samarmy

Honorable
May 14, 2012
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10,510
Hi everyone, about 6 months ago I built my first decent pc, I use it mainly for gaming but do some encoding and Photoshop, I went with AMD, after i saw an Athlon 640 quad core for £57, so its all together and works fine, but I'm disappointed with the performance of it, it lags on games like F1 2012 and Skyrim on High, but my res is only 1360x768 (I'm using a 26" TV) I don't know whether I'm expecting too much of it, or its just crap, either way I'm not happy , the full specs are;

Athlon X4 640 @ 3.75Ghz
Asus AM3+ MOBO w/760g chipset
8gb Ram
2tb HDD
Palit Gtx 560 se (Not the best i know, wanted a radeon 6850 but was out of stock for a month)

Now i have 3 options and £200

I can get an FX 8320, and keep the 560se

Or

I can get a Radeon 7850 2gb and keep the Athlon

Or

I can sell the MOBO and Athlon and get an 1155 board and an i3 3220, and keep the 560se

Which would give me the best performance for games, not too bothered about the encoding or photoshop as I probably do this about twice a month, and the photoshop isn't demanding (My P4 2.8 Handled it fine whilst keeping the room nice and warm :)

Any suggestions are much appreciated

Thanks

 

prodigydoo

Honorable
Aug 15, 2012
86
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ok so i have a gtx 580 and a i7 2600k and i get 70-130 fps on ultra in bf3.. and never under 200 in cod4..

Your problem my friend is your cpu..

when we compare our systems with a benchmark

GPU:
mine - 4,849
yours - 2,251

cpu
mine - 8,655
yours - 3,651


the cpu is what is falling behind the most..
im not entirely sure, BUT i would get the FX 8320.. I actually just bought an 8350 for a build im doing.. with a geforce 8800gt which gets a score of 756 on that same benchmark and im reasonably confident i will be able to run cod4 at around 40-50 fps with descent settings..( i may be wrong)


Dont bother with an intel convert, buying a mobo and cup? you may aswell build a new pc, your half way there..

if you dont get the performance your after.. after upgrading the cpu, then depending on the games you play, consider throwing in another cheap gpu for physX.. thats what i will be doing with my old geforce 8800gt when i manage to get a better gpu for that build..


Good luck sir, and i hope you get the performance you want.. imo.. performance starts with the processor.
 

tigeryeow

Honorable
Jul 2, 2012
148
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10,690
if u keep the athlon and get the hd7850 you will not see any improvement as your cpu is bottlenecking ur gpu ,i would take the fx8320 and upgrade the gpu later

after buying the cpu if you still have some $left considering your budget is 200 pounds? sell your gtx560 and use the money for a gpu upgrade
 

samarmy

Honorable
May 14, 2012
5
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10,510
Hi, thanks for the reply's,

I think i'll go with the FX 8320 then, unfortunately i cant SLI on this mobo so will probably get a 7850 or a gtx 660 after xmas is done with, not sure which one, probably whichever is cheaper.

I didn't realise how bad the athlon was, before this for about a month i had the same specs with an athlon x2 @ 4.3Ghz and it actually seemed faster in most things, atleast i got what i paid for it when it went on ebay :)

One more question though, i have a Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO cooler with 2x92mm fans, would this be enough to oc the fx to around 4ghz?

Thanks
 

prodigydoo

Honorable
Aug 15, 2012
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0
10,640


watercooling with something like a corsair H-80 would be perfect... or a custom water solution...

looking at this comparison to some other (air) coolers:
Results.jpg


The evo is out performed by other coolers, but it should work fine for you.. just be a little careful going to far..

the 8320 actually has a max turbo clock speed of 4ghz anyway, so basically, any time you would be needing it, it will go to 4ghz for you..

you should be fine overclocking by .5ghz, no worries there :) just be carefull if you want to run prime 95 for 2 days straight