Hi guys, As all of us; I want some more fps because it's never enough, right? Lately, I'm doing okay fps wise; shadows have to be off, AA at 2 and all settings full or high except for filtering; billiniair. I get around 60 fps driving Monaco alone, but with other cars, it can drop severe, making it hard on my eyes sometimes. Now my whole system is crappy; Asus P5KC 775 Core duo E8200 @3,4Ghz 4Gb ram in dual channel @ 840Mhz GF GTX 260 oc 55nm 216 (and some other terms I don't understand, let me just say, back in the day it was 10 or 20% faster than a normal GTX 260 they said) Hard drive; an old spinning bastard I don't even want to talk about but it doesn't do anything in the game; I hear it shutting down when driving and nothing changes. My wife says it is more important that we feed the kids and all so the budget is limited Now I just wanted to go for a new vga card, but someone told me, my cpu was the bottleneck and if I got a 2 times faster vga, I would get -lets say- a 20 or 30% fps improvement. And I remember, "back in the day" that we were running GP2, it was known that you had to have a good vga, but the cpu really pulled the game; any improvement to that, was a big fps win. Not really fps back then; "processor occupancy" in percentage I am wondering as to how far this goes up nowadays; can the cpu be such a big holdback? My question; how can I improve my system best now; cpu or vga? And then; what vga or cpu to use best, performance/costs wise? Goal: low costs, big gain Thanks guys!
Start with CPU. Get a next-gen Intel quad core (i5 2500k). That means you will need a new mobo and RAM. A Sandy Bridge will bring some life into that GTX 260 and you should see some improvement. Then when you have a little more money, get a new video card. But I would definitely start with new CPU, mobo, and RAM.
Use this as a rough outdated guide. (technically 2 to 3 generations old now). It's a system I specified late 2010 and built feb 2011 for a mate. (mainly for his wife & teen daughters actually). View attachment 2844 View attachment 2844 I appreciate your family obligations hence something like this would do. These components would be pretty much half price or less now. Ideally go to a custom PC shop and seek their advice using this build as a base. Custom shops generally look after their clientele superbly. Get to know em (note this was a complete system, Win7 64 Ultimate included). ps: With the wife the "use this system for continuing self advancement via education" is the winner. This is how I justified this system to my mates lovely missus, one year later she has a degree and an increased income *winx
I don't think anyone can put a finger on exactly how much you can expect loose if you only replaced your graphics card with one that's twice as powerful. You would really need to test it with each game to see if the game in question is predominately cpu or gpu demanding. I did a comparison back in 2008 of 3dmark06 graphics specific scores running different cpu's but with the same graphics card (Nvidia 9800GX2). I'm pretty sure that around this same time (2006) that with the advent of the stream processor, the graphical demands of games began shifting from heavily cpu to purely gpu. Though i don't have a graphical chart on 3dmark vantage, i remember checking that if you made this same comparison on 3dmarkvantage (released 2008) you would have almost identical graphical scores with the same gpu but different cpu's (but ofc up to a point, i.e. if your cpu is too slow to run some key but non-graphical components, e.g. ai, physics, etc). The reason i originally produced this graph was to show people (at the time) who were still using 3dmark06 scores to compare their graphics performance that it was useless as a gauge of real game performance. People who had the same gpu but different cpu would be confused by the significant difference in their 3dmark06 graphics score yet receiving identical fps in their most recently purchased games. I ran rf2 for a little while with task manager opened on the performance tab to see how much it was stressing my i7 920 @ 3.6Ghz. I had HyperThreading off so only 4 cores were available. When the game ran, only two cores were in use and of them only up to 60-65% of each. That falls in line the official ISI minimum requirements which is a Core 2 Duo @ 2.4Ghz that happens to be 66% of 3.6Ghz. The ISI recommended cpu is a C2D 3.0Ghz which you already surpass. I would advise buying a new gpu for now. I don't think it will be bottlenecked by your cpu but there is no one to know that for sure (but based on a little testing and the official requirements i think your safe). Ofc, would be nice for you to have a new cpu all the same.
i take it all back. On Brianza with bt20's and 10+ players online and all 4 cores are being used and spiking to 100%. ok, seems like this only happens on Brianza though (offline and online).
I used to have a e8200 CPU with mmy current gtx460 and rf2 ran horribly slow. A new GPU will in no way help you at all. You need new CPU/mobo/RAM. As for budget.... Feed the oold CPU/mobo/ram to the kids
Tim has stated that eventually rF2 will use more cores. I don't know if 4 will be the limit or if it will use all the cores you have, but at the very least, the final release will use all 4 cores if you have them. So I think the OP would do better to get the CPU/mobo/RAM first.
There are few things you can do to your system if you money is tight, I had the same setup as you. 1st the Core 2 Duo in it's time was a great cpu- But with time comes slower performance. Now you can install this CPU on to your existing LGA775 M/B : Core 2 Quad Q9650 -(link to you M/B CPU upgrades- http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5KC/#CPUS that will take care of the 100% cpu usage issue- But being intel it will cost you about as much for a NEW fx-6100 (6 core cpu)... Other than that maybe a small GPU upgrade, but other than that you computer should be able to run RF2 on medium settings. Also to help you reduce current CPU load Put thr majority of eye candy options on the gpu. hope this helps! This will work perfectly ! http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1864492&Sku=B69-0516if you can sell your current system say for 100-150 bucks you would only need around $100 bucks for a really good setup!
Remember that rf2 is coded in 32bit so alot of your system potential just sits there being expensive...Check my specs, with this I still just horrendous stuttering on all tracks, even with no AI. I imagine the game will get optimized as they work towards a release, but I believe it has been stated that it will stay 32bit.
Been in this position myself a few times, I would go with the advise suggested above. There's a few good reasons behind going the new MB/CPU/RAM route, if you purchase a decent board as the replacement it should allow for greater expansion later as money becomes available. Cut corners on your board and that option then becomes limited later. The 260 will still perform ok with a better CPU pushing it and combined with faster RAM you should have a faster system all-round. You may have to look at upgrading the power supply to at some point depending of course on what you already have and which components you end up selecting for the upgrade. Some of these new GPUs' need a fairly beefy PS behind them. I chose to go this way many years ago and it's allowed me to keep running the same basic system with occasional purchases along the way to keep up, so to speak. I usually get anything up to 5 years before needing a major system upgrade, which I am almost due for now. Hope you get things sorted out so that the kids don't end up on the baked-beans diet.
Another thing if your thinking about a barebones build,makes sure you keep a eye on the motherboard is alot of the new boards come with Only SATA connections for the SSD/HDD, Keep in mind you existing HDD will not becombatiable with a SATA ony M/B... I learned the hard way... Thats why in my previous post I linked you to a SATA/ATA Board that will be able to use you old HDD along with the 500 GB SATA HDD.
It is more than possible that his h/d isnt an ide drive, but yea its definitely something that does need to be checked as it will add ~$100 on top of the price + possibly an optical drive (can do without these days though). If you're not sure an ide drive will have a 40pin "ribbon" cable where as sata cable are much thinner and use a connector more similar to a usb port. Just google them if you're not sure. If you already have sata drives theres no problem. You'll find cpu's being more of a bottleneck then getting more linear (poor word choice) improvements like we did gp2 days. So long as your cpu isnt a bottleneck, almost all of your framerate improvements will come from your gpu. As others suggested with your rig id be going for your cpu/mobo/memory as a first move, after that if you're on a bit of a budget like most mortals id be aiming for a gtx560 or so as they can be picked up for bout $130 on newegg atm, perform great and respond well to overclocking. IMO you wont beat that value for money.
I got bitten by that. I wanted to re-use my DVD Burner, but it was IDE and my mobo has SATA only, so that added a few bucks to my build I didn't expect. I knew my HDD was SATA, but I never thought about the DVD drive.
This how my Build went: System Specs: Model: Home Built CPU: FX-4100 Quad Core @ 3.6Ghz --- $89.00 Rebated Idle temp. 14.5c / Load 42c !! Motherboard: Asrock 970 Extreme 3 --- $89.00 Rebated Memory: 8GB DDR3 @1600mhz Vengance---$56.00 OS: 7 Home Ultimate 64bit No Pirate!! Video: ATI HD 6850 1GB < Beast!------- $114.00 Rebated DVD Optical (sata)-------------------- $14.00 1tb HDD (sata)....--------------------- $75.00 Rebated Display: 32" LCD 720P Sanyo-------- $214.00 Wife works at WalMart !!! Totals - $637.00 !! Now If I had done a little more research and purchased a M/B that had IDE capabilites I would not have had to buy the HDD,DVD DRIVE,SATA Cables saving me around $125.00 in which could have been another video card and our a Water cooling system... I hope your happy ISI I built this PC just so I can play RFACTOR 2!!
Well thats not your system ,its your setup. Check MY specs , i got everything maxed out and can run with 20 ai cars fantastic and without any stuttering, except in monaco for sure, but not that bad. Try to turn on Vsync , cause im pretty sure thats exactly your "problem". Without vsync it stutters like hell on my LCD, on my plasma instead it runs fantastic without.
