Upgrade with budget to properly feed GTX 260

[gunnarhx]

Hello,
I just recently picked up PC gaming after a hiatus of several years since the WooDoo days.
I happened to have a decent case with the following components
- M2N78-VM Asus motherboard (supports AMD2+ and AMD3)
- Athlon Dual-core @ 2.5Ghz (4850, I think)
- 2x2G of 800Mhz DDR2
- Seagate 1T .11 hard drive
- Samsung 260HD 1920x1200 display

So a couple of weeks ago, I went ahead and purchased the following upgrades (after some rudimentary research)
- XFX GeForce GTX 260 black edition @666Mhz (free copy of Far Cry 2)
- 650W power supply

Installs fine, works. However, playing Far Cry 2 and running the included benchmarks reveals that in typical 'Very High' settings at 1680 or 1920 resolution, my system produces a mere ~30FPS.
And comparing this to the fine reports on tom's hardware, I see that on high/mid systems equipped with GTX 260 they report roughly ~50FPS in the Far Cry 2 benchmarks.

Ok, after some more research and observing the cpu load whilst gaming, it seems that the consensus opinion is that one should preferrably pack more CPU muscle in order to properly feed the GTX 260.

My current thinking is to get the following:
- AMD Phenom II, either X3 720 or X4 940 black edition
- 2x2G of 1066Mhz memory
- perhaps Xigmatek HDT-S1283 cooler for OC purposes

So I would like to ask you fine experts on the subject the following:
- Does my reasoning make sense at all?
- Do you think I could get closer to the desired ~50FPS in Far Cry2 (Very High settings at 1920) with the mentioned upgrades?
- Which AMD processor to choose? I am completely open to do some basic overclocking, my Asus bios seems to support the usual stuff (CPU/bus multipliers etc)
- How about the mentioned memory?
- Anything else that I should consider?

Thanks in advance for your expert advice,
Harry

 

[drunknmunkys]

Hello,
I just recently picked up PC gaming after a hiatus of several years since the WooDoo days.
I happened to have a decent case with the following components
- M2N78-VM Asus motherboard (supports AMD2+ and AMD3)
- Athlon Dual-core @ 2.5Ghz (4850, I think)
- 2x2G of 800Mhz DDR2
- Seagate 1T .11 hard drive
- Samsung 260HD 1920x1200 display

So a couple of weeks ago, I went ahead and purchased the following upgrades (after some rudimentary research)
- XFX GeForce GTX 260 black edition @666Mhz (free copy of Far Cry 2)
- 650W power supply

Installs fine, works. However, playing Far Cry 2 and running the included benchmarks reveals that in typical 'Very High' settings at 1680 or 1920 resolution, my system produces a mere ~30FPS.
And comparing this to the fine reports on tom's hardware, I see that on high/mid systems equipped with GTX 260 they report roughly ~50FPS in the Far Cry 2 benchmarks.

Ok, after some more research and observing the cpu load whilst gaming, it seems that the consensus opinion is that one should preferrably pack more CPU muscle in order to properly feed the GTX 260.

My current thinking is to get the following:
- AMD Phenom II, either X3 720 or X4 940 black edition
- 2x2G of 1066Mhz memory
- perhaps Xigmatek HDT-S1283 cooler for OC purposes

So I would like to ask you fine experts on the subject the following:
- Does my reasoning make sense at all?
- Do you think I could get closer to the desired ~50FPS in Far Cry2 (Very High settings at 1920) with the mentioned upgrades?
- Which AMD processor to choose? I am completely open to do some basic overclocking, my Asus bios seems to support the usual stuff (CPU/bus multipliers etc)
- How about the mentioned memory?
- Anything else that I should consider?

Thanks in advance for your expert advice,
Harry

Either of those CPUs offers good value, just depends on your budget and if you need 4 cores or not. Like you've already realized your CPU is most likely the bottleneck and needs to be upgraded. Xigmatek and Scythe Mugen both make great aftermarket coolers, just make sure they fit.

For memory, these come highly recommended.

 

[gunnarhx]

Thanks for your advice.

It sounds like you agree about my assessment on CPU bottleneck.
Thanks for the component tips.

While we are at it; if one only considers gaming as main purpose for this machine, and reading the article from yesterday with title "AMD Unleashed: Four CPUs, Two GPUs, All Overclocked", it seems to be the consensus that 720 delivers essentially the same gaming performance as 940.
Would you agree?

If so,
Are there any games that knowingly performs better on 4 cores rather than 3?
Could it be anticipated that forthcoming games based on new engines (crytek 3 perhaps) would make use of 4+ cores better than the games available today?

 

[drunknmunkys]

The 720 and 940 will offer similar performance in gaming. The debate is between the e8xxx series and the 720/940 at that price range. The e8xxx cpu's can be overclocked slightly higher and will give a little more performance, but they are dual core. The tri-core 720 lets your computer run other tasks in the background and leaves 2 cores just for gaming. Given the mobo you've got, I'd go for the 720 and save your money for future upgrades.

I think it will be a while before there are enough games that take advantage of 4 cores to make it worthwhile. That being said, if you want to get the 940 just in case, its your call

Either one + heatsink and you'll be set!

edit: supreme commander is the only game out that I know of capable of using all 4 cores.

 

[Griffolion]

Gunnarhx, it may be worth you taking a look at AMD's new Callisto Phenom II's, they are basically phenoms with 2 cores disabled to make a dual core that runs off the phenom II transistor size and stepping.

It will offer great value for money and the best clocks of the Callisto range is 3.1GHz (black edition). These are available for about £80 (if you're a dollar man, about $140 i think?)

I agree with drunknmunkys, 4 cores isnt worth it atm unless you really really want to get 4, most of the latest games such as FEAR 2, DOW 2 etc are 'enhanced for multicore' but this generally means they can use 2 cores pretty well.

 

[gunnarhx]

Thanks for the insight.

Another question: In practical use-cases, how much does the system bus speed matter? I see for instance that the stock 720 runs at 4000MHz whereas 940 does 3600.

Does anyone have any opinion if this is a point of consideration when optimizing for say gaming speed? Or is CPU GHz more important? It looks like the overclocking articles somewhat focuses on max CPU GHz and secondarily tune the bus speed.

Thanks

 

[gunnarhx]

Griffolion, BTW, I am a dollar-man and I just saw that both tigerdirect.com and newegg.com list the Phenom II x2 550 @ 3.1Ghz running 4000Mhz bus for $110.
The main competitors in the Phenom II series I have looked at are x3 720 @ 2.8Ghz/4000and x4 940 @ 3.0 Ghz/3600, and they run $150and $199


Th 550 sounds like a good purchase, wouldn't you think? Especially since I am looking to improve the gaming mainly.

Thanks

 

[drunknmunkys]

IMO the advantage to havine 3 cores (pII 720) is that you can (theoretically) have 2 cores devoted just to gaming and thus provide better overall performance. The advantage to having 2 cores (e8xxx, e7xxx) is having a super high clock speed and overclocking the crap out of it to provide better high end performance, but possible not as good overall performance as a tri-core.

When I'm gaming, I typically have 2-3 firefox windows, ventrillo, aim/msn, and maybe a few other programs running. I think that's where the extra core becomes more noticable.

If you decide you only want 2 cores, then you'd want to compare the 550 to the e8400. I don't remember offhand, but read the new AMD overclocking article on Tom's, I think they OCed some of the newer dual-core PIIs and see how they stack up with the e8400 (4.0+GHz).