What should I upgrade?

Wozner

Hello CP,

I just wanted to ask for a piece of advice regarding my PC hardware. You see, currently I have.

- 90 GB SSD (For Windows7(64bit) system)
- Processor Intel Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600@ 2.40GHZ (4 cores inside) Socker 775
- AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB of Ram (GDDR5)
- 4 Gigabytes of Ram onboard (DDR2 - Ram Freq 400.0MHz)
- Mainborad Gigabyte P35-DS3L
- Monitor is configured with the highest resolution 1920 x 1200

When I run Crysis 3 on ultra settings, everything works laggy and PC is slowing down, also just noticed that my PC is suffering from huge load when I am trying to test example levels from UDK. Maybe high resolution is causing thins, I mean Graphics card is weak. I am thinking of selling my 4 GB and getting 8 GB of ram instead, will that solve the problem or I should change Graphics card also?

In any case thank you for reading this topic.

Ark

Your 6950 isnt gonna handle Crysis 3 at 1080p on Ultra. My 690 has a hard enough time with Crysis 3 at Ultra settings.

Problem is that upgrading just one part of your system will still be bottlenecked by the other components.

If you want it mainly for gaming then the GFX card is the priority.
Adding more RAM would probably help with loading big UDK levels.

You can salvage your SSD and monitor. Maybe your 6950 if you dont wanna play on the highest gfx settings.

Wozner

Thank you Ark, you confirmed my thoughts. So I think new graphics card and Ram will be next on my list, I think I will get one of Nvidia's cards.

kaptainkernals

I think upgrading the graphics card isn't going to do much, as he's bottleknecked by his CPU and ram.

I had a similar setup to yours - and my CPU was maxing out - i had a 275gtx, and the CPU was reaching full load before the graphics card was, and it would be worth your while investigating a mid i5, with some DDR3 ram and a new motherboard, and keeping your existing card for another year.

Thats what I'd do at least.

oXYnary

Yea but isnt Crysis 3 using potentially more than 1 gig of video ram at those high settings and rez? Also 4 gigs is the minimum recomended specs for a 64bit windows install. Having more main system ram would allow background processes more room to breath.

In any case it may be time for a total system upgrade.

Wozner

Yes, I guess you guys are right, I think it is time to upgrade mainboard, processor and ram together. DDR3 will be great for new games and UDK, also UDK4 will be released soon, so it is necessary I guess.