My PC coping with new games

[Dominic Lucey]

Hey guys I bought a new PC november 2011, these are my specs:

Case STYLISH PIANO BLACK ENIGMA CASE + 2 FRONT USB
Processor (CPU) AMD PHENOM II X6 SIX CORE 1090T (3.20GHz/9MB CACHE/AM3)
Motherboard ASUS® M5A87: AM3+ PLATFORM, DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Memory (RAM) 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x
4GB KIT)
Graphics Card 1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTS 450 - DVI,HDMI,VGA - 3D Vision Ready
Memory - 1st Hard Disk 1TB SATA-II 3-Gb/s HARD DRIVE WITH 32MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0
PORT
Power Supply 450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan (£29)
Processor Cooling STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Sound Card ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL
PCs
USB Options 4 PORT USB 2.0 INTERNAL PCI CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS
Modem NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND
Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Surge Protection 6 Socket Compact 2M UFO Surge Protector (£9)
Cable Tidy JML 1.5M Zip Cable Tidy - Professional Cable Management For Your PC
(£4)
Warranty 3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year
Labour)
Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days


for £647. my question is do you think this will be able to cope withmost of the main current games like black ops 2 battlefield 3 the witcher 2 etc crysis 3.

If it won't what would you recommend changing, I think I'll probably have to change the hard drive because it's not amazing but the power is like 440watts on a 450watt power supply so obviously if I were to increase anything I'd have to get a higher watt power supply. I'm not sure if i'd need 600/750/800/ or more to be honest I like computers but I'm not incredibly computer literate. I was thinking of getting an additional solid state drive.

I would be wanting to record fraps in the background so I know that would slow it down a bit

[Rakk]

The main thing that will let you down for gaming is the graphics card, it'll be your bottleneck, and will probably struggle on those games, but yes a new graphics card could well require a better power supply, depends on which card you go for, but a 600W supply woudl probably be easily enough.

Yes, the hard drive isn't the fastest but as I say, its not the thing that will make that much difference.

[Dominic Lucey]

Thanks, what specs would you recommend instead for my graphics card? Ideally I don't want a graphics card that costs £400 or completely top spec, but on the other hand I want something that will last me. Do you think I should try and sell my graphics card or use a new one as a second one? Ideally I'd like to spend something around the £200 mark if I don't sell my graphics card

[Rakk]

I'm not sure what would be the best to get for 200quid - I'm sure a few other people can make good suggestions though.
But I suspect selling your old one won't get you very much (new ones currently go for about £75), the 450 was a low end card to begin with, though you could see what you could get for it on ebay or something like that.

There would be no point pairing it up with a newer card, it wouldnt SLI with a different card anyway.

[Karnor00]

I'd agree with Rakk that the big bottleneck will be your GPU. In terms of a better card, a GTX 570 goes for around £200 but I think you'd need a new power supply to get that running in your computer. You might just about get away with a 560ti (c.£150 or so) with your power supply but it would be fairly tight and personally I wouldn't want to risk it.

So probably the best you could get without upgrading your PSU would be something like an HD 6870 (c.£120 or so). Which isn't a bad card by any means, but you'll probably need to run games in medium/high res to get acceptable framerates rather than running in ultra.

You could also try getting the replacement GPU second hand in which case you could get it cheaper than I've listed above. Although your PSU seems to be the primary constraint to getting a more expensive GPU rather than price.

[baron75mk2]

Hi there , what kinds of framerates do you want to achieve & what settings for battlefield 3 witcher 2 etc ?

[Dominic Lucey]

TO Rakk: Thanks about telling me how much my graphics card is worth. What does SLI stand for and if the two graphics cards didn't work together why would people have more than one, to handle more than one monitor?

TO Karnor00, thanks for the advice on graphics cards I like the idea of GTX 570 because I think that would probably last me. I don't mind not running games in the absolute highest setting but obviously ultra looks nicest and I'd prefer that. Do you think my CPU and RAM would be adequate? Also do you know how big a power supply I'd need if I bought the GTX 570, so I can get an idea of that price. I'm fairly certain I won't stick with the same PSU because I've spent too much on my CPU to risk anything happening to it!

To Baron 75MK2: I'm not sure the exact frame rate but one that would get me comfortably 720p for putting on youtube, I'd imagine around 50fps. Do you think that would be reasonable?

Again guys thanks for the help and advice

[Rakk]

TO Rakk: Thanks about telling me how much my graphics card is worth. What does SLI stand for and if the two graphics cards didn't work together why would people have more than one, to handle more than one monitor?

It actually stands for Scalable Link Interface, but I must admit I had to look it up to find out, everyone just knows it as SLI You can read here if you want a bit more information.
Its Nvidia's way to link two of there cards together to get better performance than just one card (AMD's version is called Crossfire)

With SLI, you have to have two cards of the same model to SLI them, so if you have two different cards, they won't be SLI'd, and I'm not sure how they would be best to be used
Generally when people have two cards they are the same model of card.

With Crossfire, the restrictions arent quite so strict that it has to be the same model of card, but it does need to be fairly close and I've seen a chart somewhere saying which ones can go with which.

[Karnor00]

Your CPU and ram should be fine for gaming.

The GTX 570 is pretty power hungry - it would use about 100W more than your current card. A 600W PSU should be sufficient, maybe 650W to be on the safe side. Of course you might want to get say a 750W if you are considering adding more stuff to the computer (hard disks have comparatively low power requirements, but it all adds up).

[MadMan]

id get a 7850 for £191.40