Gaming rig upgrades

[Jpeterson1701]

Hello, everyone I need a little help on some pc upgrades. I'm going to list what I'm currently using. I could use some pointer in the area that needs the most upgrading. Cool master HAF 935 full tower, Asus M4a78e motherboard, CPU Phenom 2 x4 black edition, PCU 750 w, cooling 3320 mm and 2 120mm and last 2 Radeon xfx 4890 VGA but I didn't like crossfie so I'm only using 1 card. I would like to be able to to play WOW and others game with with better then 25 FPS and lag. I'm lloking to spend about $400

 

[swifty_morgan]

phenomII x4.......... which one? monitor size/resolution? operating system?

not knowing anything maybe a gtx650?

 

[Jpeterson1701]

Hello, everyone I need a little help on some pc upgrades. I'm going to list what I'm currently using. I could use some pointer in the area that needs the most upgrading. Cool master HAF 935 full tower, Asus M4a78e motherboard, CPU Phenom 2 x4 black edition, PCU 750 w, cooling 3320 mm and 2 120mm and last 2 Radeon xfx 4890 VGA but I didn't like crossfie so I'm only using 1 card. I would like to be able to to play WOW and others game with with better then 25 FPS and lag. I'm lloking to spend about $400

Sorry about Amd Phenom 2 x4 955 black edition
Vista 32
22" monitor running 1080I

 

[Avenged7x]

I'm kind of surprised that your 4890 is performing that poorly. I think you should go for a GTX 660, mine gives 75+ FPS with WoW maxed at 1920 * 1200. The 650 isn't really an upgrade on your card, although it may perform better as WoW still favors nVidia. http://www.hwcompare.com/13553/geforce-gtx-650-vs-radeon-hd-4890-1gb/

If your looking at playing more demanding games - a GTX 670 is a great card but serious overkill for WoW.

The rest of your components seem adequate, although I have never heard of your PSU.

 

[dish_moose]

Lower the details and eye candy for your gpu - if FPS do not increase substantially your cpu is causing issues. You may want to get a cpu cooler & OC your cpu. Please give all details - psu make & model...
-Bruce

 

[jessterman21]

You should upgrade to W7 or W8 64-bit and get 8GB RAM, then sell your HD 4890s and buy the best single-GPU you can afford. Probably the HD 7970 or GTX 680. That will get you at least 45fps in any game on Ultra @ 1080p. Probably about 120fps in WoW.

 

[Jpeterson1701]

My CPU is a AMD Phenom II x4 955 black Edition 3.2 MHz , Temp avg. is 136 degress and I do have 8GB of Ram installed.
1900 x 1200 1080I
PSU is a Corsair 750W
Yes I avg. 25-34 FPS. I seen no real improveemnt when I ran 2 4890 except Rig temp went up from 100 - 120 degrees.

I dont believe that I can use a Nvida card with my motherboard.

 

[jessterman21]

My CPU is a AMD Phenom II x4 955 black Edition 3.2 MHz , Temp avg. is 136 degress and I do have 8GB of Ram installed.
1900 x 1200 1080I
PSU is a Corsair 750W
Yes I avg. 25-34 FPS. I seen no real improveemnt when I ran 2 4890 except Rig temp went up from 100 - 120 degrees.

I dont believe that I can use a Nvida card with my motherboard.

Haha - of course you can run either brand of GPU. Can you get us your temperatures in Celsius? And there's no point in having 8GB RAM if you're on a 32-bit OS. You'll only have about 3.25GB usable. Invest in Windows 7 64-bit or Windows 8 if you want. Sell your HD 4890s on ebay - probably can get $150+ for both, and then get a GTX 680 - or an HD 7970 if you'd rather AMD.

 

[Avenged7x]

Its starting to sound like your CPU might be the bottleneck if you saw no improvement with crossfire. dish_moose had good advice on how to check that.

Agree with jesterman that investing in a 64 bit OS is a good idea to get the benefits of the extra ram you already have. However I think a 680 or 7970 is overkill for your needs. What other games are you thinking on playing? A 670 or 7950 is more than sufficient for almost anything at 1080p.

 

[swifty_morgan]

a gtx660 or slightly above. the 955 isn't going to push anything faster. it's a handicap but still good enough.

the 650 is a big leap over the 4890. 2 completely different animals.

true about the memory. 32bit systems won't utilize it.

 

[jessterman21]

Agree with jesterman that investing in a 64 bit OS is a good idea to get the benefits of the extra ram you already have. However I think a 680 or 7970 is overkill for your needs. What other games are you thinking on playing? A 670 or 7950 is more than sufficient for almost anything at 1080p.

Just going by the budget. If OP's going for longevity, those are the best choices. And they will only be CPU bottlenecked in games where the PII X4 isn't fast enough to provide playable framerates. No example comes to mind, so at worst, the CPU will keep a GTX 680/HD 7970 from runnning at 100% at all times, but still providing very good playability in all games. A platform upgrade in the future would be great, but isn't necessary just yet, IMO.

 

[Jpeterson1701]

*Due to OS limitation, when installing total memory of 4GB capacity or more, Windows® 32-bit operation system may only recognize less than 3GB. Hence, a total installed memory of less than 3GB is recommended. I will have window 7 64 bit next week.

57 degrees in Celsius for CPU temp.

What was wrong With the CPU? What would you recommend?

The statement I made about nvida was because I was thinking that Nvida was SLI and AMD was CrossFireX™. It never state that it would support SLI only that it supported Hybrid CrossFireX™.

This PC is for gaming only. I play WOW, D3.
I run on low or fair settings with my 4890 so that I can maintain 20 - 25 FPS.
But I do run 1900 x 1200 1080I- resolution

So my Asus M4a78e Mobo will support nvida gtx 660,670,680?

 

[swifty_morgan]

yes, it will. remember the laws of diminishing returns.

watch......the specs on the reviewers machine far exceed yours.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDkQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DHaXVrCFvL94&ei=CLEKUdfvPJDE0AHN1oGQBQ&usg=AFQjCNGunZ8BusEF5MFOKOwnv0W0NtNofA&bvm=bv.41642243,d.dmQ

 

[barraccuda]

I noticed that you mix up a SLI & CrossFire with the actual GPU slot which is PCIe.

SLI and CF is for something absolutely different - it is the way how Nvidia and ATI/AMD named and made their double-sloted PCIe GPUs.

And as you said: you don't like dual-cards = SLI/CF, thus the point of that is completely useless


If you want to know which card will fit into your MoBo, you need to check if it is a PCIe or a AGP slot. Nothing else
Most/if not all... of the GPUs are already manufactured only for PCIe, so you won't get a incompactible GPU if you buy anything from last 2 years+

and just FYI...
there are several version of PCIe slots... (v1, v2, v2.1, v3)
they are compactible backwards, so you can run a GPU with PCIe v3 on a PCIe v2,1 slot... no need to warry about incompactibility