Am I bottlenecking?

[dellacroix]

Im pretty new to computers, but ive just recently becoming interested in upgrading my comp. I just upgraded my video card to a gtx 550 ti. I am playing SCII and seeing an avg of 27 fps on ultra with some shadows and lighting turned down to high. I am wondering if the graphics card i bought isn't handling like i thought it would, or if i need to upgrade something else on my comp.

My Specs:
Processor: amd athlon IIx4 635
motherboard: acer aspire x3400 stock
4g ram
500 watt cool master psu
evga gtx 550 ti

So is it the graphics card or something else that is slowing down my fps?

Thanks

 

[willard]

SC2, and basically all other strategy games, require powerful CPUs. A two year old budget CPU is not going to get great FPS on max settings. Lucky for you, there are lots of cheap upgrades for the AM3 socket to keep you going.

The FX 8150 is pretty lackluster for a flagship product, being soundly beaten by Intel's middle of the road offering, but if you're just looking for maximum power for minimum cost, that's your best option. Though at $250, it's not a very easy sale.

Just below that the FX 8120 offers pretty decent performance for a bit shy of $200.

At a price point similar to your Athlon II you've got the FX 4100. Like all Bulldozer chips, it really has half as many cores as it claims (you only get the full count with exclusively integer based workloads), but I think it will perform admirably in SC2. It also overclocks very well, I believe easily into the ~4.5 GHz range.

Edit: You'll need to be sure your board supports Bulldozer based chips before you buy anything.

 

[dellacroix]

Thank you very much. And yes, an additional $250 for this computer would hurt my wallet so that upgrade will have to be done later.

Are there any cheaper solutions that may help a little? I have been thinking about slightly over clocking my CPU (I'm still looking into it), and maybe adding some additional RAM. Do you think that would have an effect?

Thanks

 

[willard]

4GB of memory is straddling the line between "good enough" and "not quite good enough." You might see a benefit if you game with tons of crap running in the background, like Firefox with dozens of tabs.

As far as overclocking, your chip is actually a pretty decent overclocker.

 

[thefilmcritic1]

I have the same issue I think with bottlenecking i think its my ram though I cant seem to find out my rig is

Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H mobo
Phenom II Quad core 955 BE 3.2 not overclocked
8 gigs ddr2 (2 sticks 667)(2 sticks 800)
ocz 880 w PSU
Saphire 6870 GPU
aslo my hard drive is a Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM

I've done tons of test and can't figure out what the heck is wrong lol
Best of luck