Hi, My friend has found some of his games starting to stutter a bit, more noticeably after installing Windows 7. He currently has this setup... Intel e6320 1.8ghz 2 x 1GB of RAM Gigabyte ga-965p-ds3p mobo 4870 1GB GPU The games that are coming out in the future that he wants to play are splinter cell conviction and bad company 2. Splinter Cell Core 2 Duo at 1.8 GHz or Athlon X2 64 at 2.4 GHz 1.5GB RAM for Windows XP; 2GB RAM for Windows Vista or 7 GeForce 7800 or Radeon X1800 with 256 MB (GeForce 8800 GS or Radeon 4670 with 512 MB recommended) BBC2 Minimum Specs Processor: Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHz Main memory: 2GB Graphics card: GeForce 7800 GT / ATI X1900 Graphics memory: 256MB Recommended Specs Processor: Quadcore Main memory: 2GB Graphics card: GeForce GTX 260 Graphics memory: 512MB I looked at possible upgrades to his current computer, for example a Q8200 and 4GB of RAM which came to about £200. Personally I think it might be a waste to invest in fairly old technology and have also looked at an i5 rig, i5-750, gigabyte p55m and 4bg of ddr3 1600 RAM which came ot about £340. The i5 seems like the more worthwhile investment to me, but I wanted to see what people on here thought and if there were better options that i've missed. Does anyone have any extra advice or alternatives that I should look at?
All depends on what he wants to spend, have you tried OC'ing his existing PC? I'd go for an i5 over upgrading a dead socket.
could just upgrade the RAM to 4GB and overclock the E6320 to around 3GHz. cheapest option for you. what res does he game at ? as the 4870 is still a pretty good GPU and its probly your CPU and RAM that lettin you down now
Sorry, i should have mentioned that he games at 1680 x 1050. I haven't tried overclocking his current system. Do you imagine an overclocked version of his system would be adequate for Battlefield Bad Company 2?
hmm should do ok only thing you will lack is quad core but a nice fast dual core should compensate a bit.
Overclocking's definitely the first thing to try, because after that (I too don't consider it worth upgrading a dead socket) he'd need a new CPU/motherboard/RAM combination, which is much, much more expensive. To soften the blow (and if all he does is game) you could try the i3 dual-cores, which are cheaper than the i5 quads.
I might head over to his on the weekend so could possible try overclocking first, although i haven't done any since overclocking my AMD 3000+ about 5 years ago so I'll need to read up on that again. The i3 looks like a really good cpu for the price, he doesn't mind spending money to be covered for the future and it seems like quite a few games might be going quad core, like battlefield bad company 2 for example... so he may just think it's worth paying the extra £65 for the i5 750. thanks for all the quick replies by the way =)
if he doesnt mind spending some cash id go i5 750 and overclock it should have no problem for the next year or 2 before you upgrade again lol
yea, i mentioned him the cost of the i5 build and he said it was less than he'd expected to spend so i think that's the best option. =) thanks again
