Upgrade the CPU, GPU or both?

Jacinto

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Aug 31, 2004
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Hi everyone. A friend of mine recently complained about getting very poor performance in WWII Online. I question why he even plays the game, but it makes him happy so I told him I'd ask around and see if I could figure out what's going on. From what I could see, it wasn't exactly a graphically intensive game. That being said, he was getting between 2 and 11 FPS.

He's running a *cough* Celeron 1.7 and a GeForce 5200 with 128MB (non ultra). He has 521 mb of RAM.

Granted his system is clearly underpowered but should he really be bouncing along at an average of 18 FPS with that setup?

He's looking for the least expensive way to get reasonable performance in the game. His HD was fragmented all to hell and I starated by instructing him to defrag it. His video drivers were some whacko third party ones that were over a year and a half old and I updated those with the latest detonator drivers. Those two things got him an extra 15 to 20 FPS but it's still a bit too choppy.

Can this poor man's soul be saved? Is there a reasonably priced solution to his woes? If price were no object I'd get him over to AMD.

What do you all think?
 

Spitfire_x86

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Jun 26, 2002
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He should upgrade both.

This is an inexpensive upgrade solution:

AXP 2400+
ABIT NF7 v2.0
Radeon 9600 Pro/XT 128 MB

This upgrade will make his games run at least 3 times better


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Jacinto

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Tbred or Barton? Does it really matter?

If he does this upgrade should he look at OC'ing it for even more performance? If he does, will it really boost performance that noticably?
 

Snorkius

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The 1.7 Williamette celeron is only slightly faster than the 1.3 Morgan-based Duron, IIRC. <i>Any</i> Athlon XP would blow it out of the water, especially in games.

P.S. what type of memory does he have?

<font color=blue>The day <font color=green>Microsoft</font color=green> will make something that doesn't suck is the day they'll start making vacuum cleaners.</font color=blue>
 

Spitfire_x86

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T-bred (or Thorton) 2400+

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Mitch007

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Mar 31, 2004
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What's the Budget,
What's the Motherboard.

He should be able to get a northwood of E-Bay pretty cheap, that should drop straight in and see a resnoble performance increase, plus an overclock on the 5200,

if your talking 100 sheets for the upgrade, then stich with what you got bar the CPU. If price were no object why bother with an upgrade, get him a new high end rig!!

MIS645Ultra/P42.4@2.8Gig/2*Corsair 256MBit CL2-2-2-7XMSLLPT PC3200 DDR RAM/450W Enermax PSU/1*40Gig 7200rpm Wes-Dig/1*20Gig 7200 Hitachi Disk/GeF4 Ti4200 XFX Turbo 670/250 Ram/Core MHz.
 

xeenrecoil

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Jan 7, 2003
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jacinto;

Clearly stated, the FX5200 is the biggest piece of GPU <b>SH|T</b> to ever come down the pipe. For games that require a high frame count, a new graphics card would be the proper solution.
On the other hand the Celeron is also the Biggest piece of CPU <b>SH|T</b> to ever come down the pipe. The celeron was not designed for multimedia. The pentium is Intels Multimedia processor. Implimenting the fastest P4 that motherboard will taKe, will give you a HUGE increase in performance, AND most likely on the cheap.
So basically in no uncertain terms the entire computer is a big ole piece of SH|T</b>, there realy is no way around the horrible performance of that core. However the first step is to start correcting the problem one thing at a time. For the short term i would recommend a graphics card upgrade, the Geforce 6600GT would be a good place to start.
Later i would replace the motherboard first, perhaps a Abit IS7, then the memory shortly after some Crucial PC3200, then the CPU shortly after that, a p4c 3Ghz.

I know the language is harsh but there is just no other way to describe just how terrible that computer realy is. In short its time for an upgrade.
 

Mitch007

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If the dood has a $$ ££ limit change the CPU, if bot get Alienware top end, come on mate what's your real intention for your buddy here

MIS645Ultra/P42.4@2.8Gig/2*Corsair 256MBit CL2-2-2-7XMSLLPT PC3200 DDR RAM/450W Enermax PSU/1*40Gig 7200rpm Wes-Dig/1*20Gig 7200 Hitachi Disk/GeF4 Ti4200 XFX Turbo 670/250 Ram/Core MHz.