Upgrading 2010 build (how to know what is my bottle neck?)

[chico1st]

Hello I'm trying to upgrade a 2010 build of mine but I'm not sure how to know what is currently limiting my system's speed.

I mainly, watch movies and play easy games (divinity and dota2). When my computer turns on it takes forever, playing dota is fine but loading the map takes ages, divinity is the same everything is fine except loading a saved game. It also takes a few seconds to open windows explorer or chrome but once its open everything is fine.

If that lag went away everything would be great.

I looked at resource manager but couldn't really determine my bottleneck.

My current build is AMD X3 440, Radeon HD5770, 4GB 1600mhz DDR3 ram, some ancient HD from a build before 2010.

I was thinking if I got an SSD and 8GB of ram then life would be good but I dont know if that makes any sense. Thoughts or advice on how to determine what to update?

 

[ArchitSahu]

Your bottleneck is essentially everything.

Get a new PC. 8 GB will help, but with such an aging system, not worth it.

 

[Dugimodo]

The SSD and RAM would certainly improve your load times and system responsiveness a lot. The RAM may also help game performance a bit.

If you are happy with the games you play and how they run then those 2 upgrades should make life a bit more enjoyable.
As to what's your bottleneck, for more demanding games it's all a bit too old so all of it really.

 

[USAFRet]

In order:

1. A clean OS install. What OS is this, and when was the last time it was wiped and reinstalled?
2. More RAM
3. SSD
4. Replace everything.

 

[photonboy]

EVERYTHING is pretty weak so it boils down to how much you are willing to spend.

As per USFRet

1. Clean OS - will help to a certain extent but at best gets you back to the performance you had during original install, assuming the HDD is working fine still which MAY not be the case

2. More RAM - probably will help but hard to say

3. SSD - will help a lot with bootup and loading applications. combined with a clean Windows install things will seem much snappier, but... will not affect the GAME EXPERIENCE unless you are running out of system memory... in which case you'll still get STUTTERS due to swapping data around from SSD to system memory but they'll just be shorter

4. I agree really. Replace everything.

It all boils down to BUDGET. One option is to find a good deal on a pre-built from BESTBUY or wherever with a 4-core Intel then either use the iGPU in that CPU temporarily or buy a graphics card right away to add to it.

Or at least an i3-7100 (dual-core with hyperthreading).. I'm showing this link ($400USD on sale) for two reasons:
1) not bad specs for the price, and
2) not sure if you can add a graphics card that's NOT half-height.. anybody know?
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-desktop-intel-core-i3-8gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-black/5775302.p?skuId=5775302

I'm fairly sure you CAN add a normal graphics card (length uncertain) based on pictures. Prices are still a bit high but I'd maybe consider the GTX1050Ti for roughly $200.

Ideally you would just piece together a system to build yourself using PCPARTPICKER and help from others. You'd need to give us a BUDGET and tell us what that includes such as:

- main PC (case, CPU, motherboard etc), and
- monitor?, and
- Windows 10 64-bit

Other:
If budget is tight then I'd actually avoid the SSD for now and get:

1) 1TB HDD (i.e. WD Blue) 3.5" for $45USD or so, and
2) another IDENTICAL stick of DDR? (DDR2?) memory if it's available (not sure if you have 2x2GB or 1x4GB), then
3) run MEMTEST86 to see if memory passes www.memtest86.com , then
4) reinstall Windows

For reinstall be sure to plan things very carefully. Passwords, list programs to reinstall, make sure you have your license code for Windows, backup other data etc.

 

[Solandri]

It also takes a few seconds to open windows explorer or chrome but once its open everything is fine.

This suggests you're running low on free RAM. Windows 7-10 shouldn't be using more than 1-1.5 GB upon a clean boot. If task manager shows it using more, you should go through your startup programs and disable anything which is unnecessary, like auto-updaters for Adobe Acrobat, printer ink status monitors, etc. Unfortunately Microsoft keeps moving around where the list of startup programs and services is. If you install CCleaner, one of the tabs under Tools is a list of programs set to startup automatically. You can then disable anything not essential. This should be easier to do that a clean install, and you'll want to do this after a clean install anyway (after you've reinstalled all your programs).

That's the cheap and easy fix (if it works). After that, yes adding more RAM would help. But I would suggest upgrading to a SSD instead of buying more RAM, simply because any RAM you buy for this system will be obsolete when you upgrade to a newer system, and will essentially be money thrown away. You can transfer the SSD to the new system and use it there without any problems. It sounds like the games (both list 2-4 GB RAM as requirements) run fine once they've started and pushed all other processes out of RAM. So you shouldn't get stutters with a SSD as a previous reply suggested (at least not any more than you're getting now).

After that, I'd suggest upgrading the entire system. The HD 5770 is barely better than the integrated graphics in the newest Coffee Lake processors. If you game a lot, you should forget the above two paragraphs and make upgrading your #1 priority. From a quick perusal of reviews, your system likely consumes around 100 Watts at idle, close to 200 Watts when gaming. A modern system uses about 30 Watts idle, 100 Watts under load. That extra 70-100 Watts translates into about an extra $25-$35 spent on electricity each year if the computer is on about 8 hours/day and you pay the U.S. average 12 cents/kWh. So if you keep using this system for 1 additional year, the extra electricity it uses is probably costing you as much as a 4GB RAM upgrade. Using it for 2 more years will result in you wasting as much money on extra electricity as it would've cost for a SSD or low-end GPU.