af1falcon

Hey guys, my computer has been slowing down quite a bit when I play games, not an insane amount, but definitely noticeable.

Here is my current setup::
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.8Ghz
Vista Home Premium 32bit
2 GB of Ram (2x1GB)
Geforce 8600GT 256MB DDR3
All my Vista subscores are in the low to high 5's with the exception of my CPU which is a 3.7.

I was wondering if upgrading to something like a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core would make a huge difference or at least a very noticeable one? Don't currently have the money to upgrade my motherboard, CPU AND RAM, so upgrading my CPU right now is my only option,

Thanks a lot

lion149

You need to post what motherboard you have up...

__________________
Rig#1:
OS: XP Home Sp3
CPU:Intel Pentium 4 (3.20ghz)
MB Biostar p4m900-m4
HDD:160 gb 7200rpm
RAM:2gb Kingston DDR2
GPU:EVGA 8600gt DDR3 512mb
PSU:Apevia 500w
Rig#2: HP a110n-XP Pro-Celeron D 3.06ghz-80gb-2gb-ati x1550
Rig#3: Compaq Deskpro-Ubuntu 7.10-Pentium III 600mhz-10gb & 7gb slave-384mb-Agp rage pro 2x

af1falcon

Oh sorry, here we are:
DFI nF4 Ultra-Infinity 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard

Link with specs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813136163

lovely?

yikes, socket 939... well if you spend about $240 you can get a really nice motherboard and a processor (mine) that scores a 5.6 in vista, very easily.

($240 is a guesstimate, my processor is about $120 but you can get motherboards for under $70 that work extremely well.)

__________________
E4500 @ 2.93GHZ
ASUS P5K-DELUXE
2GB OCZ Reaper CL3 @ 800MHZ 3-4-4-15
eVGA 8800GT
OZC GameXStream 700W PSU
320GB WD Caviar SATA, 80GB WD Caviar IDE

Sometimes scientists make things alot harder than they need to. All they've gotta do is put a big spring on the ground where they think it's gonna land, or send a mission to the moon to erect a sign that says "Welcome to Earth".

af1falcon

If I did that would I have to upgrade the ram? I can't really go over 200 at all, 180 is probably my limit

Orionx

If you're playing newer games, your cpu and gpu are slowing you down. The Geforce 8600GT is a nice card for it's price and will fly through any older games np at all. But trying to play Crysis or anything else newer on it wouldn't perform the best. Still would be able to play low-medium for sure, regardless of the game.

Overall, I would say your Athlon 3000+ and 8600GT are pretty balanced for each other, as games are mainly gpu-bound rather than cpu-bound. If you could find a nice skt 939 X2 4200+ or so and upgrade your gpu to an 8800GS or even possibly a 9600GT, you would see a considerable performance increase in games. I am basing those suggestions on your ~$200 budget. Might have to hit up ebay for the X2 4200+ though.

oregon

I agree with OrionX. Your balanced, and would have to upgrade both cpu and gpu to get really good performance, though CPU first.

__________________
MB: Gigabyte P35-DS3L
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6550 @3.5hz
GPU: PNY GeForce 8800 GT 512
RAM: 4GBs DDR2-800 (Ballistix and OCZ SLI) CL4
PSU: Antec NeoPower 650W
Case: Antec 900
HDD: Seagate SATA 250GB, 16MB cache
Seagate SATA 320GB, 16MB cache

manda_panda

Upgrading to a dual core CPU would get a few more FPS. I got about 10 more on newer games when I went from a 3700+ to a FX-60 on the same PC. Upgrading your vidoe card will make the most differene though. I would go with a 8800GT or 9000 series. That way you could keep you motherboard.

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Asus A8N-Deluxe w/ AMD FX-60
2 GB (4x512MB) OCZ DDR400
eVGA 880GTS 640MB
600 watt PSU
2 x 74GB WD Raptor 10K on RAID 0
Windows XP Pro SP2

af1falcon

Thanks a lot for the responses