JTM Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Currently im running:AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor 1.81ghzAsus Motherboard1gb of DDR ramNNIDIA GeForce 6600 LE gfx card 256mbBasically it runs half life 2 pretty well but struggles on frame rate at intensive times, and I havent got everything set to max. Im about to finish episode 1 and buy episode 2, but Ive heard its much closer looking to the Lost Coast demo which my PC doesnt run all that well. I want it to. I want to know the most cost effective way of make it running htese games a little better. I will most likely try and get the parts off EBAY so ones that are common would be useful. To clarify, im not looking for a new PC. just a bit more oomph for these games. Oh and my PC is kept in top condition and all other background programs are closed during gaming, before you mention it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barbara Logan-Price Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Currently im running:AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor 1.81ghzAsus Motherboard1gb of DDR ramNNIDIA GeForce 6600 LE gfx card 256mbBasically it runs half life 2 pretty well but struggles on frame rate at intensive times, and I havent got everything set to max. Im about to finish episode 1 and buy episode 2, but Ive heard its much closer looking to the Lost Coast demo which my PC doesnt run all that well. I want it to. I want to know the most cost effective way of make it running htese games a little better. I will most likely try and get the parts off EBAY so ones that are common would be useful. To clarify, im not looking for a new PC. just a bit more oomph for these games. Oh and my PC is kept in top condition and all other background programs are closed during gaming, before you mention itgraphics card?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTM Posted October 24, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Well do you know or not?! Its me asking the question so why ask me one back! If I knew the answer was a new graphics card I wouldnt have bothered with this topic would I! lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poopipe Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 You'll be able to play HL2 based games at a decent level of detail if you run 2 graphics cards (I have a slightly better cpu and mobo with a pair of 6600GTs and it runs absolutely fine) Assuming you have an SLI capable motherboard I'd suggest a pair of (at least 256mb) geforce 7900 based cards. If you don't, get the fattest single core 7900 you can findBefore anyone rants on about 8800s you're not going to be able to play anything that requires an 8 series card on that CPU - it's too old and slow for the newer games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Nick Riviera Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poopipe Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram.Never a bad idea but I don't see it helping much with the games. CPU is going to be the bottleneck once the graphics are dealt with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haz Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Before anyone rants on about 8800s you're not going to be able to play anything that requires an 8 series card on that CPU - it's too old and slow for the newer games.And at the price you'd pay for a decent 8800 you could get two 7900s (second hand or from ebay) and money left over for a AMD 3800 X2If of course, youa re SLi enabled... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Nick Riviera Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Never a bad idea but I don't see it helping much with the games. CPU is going to be the bottleneck once the graphics are dealt with.depends if you're a whore for graphics or gameplay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTM Posted October 24, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Well im trying to do this as cheaply as possibly so £150 on a cpu and gfx card is outta the question. I have no quarms about buying 2nd hand. It doesnt need much, just a extra bit of a boost. Concentate of bang for the buck and which offers the most. How do I know if SLi compatible? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaRtZ Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 a graphics card?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poopipe Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 (edited) Well im trying to do this as cheaply as possibly so £150 on a cpu and gfx card is outta the question. I have no quarms about buying 2nd hand. It doesnt need much, just a extra bit of a boost. Concentate of bang for the buck and which offers the most. How do I know if SLi compatible?you'll have two big PCI express slots but that still doesn't guarantee its SLI capable. find out the exact model number of your motherboard and ask the interwebhow big is your power supply ? - you'll want 500watts as an absolute bare minimum to run 2 cards (or one really big one)oh - regarding the X2 CPU - I think you'd need a bios upgrade unless you bought the machine pretty recently Edited October 24, 2007 by poopipe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuse Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 It's worth noting that Half Life 2 is quite CPU intensive. The best way to find out if your CPU is holding it back, change the resolution and detail to minimum and note the framerate, then bump everything up really high and note the framerate again. If there's practically no difference the CPU is holding you back. On the other hand, if you get a massive drop in framerate when you up the res and detail it's more likely the graphics card causing the issue.In reality you're probably somewhere in between, and if that's the case just changing the gfx or the cpu probably won't make a massive difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTM Posted October 24, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Pretty sure mines 450/500 but to be honest im not into the idea of 2 cards, especially with buying from ebay, its just more people I have to threaten when they dont work.Ill find out what motherboard I have althought I dont spose that matters now that I dont want to run 2 gfx cards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poopipe Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 It's worth noting that Half Life 2 is quite CPU intensive. The best way to find out if your CPU is holding it back, change the resolution and detail to minimum and note the framerate, then bump everything up really high and note the framerate again. If there's practically no difference the CPU is holding you back. On the other hand, if you get a massive drop in framerate when you up the res and detail it's more likely the graphics card causing the issue.In reality you're probably somewhere in between, and if that's the case just changing the gfx or the cpu probably won't make a massive difference.his machine is probably of a similar vintage to mine which does a fine job of running HL2 with the two cards. The first game I noticed CPU bottlenecks on was bf2142 and everything since then has gtten worse.on the two card front- the 7950 gx2 or whatever it's called is two chips on one card so that's one person to shout at and you get your SLI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 All I ever play is Counterstrike:Source - and my PC does fine for me on this. One thing I have noticed is that my FPS stays the same no matter what I've got running in the background (within reason). I used to religiously close everything before loading a game but now I leave it all open - Word, Acrobat, Firefox etc. Even photoshop sometimes. And it makes no discernable difference. I conclude that my system isn't limited by RAM (1024 in my case) or CPU (3200+ Athlon 64).You're in the same sort of situation I'm in (very similar spec). My computer has an AGP graphics slot which is a bit rubbish since you can't get many modern AGP cards. Similarly my motherboard's CPU slot is socket-764 not 939 which means that I can only upgrade the CPU as far as a 3600+ I think, and I don't know if they make them. I'm almost certain your board will be 939 which means you're limited to 4200+.Best bet is to buy a graphics card. You can still get something like an AGP x1950 for £100 ish. Unless you have a PCI-E slot in which case you're laughing and you can choose anything. Like Poopipe says - you need to find out what motherboard you have. Or sack it all off and buy a new PC... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Token Posted October 24, 2007 Report Share Posted October 24, 2007 Overclock, overclock, overclock, overclock, overclock, overclock!You've got to realise HL2 is one of the most physics intense games, the game demands CPU and RAM, if your noticing lag in pretty intense situations it may be worth squeezing abit more out of your processor. It doesn't cost anything after all.I've got the same CPU as you (amd3000), running at 2.4ghz, that's a free 20% performance gain. Overall though, because your gfx card only has 8 pixel pipelines an HL2 is also quite high in texture you may be stuck with a bottleneck there. So if i was in your situation, I'd go for the overclock, then if your still not happy look for a 7800 or a x1950.Tomm, your socket is 754 an you can go as high as a Clawhammer 3700. (if you can find one for sale) =) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JTM Posted October 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 25, 2007 Yeah mines PCI express and 939 slot. Now were getting somewhere, any good sights for overclocking my particular card?For the record tomm, my PC runs cs absolutely fine. With no slowing at all. But then its not as pretty as HL2 etc is it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rocks370 Posted October 25, 2007 Report Share Posted October 25, 2007 This tabel might help selecting a graphics card.as you have pci-ex its worth just upgrading the gfx card now and save up for cpu, memory, and motherboard later Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krisboats Posted October 25, 2007 Report Share Posted October 25, 2007 Yeah mines PCI express and 939 slot. Now were getting somewhere, any good sights for overclocking my particular card?For the record tomm, my PC runs cs absolutely fine. With no slowing at all. But then its not as pretty as HL2 etc is it?Its practically exactly the same. The only difference with lost coast is the HDR lighting function which will knock off about 20-30fps depending on your graphics card. The cheapest option would be to turn HDR off and play it that way. On the other hand you could pick up an ati x1950 pro for around £70 and you'd notice a huge difference in speed.You can always overclock your cpu too, i have an ancient athlon64 3000+ and i also got it to 2.4ghz which gave me an extra tiny boost in games.Basically anything faster than a 6800 or x1650 will be better than your current card On the list posted above your card comes in at around 68 or 69 as its just slightly slower than a standard 6600.You can see here that the £70 x1950pro i mentioned gets 37fps instead of the 6600gt's 8fps (the gt version is faster than your LE too). The dark messiah game runs at about 10fps less than lost coast with full settings applied on both games so you can use that as a rough guide for how it'll play. Anything over 25 is alright and anything over 30 is great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strat-trials Posted October 25, 2007 Report Share Posted October 25, 2007 Don't bother going out and buying two graphics cards. Your much better off getting one really good one. I have a X1900XTX 512mb card and that is pretty good at running anything you throw at it. The best option for a cheap upgrade, is an ATI X1950 Pro, or something along those lines. After that, get another gb of ram. Ram makes a lot of difference. Only downside to buying new ram (you will need DDR400) is that the ram will not be usable in your next machine. I'd stick it out with computer you have, buy a fairly decent graphics card, then maybe when that setup really starts to struggle, look at a C2D setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
br3n Posted October 25, 2007 Report Share Posted October 25, 2007 dont know how much this'll effect HL2 as its a different game engine but original for original HL radeons dont perform very well. in my pc I have a 9800xt pro 256 (saphire - AGP) which at the time was the absolute muts nuts although a nvidia gf4 would out perform it :/as i said, thats quake1 engine so doesnt matter anyone know what a nvidia geforce 8600m GS (256mb with 1gb turbo cache memory) is any good? thats what my laptop has which i think is better in every way than my pc! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomm Posted October 25, 2007 Report Share Posted October 25, 2007 You can see here that the £70 x1950pro i mentioned gets 37fps instead of the 6600gt's 8fps (the gt version is faster than your LE too). The dark messiah game runs at about 10fps less than lost coast with full settings applied on both games so you can use that as a rough guide for how it'll play. Anything over 25 is alright and anything over 30 is great.The GT is MUCH faster than the LE isn't it? Am I right in thinking that 6600LEs can be unlocked to GTs? Or was that 6800? Either way the 6600LE is pretty 'budget' so I reckon an upgrade there is definitely the best idea. As you've got PCI-E you should have loads of choice so just get something in your price range Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BONGO Posted October 25, 2007 Report Share Posted October 25, 2007 get an xbox 360! Mines amazingf**king brilliant lol...... what a helpful post! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al_Fel Posted October 25, 2007 Report Share Posted October 25, 2007 get an xbox 360! Mines amazingf**king brilliant lol...... what a helpful post!You big swweaty bellend, you can't play first person shooter with a control pad thats just gay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krisboats Posted October 25, 2007 Report Share Posted October 25, 2007 The GT is MUCH faster than the LE isn't it? Am I right in thinking that 6600LEs can be unlocked to GTs? Or was that 6800? Either way the 6600LE is pretty 'budget' so I reckon an upgrade there is definitely the best idea. As you've got PCI-E you should have loads of choice so just get something in your price range I think the 6800gt's could be unlocked to ultras and the 6200's could be flashed to 6600's but i havn't a clue about the LE versions, aside from it being slower.At least the general consensus is that you should get a new graphics card and something like an x1950pro would do you fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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