What hardware upgrades make a PC run faster games?

[Junkhead]

I am looking to upgrade my PC. I am thinking of upgrading my GPU, mainly. Maybe my RAM if I have enough money. I don't have money to buy a high/ish end PC, they're pretty damn expensive over here. And so I ask, what hardware updates (or combination of hardware) would make the most impact when running faster games?

My GPU is a GeForce 9400 GT (1GB), but my CPU itself is about ten years old, Dual Core 2GB RAM. Which will make more of an impact, updating the GPU or doubling the RAM to 4GB?

System specs

Windows 7, 32-bit

Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2180 @2.00 GHz, 2 GB RAM, NVidia GeForce 9400GT (1GB)

Edited December 20, 2014 by The Alice

[kingddd]

In your case scenario, GPU and RAM upgrade would be the best idea. A 9400 GT is mostly for low intensive renderings and it's not really a gaming GPU.

RAM won't make your game run exactly faster more like it lets you have a safe way to load the process of your games and therefore only mandatory if a specific game requires a significant number of memory space.

Since you're only looking at upgrading your current PC, You have to be aware though if you don't have a good combination of CPU and GPU, you may experience bottlenecks if you buy a really high end GPU. I'd recommend getting at least a midrange GPU like a Geforce 650 or 660 or equivalent to AMD's case for your case since your CPU is really low end in the current PC market. However the issue is that you may need an upgrade to your PSU, or power supply since newer GPUs require more power. Check the GPU's specifications and your current PSU's power watts.

Edited December 20, 2014 by kingddd

[Djeets]

Nvidia is already good VGA -w-

also try to make it from dual core to quad core (wait is that possible?)

[kingddd]

Nvidia is already good VGA -w-

also try to make it from dual core to quad core (wait is that possible?)

Only if you can find a Core2quad CPU which most of them are out of stock and were discontinued really fast. The issue is that since he has a core 2 duo, he can only upgrade with a core 2 quad CPU since most of the Intel i# series requires a CPU slot of LGA1155 whereas core2 duos and quads uses LGA775.

Edited December 20, 2014 by kingddd

[Djeets]

i never know too much regarding specs and whatsnot

all i know if your lappy/com is good enough to run Dota 2, then its already quiet amazing, for me at least

[Sentacotus]

Yeah that CPU is pretty dated and you'll have to upgrade that at somepoint if you want to run games better (or in some cases even at all). Even if you upgrade your GPU its going to be limited by what the CPU can do in your case. As for the RAM it depends on what game you are trying to run some need more some need less just check before you upgrade. RAM now in days is pretty inexpensive to upgrade and I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I personally like the i5 and i7 series of CPU's by intel but they can get pricey and like what was mentioned before if your power supply is dated then you'll need to upgrade that too.

Upgrading a CPU in some cases is like upgrading the engine to a car. In some cases its sometimes better to get a new laptop/rig/computer.

[kingddd]

i never know too much regarding specs and whatsnot

all i know if your lappy/com is good enough to run Dota 2, then its already quiet amazing, for me at least

Dota2 doesn't require a good PC to play well anyway. In fact a toaster PC can play that game fine.

But like Tacoman said, upgrading your PC is difficult at this point because of your outdated hardware like outdated CPU slots in the motherboard that is preventing you from upgrading your CPU and if you have a low end CPU, upgrading your GPU would not do too much especially if the game requires heavy processing abilities and you have to considering a new power supply.

At this point, you're better off buying and building a new computer or get a mid range prebuilt. As upgrading would probably cost you more than a new PC in the end.

Edited December 20, 2014 by kingddd

[Celice]

If you are considering upgrading only your GPU, check out your power supply and make sure it can support whatever card you're going to get.

[Junkhead]

Thank you for the information, I am now understanding significantly better. However, I should also point out, I'm not exactly much of PC gamer myself. There's this one game I love (Alice Madness Returns) that I just want to play on the highest/high-ish settings. It's looks verah verah pretty, but I don't think it's ridiculously demaning, either (it's a 2011 game).

[Sentacotus]

Hey that's great man whatever works for you. Just before you consider shelling out cash on upgrading I would look into getting something prebuilt like kingddd said. You could get something far superior to what you currently have for around $300-$500 that's prebuilt compared to upgrading which will likely cost you close to $1000 possibly more.

Here is a helpful site I use that analyzes the specs of your machine and tells you if you can run it on minimum or recommended settings for that game they update the list with all the new releases and even have older titles as well

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri

Edited December 20, 2014 by TacoMan42

[Klokinator]

No the best way to evaluate any video card is by using Notebookcheck.net. Find a popular video card and compare the video performance to another by using their bar rating scales.

My old PC: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9800M-GT.9906.0.html

My current: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-560M.48313.0.html

To do this, scroll down to this section here:

Those bars look meaningless at first, but take a look at any one of them, like 3DMark 05. These are all programs that are run by this site's staff to benchmark how a video card will work.

The 3DMark 05 for both video cards, my old and my current, look like so:

Old (Nvidia GeForce 9800M GT)

New (Nvidia GeForce GTX 560M)

See the numerical values below each card? Higher numbers are BETTER. It indicates raw performance on the test. As you can see, my old card had a median rating of 14.8k, while my new one rates 22.1k. That's a more than 50% gain! It means my current card is now 50% better than the old.

You can repeat this test with the other testing programs. If we take the card you mentioned in the OP, the 9600M GT, we get:

As you can see, it scores only 10.4k. This means my old laptop was 40% better than yours, and my current is 120% better!

Finally, once you've decided what model to buy, you can check other stats too, like how many FPS it gets on the latest games, and what computer models it comes in. I recommend Asus, my Asus G74sx is a good budget gaming laptop with a ton of features, and very sturdy.

[Klokinator]

Incidentally, 4GB of RAM is pretty shitty, assuming you don't mean VRAM. Nowadays, 8GB is the norm, and for a good gaming/multimedia laptop with lots of things open, I like having 12-16 GB's.

Of course, I have to use Windows instead of Linux so my optimization of programs sucks...

[Junkhead]

I'm thinking of buying an NVidia GeForce 730 (2GB DDR3 PCI-e 16x 3.0), do you know if it'll work on my computer?

[kingddd]

I'm thinking of buying an NVidia GeForce 730 (2GB DDR3 PCI-e 16x 3.0), do you know if it'll work on my computer?

yes but that's an awful card. I do mean really bad. This card is meant for photo editing and webbrowsing at best.

If you want to learn how to judge a graphic card here's my tip:

Look for something that states Nvidia and AMD. The 2nd thing you want to look for is the series number. The common nvidia series number right now is 400, 500, 600 and 700. AMD's common series number is 5000, 6000 and 7000 etc (2 or so years ago). The higher the number means when it was released. Like the 7000 series for AMD was released in 2012.

Here is the most important part though, the 2nd digit of the series number. If you see something like Nvidia 410, 510 or 610, that means its the lowest end of the series. In other words it's a really bad video card and these are meant for low end graphical processing. If you see something like Nvidia 450, 550 or 650, then it's a good budget graphic card and adequate enough for most PC games. If you see something like Nvidia 570, 580 or up, then it's the best dedicated video card you can find on the market and these cost a fortune. If you see a 3rd number that isn't a 0 it's usually just a slightly beefed up version of that card.

So first digit = series number (When it is released usually)

the 2nd digit = how good the card is in that specific series

the 3rd digit = slightly upgraded version of the card

So if you see Geforce card with the 700 series number:

710 <---------------------- 750 -------------------------> 790

web browsing budget 3d gaming Extreme high end 3D rendering and gaming

picture editing

I cannot stress this tip enough to a lot of people.

Edited December 29, 2014 by kingddd

[Junkhead]

kingddd to the rescue? ;u;

Anyway, thanks a lot. That certainly clears things up. I thought that higher number (JUST higher number) meant, you know...better. Better everything, pretty much. That's why I, when I read "730 2GB", I thought that thing was ridiculous (at least, much better than my current 9400GT 1GB?).

Another question I have: If the single digits matter more when it comes to performance on games...does that mean 290 will perform better than, say, a 730 in the gaming aspect? That's what I'm curious about. So I can start looking up one within what I can afford...

[kingddd]

kingddd to the rescue? ;u;

Anyway, thanks a lot. That certainly clears things up. I thought that higher number (JUST higher number) meant, you know...better. Better everything, pretty much. That's why I, when I read "730 2GB", I thought that thing was ridiculous (at least, much better than my current 9400GT 1GB?).

Another question I have: If the single digits matter more when it comes to performance on games...does that mean 290 will perform better than, say, a 730 in the gaming aspect? That's what I'm curious about. So I can start looking up one within what I can afford...

Geforce 290 will perform better than a Geforce 730 in terms of gaming performance. (assuming the 290 exists).

But because the Geforce 290 is a much older card, it won't support some new features like DX11 and because it has less video memory, any intensive video memory resolution will suffer quite a bit but in most cases most games don't use more than 1 GB of video memory. You usually need video memory for really high resolution textures or playing the game in high resolution formats but video memory is only necessary if you're jacking up the game's resolution to extranomical levels like 5000 x 3000 kind of numbers. In fact Street Fighter IV uses like way less than 512 mb of video memory at 1080p resolution.

So while the 2 GB Geforece 730 may look better because it has more video memory and more newer graphical features like DX11 than say a 1 GB Geforce 290 DX10, the performance between the two cards are significantly different. Look up some youtube videos of video card performance/benchmarks, they'll help give you a general idea on what card is good.

edit:

However if you were to compare something like Geforce 550 to Geforce 650, obvious the Geforce 650 will be slightly better.

Remember to research the video cards carefully, cause in the end, it's all about their specifications and their benchmarks.

Edited December 30, 2014 by kingddd

[peener weener]

Dumb idea to pour hundreds of bucks just to make Alice run in the highest settings. It's not a very demanding game and the beauty lies in the stylisation anyway. Your PC could use a general upgrade but if you won't be seeing much use of it, then for what purpose? Whatever floats your boat though.

Edit: ftr with gt cards the first number is the series number and the second number is performance rating. ie 730 is a series 7 low end gpu, 290 is a series 2 high end gpu

Edited December 30, 2014 by fuccboi

[Junkhead]

I'm not going to lie: That's pretty much the whole reason I'm doing it....................................lol.

Do you have it on PC or PS360?

[peener weener]

PC. My PC is fairly low end and it runs fine. My GPU is better than yours though, to be fair.

[Skynstein]

For modern games it's the GPU that makes the most difference. For anything that wasn't hardware accelerated (most stuff from mid-90s and before), the CPU is the biggest factor.

[Junkhead]

Could someone guide me a bit on processors/CPUs (are they even the same thing)? Maybe I could upgrade both.

[Sentacotus]

Normally when people talk about processors and CPU's they are using the term interchangably and refer to the same thing.

[Skynstein]

I think you need to buy a new PC. An Intel dual core CPU will bottleneck any recent GPU.

[Celice]

Could someone guide me a bit on processors/CPUs (are they even the same thing)? Maybe I could upgrade both.

/r/buildapc might be a good place to stop by for advice :)

http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc