[frog7877]

I recently built a budget gaming desktop to play Star Wars: The Old Republic. It works quite well, but, as expected, I'm CPU-limited in some situations (SWTOR's framerate indicator tells you what your bottleneck is).

Here are my components:

Monitor: ASUS VE248H
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912
PSU: Seasonic X650 Gold
Mobo: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 C3 BE (was on sale for $90)
Heatsink: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
GPU: MSI Radeon HD 7850 2GB OC Twin Frozr
HDD: 1 TB WD Black (64 MB Cache, SATA 6Gbps, 7200 RPM)
ODD: ASUS DVD-RW (for $18)
OS: Windows 8 Pro 64-bit OEM
RAM: This DDR3-1333 Kingston ValueRAM which I bought because at the time, I was under the impression that stability might be an issue.

But, now that I've successfully OC'd my CPU to 4 GHz (it survived two hours of Prime95 with no errors or issues of any kind, and stayed below 55 C the whole time), I'm starting to think that maybe my machine can handle some nice DDR3-1600 with relatively tight timings.

I'm thinking of picking up something like This. I'm certain that my motherboard can handle that, but my question is, can my old Phenom II's onboard memory controller handle that, and is that upgrade likely to grant a performance increase?

Currently, while playing SWTOR at max settings, I get 60 FPS most of the time, but in combat my framerate drops to about 35 FPS (due to CPU limitations, my GPU has basically been on vacation since I built the machine). It's still playable, but it would be cool to get 40 or 45 FPS in combat, and I think it's worth spending another $100 to get that, provided it would all actually work.

Any help is much appreciated.

*Edited to specify amount of VRAM

 

[twerk]

Your setup could handle 1600MHz RAM but it would offer no benefit at all, faster RAM doesn't help at all (maybe a couple of %) in games.

 

[PedroC1999]

If you want some CAS8 1600MHz RAM then get the Patriot Viper Xtreme, or get some Samsung 30nm 'Green' RAM that OC's like a beast and can do [email protected]

Patriot Product Code - PXD38G1600LLK

 

[diggiddi]

Go with the 1600 ram it makes for a much snappier system

 

[frog7877]

Thank you all for the input. It seems that everyone is in agreement that my setup could handle faster RAM, but I see a few conflicting opinions on whether or not I'd actually see any benefit. However, my wife already gave me permission to spend money on RAM, so seeing that it will work, I think I'll go ahead and buy it, even if there's a chance that all it will do is make my e-**** bigger.

I finally settled on This DDR3-1600 RAM from Corsair with tight timings and low-profile heat spreaders, just to make sure that my RAM clears my heatsink.

I've read mixed things about Corsair, so I'd love some opinions on my choice of RAM.

*Edited to add reasoning behind low profile heat spreaders.

 

[twerk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by frog7877

Thank you all for the input. It seems that everyone is in agreement that my setup could handle faster RAM, but I see a few conflicting opinions on whether or not I'd actually see any benefit. However, my wife already gave me permission to spend money on RAM, so seeing that it will work, I think I'll go ahead and buy it, even if there's a chance that all it will do is make my e-**** bigger.

I finally settled on This DDR3-1600 RAM from Corsair with tight timings and low-profile heat spreaders, just to make sure that my RAM clears my heatsink.

I've read mixed things about Corsair, so I'd love some opinions on my choice of RAM.

*Edited to add reasoning behind low profile heat spreaders.

It's solid, standard 1600MHz CL9 memory, there isn't really much to say about it. It looks good, it's reliable so if you want it then go for it. Corsair stuff is normally a little overpriced but that kit falls in line pricing wise with every other manufacturer.

 

[adridu59]

Not the best choice esp. talking about overclockability but it will work fine and Corsair has very good CS.