Graphics settings to make games more GPU intensive? (I have a REALLY bad CPU)

[VincentTHATW_kt]

Quick background, found an old office PC, bought a cheap Radeon HD 4650, gave it to my little brother for him to play league of legends, PC works fine.

Recently I've been playing alot of CS:GO and Overwatch and my brother wants in on the action, I installed CS:GO on his computer, turn all settings to low, it ran like crap. (Resolution 800x600)

I reset the settings and set the resolution up to 1280x1024, and all of a sudden it ran smoothly.

I've come to the conclusion that because my CPU (Intel Core 2 Duo E6300) is so bad, that even a terrible GPU like the one I have is bottlenecked.

So my question is, what graphic settings should I turn up or down to make CS:GO and or Overwatch more GPU intensive rather than using the CPU a lot.

 

[Dugimodo]

That's strange, but loading up your GPU more will not improve performance. Whatever caused the weird jump in performance when you increased the resolution it's not because the GPU can magically take the load off the CPU, unless you somehow switched to a mode that doesn't use hardware acceleration when you picked 800 x 600

One suggestion, get a list of supported CPUs for that machine and check Ebay. You can often find the less popular models of that generation for $20 or less because most people upgrading only want the absolute fastest.

CPUs like E8400, Q8400, Q9500, can often be had for cheap. Something closer to 3Ghz and if possible 4 cores would be a lot better than that CPU. The actual model of the Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad family is not as important as faster clocks and more cores generally. If you have to stick with the same cooler try to stay with the same TDP rating (65W)

 

[gamerk316]

You have the wrong idea here; while upping graphical settings will make the GPU do proportionally more work then the CPU, you are still increasing the CPUs workload overall.