E2208HDD 22 inch Wide LCD 1080p DVI Monitor
Resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels, Inputs DVI, VGA, Response time 5 ms
In Amazon at £111

Hope that info helps to decide on what exactly my son should look for

Cheers

Message quoted 2 times

Reply to smallzoo

smallzoo wrote :

The power supply says

Model No: PS-5301-08HF
Watts: 300

My son hasnt chosen the monitor yet but he is after a monitor like :-

Ilyama E2208HDD 22 inch Wide LCD 1080p DVI Monitor
Resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels, Inputs DVI, VGA, Response time 5 ms
In Amazon at £111

Hope that info helps to decide on what exactly my son should look for

Cheers

Ok well we need to stick to a card that wont need any extra power from the PSU because the unit you have seems to be a generic 300Watt PSU and as such most probably wont have a PCIE cable anyway. So we would be looking at a HD5670 probably as the best bet. You can get a 5750 that wont need extra power as well by the way.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews [...] ceQ/1.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews [...] een/1.html

As for the monitor well if that's your Budget then you can get a much better monitor for that
http://www.ebuyer.com/172984-benq- [...] -l1pla-tbe
Or if you just want a monitor that will get the job done then you can get something of the same quality as the one you linked at a cheaper price
http://www.ebuyer.com/280625-lg-e2 [...] -e2211s-bn

Mactronix

------------------------------ Barbah and Bottsie Boodles
Reply to mactronix

smallzoo wrote :

The power supply says

Model No: PS-5301-08HF
Watts: 300

My son hasnt chosen the monitor yet but he is after a monitor like :-

Ilyama E2208HDD 22 inch Wide LCD 1080p DVI Monitor
Resolution 1920 x 1080 pixels, Inputs DVI, VGA, Response time 5 ms
In Amazon at £111

Hope that info helps to decide on what exactly my son should look for

Cheers

Like mactronix has said before, with a power supply of 300W, the best card is a Radeon 5670. It packs a punch similar to the old 8800GT/9800GT cards, which can run almost any game on the market with decent settings. They can also be found at a very very very good price today. Here are a few:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] CatId=7005

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applica [...] CatId=3669

Reply to Deemo13

the cpu is fine. for reasonable gameplay you need at least an amd 5770/6770 or nvidia gts450/550ti. just make sure the power supply will supply enough power for whichever you want to use. out of the above mentioned the 5770/6770 has the lowest power requirements. an antec earthwatts 380w is a good solid power supply rated at 380w continuous power with plenty of amperage on the 12v rails.

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ INTEL CORE 2 Q6600 @ 3.49GHz, CM Hyper TX3, ASUS P5N-D, 8GB DDR800 RAM, Powercolour HD6850, 650w Antec Trupower New PSU
Reply to iam2thecrowe

iam2thecrowe wrote :

the cpu is fine. for reasonable gameplay you need at least an amd 5770/6770 or nvidia gts450/550ti. just make sure the power supply will supply enough power for whichever you want to use. out of the above mentioned the 5770/6770 has the lowest power requirements. an antec earthwatts 380w is a good solid power supply rated at 380w continuous power with plenty of amperage on the 12v rails.

+1

------------------------------ Dell Inspiron 546 MT - Athlon II X2 250 - HIS IceQ X HD6870 - 4GB DDR2 800 - 750GB Hitachi Deskstar - Antec Earthwatts EA-500D - Windows 7 Pro 32-bit - ASUS LED Monitor @ 1440x900
Reply to jessterman21

Based on what people have said, I have decided to install the 380 antec power supply and the 5770/6770

Any ideas on where the best place to source these in the UK

thanks

Reply to smallzoo

go with 5770 ..much better card than 6770

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to ltrazaklt

ltrazaklt wrote :

go with 5770 ..much better card than 6770

Nope. They both the same card. So no performance difference at all. If I got to choose, I choose 6770 cause it has newer technology than 5770.

------------------------------

http://valid.canardpc.com/cache/banner/2342857.png

Reply to acerace

hmm, I think you might be right ..I could of swore reading way back when that the 5770 was better , and people were complaining because the supposed newer cards were being beaten by the older model .. I suppose even on the charts , it's the reference design
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts [...] ,2674.html
but they are soo close not much difference at all ..then it would boil down to power use , and price , and maybe resolution being a factor. what the heck is the difference anyway between an ATi and an AMD card ? does ATi still make graphics and AMD makes them alongside them now ? since they bought up ATi ..I need to bone up on my red team specs hehe .

Reply to ltrazaklt

^no, AMD bought out ATI. its still ATI's technology they are building from, but AMD own it. Hopefully AMD dont drag their gpu's down the way they are doing with their cpu's......

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ INTEL CORE 2 Q6600 @ 3.49GHz, CM Hyper TX3, ASUS P5N-D, 8GB DDR800 RAM, Powercolour HD6850, 650w Antec Trupower New PSU
Reply to iam2thecrowe

iam2thecrowe wrote :

Hopefully AMD dont drag their gpu's down the way they are doing with their cpu's......

For reals.

Hey iam2thecrowe, what games, resolution, and framerates do you play/get? I'm upgrading my budget rig with a 3GHz Phenom II X4 and an HD 6850 soon - we'll have about the same performance. I love checking benchmarks for new games, but review websites almost always use an overclocked Sandy Bridge CPU, and I know my frames will be lower with an HD 6850 than what they're getting.

Message edited by jessterman21 on 12-12-2011 at 10:48:50 PM

------------------------------ Dell Inspiron 546 MT - Athlon II X2 250 - HIS IceQ X HD6870 - 4GB DDR2 800 - 750GB Hitachi Deskstar - Antec Earthwatts EA-500D - Windows 7 Pro 32-bit - ASUS LED Monitor @ 1440x900
Reply to jessterman21

Based on what people of said I thought of the following shopping list :-

CiT Silent Technology 450UB / 450W / PSU / Power Supply Unit
[url=http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/8284297/CiT-Silent-Technology-450UB-450W-PSU-Power-Supply-Unit/Product.html?_%24ja=tsid:11518%7Ccat:8284297%7Cprd:8284297][/url]

Sapphire 11189-00-20G HD 6770 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
[url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-11189-00-20G-6770-GDDR5-Graphics/dp/B004XSJR5Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1323709919&sr=1-1][/url]

LG E2211S-BN LED LCD 21.5" VGA Monitor
[url=http://www.ebuyer.com/280625-lg-e2211s-bn-led-lcd-21-5-vga-monitor-e2211s-bn][/url]

Should all these be ok for my setup ?
thanks

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to smallzoo

smallzoo wrote :

Based on what people of said I thought of the following shopping list :-

CiT Silent Technology 450UB / 450W / PSU / Power Supply Unit
[url=http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/8284297/CiT-Silent-Technology-450UB-450W-PSU-Power-Supply-Unit/Product.html?_%24ja=tsid:11518%7Ccat:8284297%7Cprd:8284297][/url]

Sapphire 11189-00-20G HD 6770 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
[url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-11189-00-20G-6770-GDDR5-Graphics/dp/B004XSJR5Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1323709919&sr=1-1][/url]

LG E2211S-BN LED LCD 21.5" VGA Monitor
[url=http://www.ebuyer.com/280625-lg-e2211s-bn-led-lcd-21-5-vga-monitor-e2211s-bn][/url]

Should all these be ok for my setup ?
thanks

You will be more than happy with those. I'm not sure about the PSU the link does not work but I think the make is a decent one so you should be fine.

Mactronix

------------------------------ Barbah and Bottsie Boodles
Reply to mactronix

Toms has done some GREAT articles on PSU's .."Who's Who in Power Supplies" showed some of the better makers , as well as how some of them are different brands makers with another company sticker on it. Search around the site , you'll find some great info that

Reply to ltrazaklt

I noticed some of the power supplies for sale mention

Great PSU, but please bear in mind that this version does not have any PCI Express 6pin plugs on it. So if you have a powerful video card you will have to get a molex converter

What does this mean ? I didnt think the PSU was anything to do with the graphics card ?

What else should I be thinking of in terms of connections or should I just be able to swap my current one out ( to remind everyone my current PSU says Model No: PS-5301-08HF , Watts: 300 )

Thanks

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to smallzoo

you'll need to check the MB , for the main power connections (usually a 20 long piece connection, and possibly and add'l 4 pin connection to it. often called 20+4 ) also the motherboard MAY have add'l connection another seperate 4 or 8 pin aux power connection, and then MIGHT furher have another connection for aux power graphics, generally a stndrd 4 pin molex connection same type as you hook up to a HD or CD/DVD Rom player (pre SATA power connection, as those connecters are different..it is all going to depend on the Motherboard make model ..ok I jsut looked up that MB ..its a straight up 24 pin ATX connect , and single 4 pin aux power connection ..soo you just need to make sure the PSU has the right connections for Graphics Card ..I think all the ones you are looking at are single 6 pin connectors .. this might help
http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/b [...] ntver=true

I dont know about that PSU , the link does not work

Reply to ltrazaklt

smallzoo wrote :

I noticed some of the power supplies for sale mention

Great PSU, but please bear in mind that this version does not have any PCI Express 6pin plugs on it. So if you have a powerful video card you will have to get a molex converter

What does this mean ? I didnt think the PSU was anything to do with the graphics card ?

What else should I be thinking of in terms of connections or should I just be able to swap my current one out ( to remind everyone my current PSU says Model No: PS-5301-08HF , Watts: 300 )

Thanks

The PSU has very much something to do with the Graphics card.
Your old card did not need any extra power as it is a low powered/performance GPU.
Better Graphics cards need extra power such as the 6770. This is provided by a PCIE cable that comes directly from the power supply.
So if your power supply has no PCIE cables you wont be able to run the card, also if the PSU does not provide enough power on the +12V rail, (this is the rail the PCIE cable comes from). Then it wont power the card properly either.

Mactronix

------------------------------ Barbah and Bottsie Boodles
Reply to mactronix

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