I think my computer may have something wrong

tactic

tactic

New Member
Hello,
I have been using this rig to play wow exclusively since I built it back in '09, It was never a ultimate gaming machine by any means and I never could get constant fps no matter what I did (I average around 20-27ish). I never found this odd because I never had another game to test my parts performance against, until now. I downloaded Trials Evolution Gold Edition from Steam a few days ago and it is almost unplayable. It lags, speeds up, slows down randomly, the textures take forever to load, sometimes I have no idea where I am because everything is so blurry trying to load.
So here is my question, Are my parts just so old and outdated it cannot play a seemingly simple side scrolling game like Trials? Even in wow my frames range are never constant and almost never over 25 for more than 5 minutes unless i am staring at a wall standing still (in bgs my fps can average at 50 as i'm running around, when the fighting starts it drops back to 25-30ish). Or is there something wrong with my parts? All of my drivers are updated.

Current pc:

Corsair 650w psu
4 gig ripjaws memory
gigabyte GA-890xa-ud3 MoBo
win7 64-bit home premium
AMD phenom 2 x4 965 3.4ghz black edition deneb
XFX ATI radeon 5770

I am using two samsung monitors at 1920x1080

Thank you for reading, I really don't know where else to go to get an answer for this.
 
Your rig is pretty decent, but the 5770 is getting a bit outdated on the slow side now, and it'd be nice to upgrade to 8GB of RAM.

I'd recommend getting a newer, more powerful graphics card (7850 would be good) and upgrading to 8GB of RAM if you can. Maybe get yourself an aftermarket cooler and try and overclock that Phenom too.
 
Alright I will look into more ram and a new gpu, also, if i overclock my cpu should i upgrade to water cooling or would an aftermarket fan heatsink work just as well?

Thank you for the reply!
 
Take it one at a time. First get a video card and see how it goes. Then the memory can come later if there's still problems.
 
So first off, thank you Spirit and Twiki for your responses.

Here is what I'm looking at so far, and sorry for a late reply.

Under what circumstances will I need 16bg over 8gb of ram?

Researching my mobo I have found that it can handle "up to 1866+" ram clock speed. here is the stick I am considering.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231460
G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR
Cas Latency: 9
Voltage: 1.5V
Multi-channel Kit: Dual Channel Kit
Timing: 9-10-9-28
Model #: F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR
Item #: N82E16820231460
Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy

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For gpu I am looking for one that will last me for a few years.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125413
GIGABYTE GV-R797OC-3GD Radeon HD 7970 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
Chipset Manufacturer: AMD
Core Clock: 1000MHz
Stream Processors: 2048 Stream Processors
Effective Memory Clock: 1375MHz (5.5Gbps)

This card is volt locked (but had the best reviews of the top 3, sorted in 'most reviewed') so pretty much not what I am looking for but better than the xfx cards in terms of happy people xD

--- GPU 2 ----

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130787
EVGA 02G-P4-2678-KR GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Chipset Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Core Clock: 1006MHz
Boost Clock: 1084MHz
CUDA Cores: 1344

I have looked at benchmarks for both farcry 3 and crysis 3 on both of these cards (not exact models) and they are (on paper) pretty much equal in terms of performance. If anyone has any real experience with both of these cards I would greatly appreciate first hand knowledge.
After I went through the benchmarks I went to Newegg to review my options, (sorting by most reviews) I am thrown off by the Radeon cards having pretty terrible reviews 3/5 eggs and such. Reading some of the reviews has me a bit cautious to buy one.
Looking at the Nvidia cards (again, sorted most reviewed) the top 3 cards are all 4/5 eggs with far more reviews than the Radeon cards. I know these are simply reviews but I like to see what people are thinking about the card from first hand experience.

-----

So now I need some opinions! :D

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benchmark links
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/far-cry-3-performance-benchmark,3379-6.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crysis-3-performance-benchmark-gaming,3451-6.html
Thanks for your time reading and helping me out!
 
I think I just found something that would stop me from buying a new gpu, I found my mobo on newegg were I bought it and was looking to make sure it had the pci express 3.0 slot for the new gpu. It doesn't look like it would even support a new card.

It has a "PCI Express 2.0 x16"

and both new cards have "PCI Express 3.0 x16"

So right now, unless I am wrong it looks like I need a new mobo. If this is the case I am going to get a intel chip, possibly haswell when they are released.

regardless, still need info on the ram and 8gb vs 16gb

----

mobo link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128438
 
I have a PCI Express 3.0 card (Sapphire 7850) and it runs fine in my 2.0 slot on motherboard.

Also looking at the system requirement it looks like you should be able to play the game just fine. Probably a game specific issue. Your hardware isn't top of the line but it certainly isn't bad by any means. I had a similar setup before I upgraded to the 7850 and OC'd my CPU. I'd explore issues with the game. Have you tried reinstalling the game or verified integrity of game files?
 
Right click on the game in your library then go to properties. Under the local files tab you should see a verify Integrity of game files button.
 
Alright, I have verified all the files and they were all ok.
I do appreciate that idea however, I believe my gpu may just be getting to the end of its life, which is fine. This thing was a trooper for sure ^^
 
First off, sorry for the late reply again.

I was actually messing with it a little yesterday on wow, here is what I found.
I was standing in a main faction area (lots of people running around, Sotm) and I have gpu-z and coretemp as well as my task manager open looking at my ram.

standing still in the middle of people running around me i was getting 7 fps constant standing still, gpu was using full memory, load was bouncing between 0% and 25%, my cpu cores were at 47-65%, and my ram in task managaer was at 3.08gb of 4gb.

I was running complete ultra settings with the only exception being shadows knocked down one step. 1920x1080.

I also did the same test with all settings on low and the lowest resolution 720x547 or something way low. I was getting 13fps standing still.

Both tests, when I move it lags and drops to like 1-5 fps (randomly going to 21, but it was for maybe 2-4 seconds if that).

no addons installed, cache and wtf folders deleted and reset (temp folders for game)

Why would my gpu not be trying to work out the fps thing instead of sitting at 0-25% load? Is this normal?
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I have read online that this is a packet loss/internet issue which I can understand because of all the people running around.

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Just flying around the maps on ultra settings with shadows knocked down a peg I go from 15fps-35fps never constant.

on low settings and low res I get 35-89 fps a little more constant at over 30 at least.

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The more I look at the results the more they seem to not really make any sense to me. When I look at it I just want to blame it on my internet for losing packets or something making everything laggy.

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I played trials again and my cpu cores ranged from 60%-70% and my gpu was at 35-60% load and 720MB dedicated memory consumption (I assume I have 1gb dedicated memory on my 5770) and my other ram is at 2.16gb of 4gb.

It still lagged a little, textures took a while to load still on some tracks. It is not as bad as when I first posted however which has me COMPLETELY stumped.

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So anyway, I don't get it, the fact that trials is actually playing a lot smoother boggles me to no end (no updates or anything on the game).

Looking at what little data I have so far it looks like my ram is low, and what does it mean when my dedicated memory on my gpu is maxxing in wow?
 
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