Why does my computer not run games better?

[rfas]

I recently upgraded my computer from:
Radeon HD 6950 1 GB
2.83GHz Quad Core Intel Q9550
4 GB RAM

-to-

Radeon HD 6950 1 GB
3.6 Quad Core AMD 4100
8 GB RAM G.Skill

Both on Vista Home.

I also got a new mobo, old one fried.. I'm sure as a result of my own stupidity.

I feel like I'm not running anything better, in fact, occasionally it feels slower. I play Planetside 2, Guild Wars 2, SC2, and Diablo 3. On everything except SC2, there's no difference in performance. I get really odd slowdowns in Diablo 3 as well. At first I thought it was the games being optimized badly, but there's no way all of them could be. I feel like I should be able to play most of these (maybe not planetside 2) on the highest settings with no problem. I really don't know what it could be.

It may be worth mentioning I run 1920x1080 on all games. Would that cause problems with a 1GB card?

 

[rfas]

Plenty of sites have benchmark charts that will consistently show what I've been saying. It's not that the FX-4100 sucks; in fact it does ok if you overclock the poo out of it. You DO need to OC it to get that performance though. Just make sure your mobo can handle the additional power without blowing its VRMs. Hopefully they'll be heatsinked, and you've got good airflow through your case.
You did take one step backwards, but a good OC will let you take two steps forward.
What brand and model, not just wattage, is that "700W" PSU?

Weird, I thought I edited my old post. Anyways, this is my PSU:

http://kingwin.com/products/cate/power_supplies/abt_730MM.asp

Also.. WoW kept bothering me with a 10 day free trial of Pandaria so I booted it up.. I got between 30 and 50 FPS in a mostly uncrowded area on Ultra. Something is definitely wrong.

 

[americanbrian]

^^ WoW favours intel and Nvidia...

As "chairsgotoschool" finally realised, all of us experienced forum members were spot on from the beginning having already done our research before mouthing off to everyone...

you did a sidegrade (as opposed to upgrade). The only way to extract more is to OC the hell out of the new CPU. You may need to buy better cooling.

 

[darth pravus]

Watch out when you OC though. As Tom's discovered in its system builders marathon the FX CPU's get very hot so good cooling is needed.

They also draw huge amounts of power when oc'ed so make sure you have a good PSU.

 

[Onus]

The new Kingwin PSUs are built by Superflower, and surprised reviewers with how good they are; that's because the older ones aren't so good. I would not try to pull anymore than 500W-550W from your older model, and if your PC experiences stability issues, it is one thing I'd suspect. Do you know what fried your old CPU and mobo? You may wish to seriously consider a PSU replacement. Planning to overclock an already power-hungry system, you'd probably want 550W-600W to allow for some head room. Anything built by Seasonic (e.g. their own, XFX, some Corsair, some Antec), FSP (their own, some Antec), Enermax/LEPA, or Superflower (new Kingwin and Rosewill) would be decent. The Corsair V2 Builder units are not among them; those were built by CWT using some inferior Samxon capacitors from a line known to experience early failure.

 

[americanbrian]

Watch out when you OC though. As Tom's discovered in its system builders marathon the FX CPU's get very hot so good cooling is needed.

They also draw huge amounts of power when oc'ed so make sure you have a good PSU.

He only has the 4-core one, so half of the heat.... The recent review was highly flawed with a cooler that may be worse than a stock one.

But you are correct that decent cooling is necessary...

 

[rfas]

Static discharge was likely what killed my old PC. What would I have to OC this processor to so that it would be better than my old one? 4.3 runs great, I tried 4.6 just to see what would happen and it wouldn't boot past the "Welcome to Windows" splash screen.

 

[Onus]

I would think somewhere between 4.3 and 4.5 should do. Any others? That's just a semi-educated guess on my part, as I've OC'ed Phenom II's and Core2Quads, but not Bulldozer.

 

[rfas]

I would think somewhere between 4.3 and 4.5 should do. Any others? That's just a semi-educated guess on my part, as I've OC'ed Phenom II's and Core2Quads, but not Bulldozer.

Had another question, lets say I did a luxury upgrade in the near future. What would you recommend I jump to in terms of any piece of hardware I currently have? Radeon and AMD things seem to just run worse in general.. or at least be less well optimized for a lot of things.. than intel and nvidia. I really know next to little about the differences though, and could be completely wrong.

 

[Onus]

I prefer AMD graphics cards myself these days (have owned both, and would own non-crippled nVidia again).
As to a "luxury" upgrade, if overclocking your CPU provides steadily increasing benefits, but doesn't get good enough before you've hit the limit, your CPU is still the bottleneck and going to an Intel build will help you the most.
IF, otoh, the benefit tops out BEFORE you reach the overclocking limit (continued increases in clock speed no longer increase FPS), then you've hit a graphics card bottleneck, and something like a HD7870 would be a nice jump over your HD6950.
A HD7870 also uses no more power, so you would not have to replace your PSU. Replacing that PSU anyway, with something decent (e.g. built by Seasonic, around 550W-650W) would be a good long term purchase that would last into future builds.

 

[rfas]

I really appreciate it man. Thanks for all the help, everyone. If I have any more questions, would it be okay if I dropped you a message Onus?

 

[rfas]

Best answer selected by rfas.

 

[Onus]

Thanks. And yes, I try to respond to PMs, but be advised I work ten hour days and my response times can be extremely variable.