Help me help a friend with his PC

[JT!]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883220043

This is my co-workers PC.

It's old, it's from 2009. I asked him if he has a dedicated graphics card, he said yes, and struggles to get much over 25fps on star craft with the video settings at the lowest (in which he has ranked masters!)

I assumed it's way outdated and he should buy a new one.

But when I looked it up (link at the start) I realized it seems pretty modern, good about of ram, decent HDD, not bad processor either considering.

However... (see attachment) no dedicated graphics.

So the question is, will modern day graphics cards be compatible with this PC from 2009? If so, what card would you guys suggest that wouldn't be a waste of power with his current setup?

He plays a lot of starcraft, LOL and is a general all around gamer. I don't think he's looking to break the bank at something like $300, but something that's going to give him plenty of happy gaming and good fps.

Thanks!

[admin89]

newegg Wrote:Memory : 6GB DDR3

He can keep his Ram then
300$ is plenty . What's exactly his power supply wattage and 12v rail voltage ? Perhaps , you should post the PSU screenshot clearly
Since i know nothing about his PSU , i may suggest 2 route :
_APU system (no graphic card , no need for new PSU ) : A10 7850k + ASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ . GPU performance should be similar to AMD 7750 DDR3 (GDDR5 > DDR3) . Hell he can overclock that CPU to 4.5GHz if he want
_Keep CPU and mobo : a new PSU such as SeaSonic S12II 620 + GTX 650 TI Boost ( He should wait because next gen maxwell GTX 750 is coming soon) . The main point of getting new high-end PSU : He can upgrade his system to a monster system later (i5 4670k + MSI Z87 G45 for example .... )

[JT!]

"04g185015190dp" is the number on the PSU.

---

It seems that it's 300W, so I guess he's going to need a new one. How does a Corsair 600W + GTX 660 sound?

[garrlker]

(02-16-2014, 06:54 PM)admin89 Wrote:

newegg Wrote:Memory : 6GB DDR3

He can keep his Ram then
300$ is plenty . What's exactly his power supply wattage and 12v rail voltage ? Perhaps , you should post the PSU screenshot clearly
Since i know nothing about his PSU , i may suggest 2 route :
_APU system (no graphic card , no need for new PSU ) : A10 7850k + ASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ . GPU performance should be similar to AMD 7750 DDR3 (GDDR5 > DDR3) . Hell he can overclock that CPU to 4.5GHz if he want
_Keep CPU and mobo : a new PSU such as SeaSonic S12II 620 + GTX 650 TI Boost ( He should wait because next gen maxwell GTX 750 is coming soon) . The main point of getting new high-end PSU : He can upgrade his system to a monster system later (i5 4670k + MSI Z87 G45 for example .... )

The 650Ti Boosts are all out of stock anyways, he'd have to wait irregardless.
Also, that sounds great! That will give him great performance.

[admin89]

Get A10 7850k and new mobo then . My notebook GPU : GT 540M can run StarCraft 2 at high->ultra setting(Custom setting . Some options are "high" , some options are "ultra") + Anti-aliasing . That APU GPU performance is much better . He should be able to run SC2 at ultra setting as long as he's using 1366x768 resolution . At 1080p , he will have to use high setting
Though the APU is not great for emulator like Dolphin , most games should run ok . For latest PC games , he may need a decent graphic card if he wish to run all latest PC games at high setting , 1080p ...
Since he's using an integrated Intel System , A10 will be a big jump for him . i5 + dedicated GPU + new PSU are too much for him and he wouldn't need that much power anyway

[NaturalViolence]

I would get the gpu + PSU upgrade instead. He has a pci-e x16 slot on his motherboard so the only thing stopping him from upgrading is the PSU. He will benefit from a faster CPU in SCII. But not that much. I suppose he could grab a cheap core 2 quad on ebay and overclock it for the mean time.

[JT!]

But if he upgraded the psu and bought something like a gtx 660, he's going to et a major performance boost even with that cpu right?

Or is the cpu going to be the bottleneck to the point where a graphics card won't make a difference?

[admin89]

StarCraft 2 is a dual core application . Core 2 Quad won't make that much difference and you know Pentium E5xxx (Wolfdale , same microarchitecture as Core 2 duo E8xxx) is pretty good at overclocking , right ?

Quote:Or is the cpu going to be the bottleneck to the point where a graphics card won't make a difference?

It will bottleneck the GTX 660 for sure . If I was him , I would prefer the newest APU . APU = CPU upgrade (2 cores vs 4 cores , 2.7GHz vs 3.7~4.0GHz ) + GPU upgrade (Intel GMA4500X vs Radeon 7 series integrated GPU ~ probably somewhere between GT 640 and GTX 650 ) . Btw , he won't have to pay more for monthly electric bill and please don't forget about AMD Mantle (lower CPU requirement)

IMO , even an E5400 @ 3.6GHz (OCed) has a hard time to keep up with GTX 650 Ti Boost

[JT!]

I don't think I made myself clear, it's obvious the cpu is going to bottleneck something like a gtx 660. But if he just installed a new psu and a gtx 660, how much of a difference would it actually make in game, or non at all due to the bottlenecking of the cpu?

[admin89]

Depending on the game , CPU demanding game like BF3 will lag from time to time due to CPU bottleneck . He definitely need a multi core (4->8 cores ) CPU for that game . Most modern PC games support multi core CPU , some games even support Intel Hyperthreading (Quad i7 will kill Quad i5 at this point)