Older gaming pc

[Mortg]

Hi guys, I recently bought a 2nd hands gaming pc + 22'' monitor for an impossibly cheap price (135€ to be precise). I was wondering if you guys could tell me if it's decent enough and when I upgrade some parts, which I should upgrade first. And also if SLI is a solution for a graphics card upgrade. I did some research myself and found it to be pretty good even though it's a little older.

Specs:
Motherboard: Asus P5K Premium Black Pearl Edition
CPU: Intel Core Duo E8500 (3.16Ghz)
RAM: 4x1Gb Corsair CM2X
Graphics card: XFX Nvidia Geforce 9800GTX+ Black Edition 512MB
OS: Windows 7 64bit
(There are also some aftermarket fans in it for cooling + it has a pretty cool gaming case. =D)

I have already played a couple of games on this and it's seems pretty good. One of the newest games I played was Need for Speed: Rivals. Although it had some lag spikes with drops in fps at first, I overclocked the graphics card and CPU a little, the CPU runs at 4Ghz at the moment and the graphics card is at 815 Core clock and 1230 Memory clock, the shaders are at stock settings.
Now the game runs like a charm.

So I'd love to hear some input from you guys.

 

[JuniorPCBuilder]

All of the parts are... Ancient, To say the least, And even with those ancient parts, You run a fairly recent AAA Title, I Think you deserve a medal.

 

[fkr]

you could stick a Core 2 Quad and maybe a gtx 660

the issue is the ddr 2 that is on that motherboard

below is an old crysis benchmark:
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1782/amd_phenom_ii_ddr2_vs_ddr3_performance/index11.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2232/7

;just another comparison.^^ddr2 vs ddr3


So if it is not a CPU intensive game I would think you would be okay with the new CPU and GPU.

maybe spend 50

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_kw=Intel+Pentium+965+Extreme+3.73GHz

 

[fkr]

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5K_PremiumWiFiAP/HelpDesk_CPU/

cpu support list

 

[Mortg]

All of the parts are... Ancient, To say the least, And even with those ancient parts, You run a fairly recent AAA Title, I Think you deserve a medal.

Haha, yeah. I know it's old, but I like that it can still handle some of the modern games.(Thank god for overclocking. =D)

 

[Mortg]

you could stick a Core 2 Quad and maybe a gtx 660

the issue is the ddr 2 that is on that motherboard

below is an old crysis benchmark:
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1782/amd_phenom_ii_ddr2_vs_ddr3_performance/index11.html

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2232/7

;just another comparison.^^ddr2 vs ddr3


So if it is not a CPU intensive game I would think you would be okay with the new CPU and GPU.

maybe spend 50

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_kw=Intel+Pentium+965+Extreme+3.73GHz

Thanks, I'll be changing those things first in the future. Do you think SLI would make any difference?

 

[Icaraeus]

For a GPU that old you won't benefit at all from SLI. It doesn't even have 1GB VRAM and the 2 GPUs share that memory of 512MB. With the problems SLI and Crossfire have, as well as how old that graphics card is, it isn't worth it. I reckon even a $50 GPU would easily surpass it. It is good enough for games like Runescape and Age of Mythology though!

 

[Mortg]

For a GPU that old you won't benefit at all from SLI. It doesn't even have 1GB VRAM and the 2 GPUs share that memory of 512MB. With the problems SLI and Crossfire have, as well as how old that graphics card is, it isn't worth it. I reckon even a $50 GPU would easily surpass it. It is good enough for games like Runescape and Age of Mythology though!

Like I said earlier I can play other modern games too, maybe not high settings, but I can. Hm, too bad SLI wouldn't do much. I was kind of hoping that it would greatly enhance it. =/

 

[Icaraeus]

Nowadays you really need at least 2GB minimum for VRAM. Less than that when SLI'ing or Crossfiring would slow you down too much. 4GB VRAM is recommended nowadays when using multiple GPUs.

However, you really need a very powerful GPU to use up 4GB VRAM. I don't think my GPU, while capable of maxing every game out with or without AA, is able to saturate that much VRAM. Games are starting to demand more and more VRAM (Watch Dogs asks for over 3GB VRAM at 1080p max settings).

 

[Mortg]

Minor update*: I was able to play Need for Speed Rivals with all settings set to Ultra with minimal fps drops. My CPU is running at 4.3GHz +/- and my graphics card at 820MHz core, 1242MHz Memory and 2052MHz shaders. It's all stable, so I'm happy 😀