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Souping advice

VolenibbletsVolenibblets Member UncommonPosts: 246
in Hardware

Bought a "Titan Nero" AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 7850+ 2.80GHz DDR2 System with 4 gigs of RAM and a GeForce GTX260 GC about two years ago. A steal in terms of price and did the job nicely for general gaming with no spectacular demands. More recently it's been struggling a bit when things get hectic in Skyrim and it now spazzes out and drops to low fps when there's a lot going on in GW2 (which there usually is) so I had to turn down the gfx settings which is breaking my heart. 

Is it worth completely replacing the machine for a quadcore system bundle with a better gc (~£500-600) or would it be a better idea to just to get a better GC (something like a GTX660 ~£200). The main problem appears to be memory in rendering complex graphics or when there are a lot of things going on on the screen so, in that case would a GC upgrade suffice to be able to play GW2 comfortably whilst turning up the gfx settings?

Advice from a more techno savvy person than myself would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

Comments

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348

    Both Skyrim and Guild Wars 2 are pretty strongly processor-bound.  In both of those games, you'd probably see a lot more benefit to keeping your old video card while buying a new processor, which will also require a new motherboard, memory, and OS license.  Upgrading a video card doesn't accomplish anything if it wasn't the limiting factor in the first place.

    That's not to say that you shouldn't replace the video card, too.  If you've got the budget, then go ahead and replace everything.  Though you'd best check on other components before buying some new ones, as you don't want to buy expensive new hardware and then promptly fry it with an inferior power supply.  Your system is likely old enough that the hard drive is about due for replacement, too.

  • VolenibbletsVolenibblets Member UncommonPosts: 246

    Aye very true, I've had some bad experiences buying bits that didn't match my setup. Plus the bundles from overclockers are often (bizarrely) far cheaper than the pricing of the individual components. Right, time to dust off the credit card.Thanks for the advice!

     

  • miguksarammiguksaram Member UncommonPosts: 835
    I won't presume to know your tech level but if you aren't 100% sure of what to buy before you pull the trigger I suggest you take the time put your prospective builde/purchase here first so it can be analyzed first by those that put current tech on the fore front of their personal preferance list.  Even if you decide on something else I've learned over having a second opinion from fellow tech junkies is never a bad thing.
  • VolenibbletsVolenibblets Member UncommonPosts: 246
    I have a fair idea of the rough basics and I've had really good experience with overclockers bundle systems for gaming setups but  good advice to double check here anyway before taking the credit plunge, thanks mate.  
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348
    Really big combo deals tend not to be very good values.  Maybe you get a nominal savings of $50 as compared to buying the parts separately, but one of the parts in the combo costs $30 more than it's worth, another costs $20 more than it's worth, and another is a piece of junk that you'll have to toss out and replace anyway.
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