Friend´s PC

[CatCloud]

Yo!

Wasn´t sure where to post this but this place was closest to the topic.

A Friend of mine has an "old AMD pc" and its for gaming,

Motherboards: Asrock M3A770DE 770 Socket

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition

GPU: ASUS Radeon HD7870 2GB DirectCU II i recomended to him (due to his budget)

RAM: Forgot to ask but i guess he has around 4 gb

Anyway, im not very good with AMD stuff so i came here, he belives his CPU is bottlenecking him badly, he can play Crysis 3 at high settings wich is fine for him But he have some major problems with Planetside 2 that is know to eat CPU power, is it his CPU or is it something ells?

Any suggestion what he could change that ain´t to much of a beating on the wallet.

His budget ...i forgot to ask but i bet its around 100£ top

[Helltech]

With that budget he just needs to save up for something newer around the corner. His CPU isn't very powerful but it isn't like his GPU is either, they are a good match together.

[CatCloud]

is that so, hmm then i guess Planetside 2 is just poorly made, or not very ADM friendly.

Personaly im using a Rampage Extreme 2 with a i7 920 2,66 mhz + GTX 580 and im doing just fine compaird to him but yeah i guess my stuff are abit more high end compaird to him??

So let´s say we triple his budget to 300, any suggestions? or does he REALLY need to upgrade all the way to something more modern that badly?

[ijKs Snow]

Yes the i7 920 and a 580 has more horsepower then a 955 + 7870.

His GPU is fine since the 7870 performs slightly better then a 660.

Has he overclocked the 955 yet? If he has a decent CPU cooler, he should be able to get that thing to 3.8ghz. I remember those things were pretty beastly at overclocking potential.

Overclocking it will help a lot. The reason his FPS drops in Planetside 2 is because that game is extremely CPU intensive. Especially in big fights. Also, that game isn't favorable to AMD processors. Everywhere on PS2 forums, people say intel processors run that game much better/smoother then AMD processors.

[CatCloud]

Yes the i7 920 and a 580 has more horsepower then a 955 + 7870.

His GPU is fine since the 7870 performs slightly better then a 660.

Has he overclocked the 955 yet? If he has a decent CPU cooler, he should be able to get that thing to 3.8ghz. I remember those things were pretty beastly at overclocking potential.

Overclocking it will help a lot. The reason his FPS drops in Planetside 2 is because that game is extremely CPU intensive. Especially in big fights. Also, that game isn't favorable to AMD processors. Everywhere on PS2 forums, people say intel processors run that game much better/smoother then AMD processors.

yeah he got it to 3,6 i belive, but he cant go higher with his curent cooling but eitherway he not doing to well even with that.

[ijKs Snow]

Yes the i7 920 and a 580 has more horsepower then a 955 + 7870.

His GPU is fine since the 7870 performs slightly better then a 660.

Has he overclocked the 955 yet? If he has a decent CPU cooler, he should be able to get that thing to 3.8ghz. I remember those things were pretty beastly at overclocking potential.

Overclocking it will help a lot. The reason his FPS drops in Planetside 2 is because that game is extremely CPU intensive. Especially in big fights. Also, that game isn't favorable to AMD processors. Everywhere on PS2 forums, people say intel processors run that game much better/smoother then AMD processors.

Ah okay. Then he probably won't see a significant boost in performance going from 3.6 to 3.8. If planetside 2 is an important game for you and your friend, then his only choice is to switch to intel. So that means he has to buy a new motherboard and chip. Not sure how it's priced in EU, but it will cost about 300 dollars to jump to a i5 + motherboard over here in the states.

[Glenwing]

Intel? He could just upgrade to the FX-8350... unless I'm missing something.

[CatCloud]

Not sure if this is accurate but I compaird the FX VS his old Phenom II

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/102?vs=697

i dunno but it feels very 50/50 overall. but atlest its an upgrade option. and yeah jumping to intel might be the easiest thing to do, there products are less confusing :P AMD sure has alot of Mhz´s on there CPU but it seems like that alone wont help much overall

More help is welcome!

[ijKs Snow]

Intel? He could just upgrade to the FX-8350... unless I'm missing something.

Yeah, if it was just a general gaming computer upgrade, but for a specific game like Planetside 2 where AMD chips are getting murdered. I don't play Planetside 2, so I haven't researched why there are reports of AMD processors performing so poorly, but people are stating that Intel chips are getting a significant boost of FPS, especially in big action scenes.