[Salty85]

Hello, I am not a heavy duty FPS player, doing alot of RPGs like Dragon age, Mass effect (was able to run at 1920x1080 full settings no problem) and Borderlands (some hickups at 1920x1080 full settings). Here is my rig, and I don't really want to upgrade if I really don't need to anytime soon. The only game that doesn't want to run is Force unleashed which is a crappy port to begin with. Just got a new vid card so I am trying to make sure I can use it properly.

Specs:
939Dual-SATA2
Athlon X2 4400+
ATI Radeon HD 5770 (sapphire) upgraded from a X800 AIW XT
2 GB ram
3.5 TB HDD space
Win XP, Can update to windows 7 at anytime, got license from school
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (Dell OEM)
Connected to 1080p HDTV with HDMI
normally connected to old 19" CRT
Z-5500 5.1 Speakers (love em)

Any advice would be helpful, currently playing on the HDTV

 

[identitycrisis]

Wow, still on the S939 platform, if it does what you want, there is no need to upgrade. But for pretty short money you could move to a new system tri/quad core AMD gaming rig that would provide a decent performance boost.

If you want to keep playing the newer games at 1920x1080, that 5770 will help, but I cant help but think the age of your dual core will really make you suffer when trying to run at high res and high detail though.

I mean all you really need is the core stuff, CPU, Motherboard and Ram.

But if none of the games you want to play give you much trouble, then why upgrade? there is nothing that says you cant install that 5770 into that S939 platform and see how it runs.

Id say if you want to upgrade with a noticeable gaming improvement, look into a Phenom X4 945, 955 or 965, a decent 790 or 890 based motherboard (I really like Gigabytes boards all around) and a 2x2 gb kit of compatible DDR3.

Install that Windows 7 license and you'll be amazed at the difference.

 

[Salty85]

I thought so too, just not sure yet. I did a fraps run with Mass effect 2 high res and matching settings of a benchmark and got around 56-65 FPS, saw others with that limit in benchmarking. Dragon age lags at small points, but it is hard to tell if the CPU is really the issue. Especially since I am still on XP, don't see a point in 7 for gaming, directX 9 is so much more mature in terms of performance to quality ratios currently.

 

[identitycrisis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Salty85 I thought so too, just not sure yet. I did a fraps run with Mass effect 2 high res and matching settings of a benchmark and got around 56-65 FPS, saw others with that limit in benchmarking. Dragon age lags at small points, but it is hard to tell if the CPU is really the issue. Especially since I am still on XP, don't see a point in 7 for gaming, directX 9 is so much more mature in terms of performance to quality ratios currently.

You have the license, let XP rest in piece or on an old, underpowered rig. windows 7 64 bit with 4gb of ram so it recognizes and uses it all was my main reason for recommending it. not to mention that newer hardware will run stuff in dx10 (or in your case dx11 when games utilize it).

Hey, like I said, its easy for me to tell you how you should spend you money, but that doesn't mean you have to listen. haha.

I felt my e8400, 4gb of ram and GTX260 were starting to show age (especially in bad company 2)

So I moved to an i5 750, 4gb ddr3, evga P55 and bought a second GTX 260.

It cost me about $550 for it all used, and I see a noticeable difference in the performance in bc2.

 

[Salty85]

If I were to update to Windows 7, it would force all the games to run in DirectX 10 or 11? From everything I have seen, besides a select few games there are no tangeable benefits for them ATM without 1/2 of the current games suffering a major performance hit in the 8-20% range.