Hi. I'm in the terrible uncanny valley of information where I know just enough to get myself in trouble I can't get myself out of.
The machine I built in 2008 (yay stimulus money!) was this:
GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz Socket AM2 125W Dual-Core Processor
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400C4
ECS N9600GT-512MX-P GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
It's running Win XP 64 Pro. I surf the internet, watch youtubes here and there, and recently rejoined World of Warcraft to tank for my casual/semi-serious guild. In the event that I get a better computer (which I will build using a guide and not by me making choices, since obvs I make bad ones), the hubs will inherit this one where he will casually play the new Star Wars mmo with some friends, as well as some not-traditionally-crazy-intensive games like Civilization. I say all this to describe the type of use I'm hoping a system will support without being a paperweight crapface machine.
Between 2008 and summer 2001, I used the above build while primarily doing the surf-youtubes-maintankinWow stuff. The computer was tolerable but I was never able to put my video settings above Fine/medium, and several had to be on low. I accepted this, as money was rather tight at the time and better parts were out of the budget. I would occasionally get up to 55 fps in Wowcraft, assuming low system demands (ie, in an area with few people). Even during somewhat high demands (the rare 25man raids), fps rarely averaged less than 20.
About 3 weeks ago, the hubs ok'd me getting a better video card, so I spent twenty hours over three days reading every review I could comprehend on video cards (including several posted at Tom's Hardware) and many forum threads that the search function returned when I searched for specific video card names/numbers. I eventually settled on
XFX ATI Radeon HD6770 1 GB DDR5 VGA/DVI/HDMI PCI-Express Video Card HD677XZNLC
from Amazon. The card arrived, I put it in, installed the latest driver exe from the Radeon website, and....
I get 30 fps. Max. Everywhere. When in a 5man, I get ~20 fps. When in a 25m raid (which is going to become more common, if you know what LFR is), I get a despicable 4 fps, and that's with every setting on absolute low. I made sure to uninstall the Nvidia drivers, then uninstall-restart-reinstall-restart the Radeon drivers. I ran the 'overclock' feature in the Catalyst program, it did nothing (except possibly burn out a Dynex 500watt PSU? I have an OCZ 600 watt psu now).
What went wrong? Is this a sign that the card is bad and I need to RMA it? Is the fact that I'm running XP throttling the card? If I really drop the two hundred and fifty dollars or whatever overpriced tag is on Win7, is that going to fix the fps? Did I manage to misread over fifty reviews and forum threads and get a card that wasn't worth the $110 I paid? Is this all I get for a $110 card? Worse performance than a three-or-more year old card that apparently wasn't even that great when I bought it?
Secondarily, if this machine tries to play SWTOR, is it going to be crapface? Is it worth even attempting to bandaid this machine and make it last another year, or are the parts too low-class to do anything gamewise anymore? and I should just relegate it to an internet machine.
For ten years I've had greater faith in the greater value of a homebuilt system over some preloaded-with-bloatware overpriced prebuilt, but it's frustrating when all my guildies and friends can outstrip my performance. I understand that to run a game like Wowcraft and probably SWTOR on not-low settings, I'm going to have to buy all new parts, and for the new machine we're going to be able to get in a month or so, I'm going to adhere to a guide and follow someone else's judgements. I just get really worried when a new part that should run things better, actually runs them much much worse. It doesn't leave me much faith in my ability to make homebuilts that function.
The machine I built in 2008 (yay stimulus money!) was this:
GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz Socket AM2 125W Dual-Core Processor
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400C4
ECS N9600GT-512MX-P GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
It's running Win XP 64 Pro. I surf the internet, watch youtubes here and there, and recently rejoined World of Warcraft to tank for my casual/semi-serious guild. In the event that I get a better computer (which I will build using a guide and not by me making choices, since obvs I make bad ones), the hubs will inherit this one where he will casually play the new Star Wars mmo with some friends, as well as some not-traditionally-crazy-intensive games like Civilization. I say all this to describe the type of use I'm hoping a system will support without being a paperweight crapface machine.
Between 2008 and summer 2001, I used the above build while primarily doing the surf-youtubes-maintankinWow stuff. The computer was tolerable but I was never able to put my video settings above Fine/medium, and several had to be on low. I accepted this, as money was rather tight at the time and better parts were out of the budget. I would occasionally get up to 55 fps in Wowcraft, assuming low system demands (ie, in an area with few people). Even during somewhat high demands (the rare 25man raids), fps rarely averaged less than 20.
About 3 weeks ago, the hubs ok'd me getting a better video card, so I spent twenty hours over three days reading every review I could comprehend on video cards (including several posted at Tom's Hardware) and many forum threads that the search function returned when I searched for specific video card names/numbers. I eventually settled on
XFX ATI Radeon HD6770 1 GB DDR5 VGA/DVI/HDMI PCI-Express Video Card HD677XZNLC
from Amazon. The card arrived, I put it in, installed the latest driver exe from the Radeon website, and....
I get 30 fps. Max. Everywhere. When in a 5man, I get ~20 fps. When in a 25m raid (which is going to become more common, if you know what LFR is), I get a despicable 4 fps, and that's with every setting on absolute low. I made sure to uninstall the Nvidia drivers, then uninstall-restart-reinstall-restart the Radeon drivers. I ran the 'overclock' feature in the Catalyst program, it did nothing (except possibly burn out a Dynex 500watt PSU? I have an OCZ 600 watt psu now).
What went wrong? Is this a sign that the card is bad and I need to RMA it? Is the fact that I'm running XP throttling the card? If I really drop the two hundred and fifty dollars or whatever overpriced tag is on Win7, is that going to fix the fps? Did I manage to misread over fifty reviews and forum threads and get a card that wasn't worth the $110 I paid? Is this all I get for a $110 card? Worse performance than a three-or-more year old card that apparently wasn't even that great when I bought it?
Secondarily, if this machine tries to play SWTOR, is it going to be crapface? Is it worth even attempting to bandaid this machine and make it last another year, or are the parts too low-class to do anything gamewise anymore? and I should just relegate it to an internet machine.
For ten years I've had greater faith in the greater value of a homebuilt system over some preloaded-with-bloatware overpriced prebuilt, but it's frustrating when all my guildies and friends can outstrip my performance. I understand that to run a game like Wowcraft and probably SWTOR on not-low settings, I'm going to have to buy all new parts, and for the new machine we're going to be able to get in a month or so, I'm going to adhere to a guide and follow someone else's judgements. I just get really worried when a new part that should run things better, actually runs them much much worse. It doesn't leave me much faith in my ability to make homebuilts that function.
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