The Computer Megathread

[Treynolds416]

No that's the right thing proog.

Anyway, you're right tok. He can reuse his gpu and maybe his cd drive or even HDD if he's trying to save a little money. Unless of course the HDD is super small and slow and the disk drive is built straight into the computer. It's still a viable option for him to work at an upgrade, but the pros and cons balance out to be a slightly less attractive prospect than building a new system

[Ad Bot]

[Proog]

I figured a brand new computer would probably be the only way to upgrade. Oh well, thanks for the input though. If I can reuse the graphics card at least that'll be good but if I need more advice for building a new one I'll come back and ask.

[Tokthree]

If you feel that your current card is too slow for gaming, which it probably will since the HD x300's are not gaming GPU's by any means, I'd recommend a 6770 or 7770 depending on how much you can spend, I have a 6770 and I can run BF3 on high settings at 40-50 FPS stable while lots of stuff is going on, it only cost me £80 so I definitely got value for money out of it

[e-maxx]

i'm waiting till the 8xxx's come out to upgrade my 5570 c:

[Treynolds416]

If you feel that your current card is too slow for gaming, which it probably will since the HD x300's are not gaming GPU's by any means, I'd recommend a 6770 or 7770 depending on how much you can spend, I have a 6770 and I can run BF3 on high settings at 40-50 FPS stable while lots of stuff is going on, it only cost me £80 so I definitely got value for money out of it

He really only came into this thread looking for a CPU upgrade

[Tokthree]

He really only came into this thread looking for a CPU upgrade

That's irrelevant, if he wants to get a new PC so he can have quad-core processor then he will very quickly find that a HD x300 is extremely inadequate for anything remotely modern besides Word editing and powerpoints

[Treynolds416]

That's irrelevant, if he wants to get a new PC so he can have quad-core processor then he will very quickly find that a HD x300 is extremely inadequate for anything remotely modern besides Word editing and powerpoints

It's pretty relevant, he seemed happy enough with his current gpu and I think we don't have to make him buy completely new parts if he doesn't want to

[Coolio]

I am looking for a new graphics card to replace my i3's integrated graphics. I want to know if I should either buy a Nvidia or ATi card. I have about $133 left to spend, so I'd like to still have a fair bit of money left. I am looking to buy from NCIX or Newegg, as I am in Canada.  According to Speccy:



I have a PCI Express 1.6 slot. What card would you guys recommend?

[Treynolds416]

@ above

pretty sure he means x16
Because I've never heard of PCIe 1.6, and the picture in OP says PCIE16X

What is your motherboard?

[Wedge]

His PC is most definitely using an OEM copy of windows which he would have to buy again if he upgraded the motherboard.

No, if you replace the motherboard then you just have to do a phone activation.

[nerraD]

Right guys. Here's the deal. I bought a Sapphire Radeon HD6870 at the price of £100.

Although it's got all the cool stuff, I can only run Blockland at 15k bricks before the FPS drops below 60. I was sure everything was plugged in, I made sure my PCI Express power connectors was fully plugged in, and all the checks was fine.

But I have a 500 Watt PSU. My mouse lagged earlier when I was in photoshop (I was only resizing a rectangle...) and it was not because of the CPU increasing it's power, it was something graphical, thus thinking it was the GPU.

Anybody know why I am getting low FPS in Blockland?

Edit
Also I am only getting 290fps in bedroom without any bricks, I got that on a £40 GPU card.

[Treynolds416]

Your psu is fine and I'll assume your cpu is fine
That's abnormal and you should probably hit up the guy that sold you the card, something is not right.

[nerraD]

Well, my CPU is an AMD Athlon X2 which runs at 3.00GHz.

And the GPU is brand new and I doubt it's faulty.

[Tokthree]

Nerrad, I'm certain that your CPU is bottlenecking your card heavily, I had the same processor and even my 6770 was running slower than my old X1950 Pro, I recently upgraded to a Phenom II x4 and now it works as well as all the videos I watched suggested it would.
With a 6870 the effect would be even more noticeable, so I'd look into upgrading your CPU ASAP as opposed to mucking about with the card or returning it.

No, if you replace the motherboard then you just have to do a phone activation.

I asked all over the Dell forums and every single user I spoke to said that after replacing the mobo in a Dell prebuilt you would either have to buy a new OEM key or new retail copy, it's the same deal if you try to replace the original HDD, Dell PC's no longer come with an OS CD or Key, you have to use the backup partition on the stock HDD to revert it if anything goes wrong, not to mention that all OEM copies are SINGLE use only and most if not all prebuilt PC's use OEM copies, even if you bought it yourself you cannot get the key reset no matter what you do.

So yes, he would have to buy a brand new copy

[nerraD]

Nerrad, I'm certain that your CPU is bottlenecking your card heavily, I had the same processor and even my 6770 was running slower than my old X1950 Pro, I recently upgraded to a Phenom II x4 and now it works as well as all the videos I watched suggested it would.
With a 6870 the effect would be even more noticeable, so I'd look into upgrading your CPU ASAP as opposed to mucking about with the card or returning it.

I have no money to buy a new CPU chip, at all.

There is 4 months until Christmas and that'd be when I would be getting at least £200, I was looking at the AMD Bulldozer processor which has the ability to be put into my motherboard, since that accepts AM3 type chips. I think the Bulldozer processor will not bottleneck my card, am I right?

I think for the time being for me I'll have to edit the GPU settings to run on it's lowest for 4 months until I can buy a new GPU card.