Bottleneck Question

[kevin_63]

With my specs I can run many games like Borderlands, Portal 2 and Dragon Age at the highest visual settings. usually sticking around 45-60 FPS. However, in Civilization V the FPS drops to 15-25 consistently and it is driving me nuts. I wanted to know what the best to upgrade would be, probably the RAM or CPU. Or both. Right now I have a budget of about 200 to spend. I'm not going to upgrade my GPU though. Here are my specs:

FX-4100
ASRock N68C-GS FX
Sapphire Radeon HD 6870
4 GB DDR3 RAM
Corsair TW650 PSU

Thanks!

 

[inzone]

What Windows version do you have 7 ? 32 bit ? 64 bit ?
One thing I would say is the cpu could be the issue , the video card is good enough to run the games at the fps you stated so it's not that . If you have a 64 bit Windows then you can try adding another set of the exact same model , brand and speed and timings but that may not be he answer.
Have you tried overclocking the cpu? If you overclock the cpu and there is a change in the fps then that would tell you the cpu needs an upgrade. If you have already overclocked the cpu then can you go up some more? Any change in the fps by manipulating the cpu will tell you that the cpu needs the upgrade.

 

[nekulturny]

Civilization V is a CPU intensive game. This is one of those games where the Bulldozer CPU will show the weakness in its core performance. (most games are limited by the video card not the CPU, this is one of those exceptions)

My advice to you would be to stick it out with that CPU and wait for PileDriver to be released later this year, based on the benchmarks Tom's did with Trinity, I think its a fair assumption that PileDriver FX-8320s/8350 CPUs will be on par with Intel's Sandy Bridge i5s. That would resolve the issue. In the meantime, yes overclocking the FX-4100 should help some. But with Civilization, I wouldn't get my hopes up too greatly.

Although for overclocking, thats not the best motherboard to do it with. So you might consider swapping to an Intel board and i5 or a better mobo if you upgrade to PileDriver.

 

[kevin_63]

Best answer selected by kevin_63.