[Upgrade] CPU or GPU

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#1

Current CPU
3.35 GHz AMD Athlon II X2 260 Black Edition

Proposed CPUs
3.30 GHz AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition (3.70 GHz ‘Turbo’)

or

3.40 GHz AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition

Current GPU
ATI Radeon HD 5850

Proposed GPU
Wait until 7xxx series.

Should I upgrade my CPU now, and scrap the later GPU upgrade,
or
Should I scrap the CPU upgrade, and get a new GPU on 7xxx series launch?

I’m leaning towards GPU upgrade later because I don’t feel like I need more than a dual core atm, even though it’d be cool.

#2

Your GPU is still pretty damn good, upgrade the CPU.

#3

I’d say you don’t need to upgrade anything right now, but when the next gen AMD processors come out, you could upgrade to that.

but if any game you have right now is below 60fps, it’s the CPU or a badly optimized game

#4

Yeah, its a toss up. Nuthin’ or the CPU.

But sersoft knows more than me about comps so I’d take his opinion.

#5

I have 8GB of RAM, but is there any chance it being DDR2 can bottleneck anything?

EDIT: Also, is this normal?

3840×1080 453 KB

When I’m running only this? This is what I consider idle. I know FF 4-5 is supposedly a memory hog,

998×911 106 KB

But when I close FF, and go to what I truly call ‘idle’…

1001×909 73.9 KB

1003×905 103 KB

… and it still seems a bit …less than optimal.

#6

Processes: 80 != idle

#7

All of those run all of the time, so it’s what I consider ‘functional’ idle. All of them are wanted and used, too.

Aside from ‘TabTip32’, Pen_TabletUser, itype, Pen_TouchUser, Pen_Tablet, and wisptis which have to do with my WACOM tablet, but I can’t close them for some stupid ass reason, even though the tablet isn’t even plugged in. I use the tablet though, so when it’s plugged in I need them, but I don’t see why the fuck they need to be running all the time. Why does a single tablet need all of those? No idea.

They don’t take up much mem or CPU power anyway, though. So I don’t care too much.

#8

thats a ton of processes.

Open msconfig and go though the list of startup programs and un-check what is not needed at startup.

#9

80 processes with 0% CPU usage shouldn’t equal a CPU usage of 50%… there’s something wrong there.
I have 86 processes at the moment, and CPU usage idles at 3-5% (one of these processes being media player playing music)

Edit: Maybe it’s a service that’s hogging the CPU? Open the resource monitor instead, it might give you more details.

#10

wmpnetwk.exe, related to Windows Media Player media sharing, has a usage of %50. It won’t let me see it on normal task manager. Resource manger shows it, though.

I don’t even use WMP.

EDIT: Disabled WMP’s network sharing service, I now idle @ %0 with all of my ‘functional idle’ processes running, Steam included. Jesus fuck.

Never went below %50 before.

I have (had? need to check now) Media Center connected to our TV tuner so I could get TV on my computer, and apparently, WMP needed %50 of CPU resources dedicated to doing that, even when not in use?

Might reconsider the upgrade if this speeds my computer up as much as it seems to be doing, and it wasn’t bad before! Wow.

Out of this I have grown a new hatred for WMP.

#11

Join the club WMP sucks.

#12

make a txt file and open it with notepad, then type in

taskkill /f /im TabTip32
taskkill /f /im Pen_TabletUser
taskkill /f /im itype
taskkill /f /im Pen_TouchUser
taskkill /f /im Pen_Tablet
taskkill /f /im wisptis
taskkill /f /im Rainmeter.exe
taskkill /f /im Dropbox.exe
taskkill /f /im speedfan.exe
taskkill /f /im iTunesHelper.exe
taskkill /f /im AvastUI.exe
taskkill /f /im YouCamTray.exe
taskkill /f /im jusched.exe

then rename it to free ram.bat

but with 8gb of RAM you will never need to do that anyway :awesome:

#13

don’t upgrade the CPU yet, you really won’t see much of an advantage in gaming with several additional phenom cores. your GPU is also still very good, upgrading to the 7xxx series will likely give you at most 10-15fps more in a game if you upgrade for the 7950 (or its equivalent, whatever it will be), judging by performance increases brought by the 6xxx series.

Basically, I’d recommend saving your money and buying a bobcat processor + motherboard when they come out, which should be very soon, if you really want to upgrade. That will definitely give you a huge CPU boost. Or, if I were you, I’d use the money to get a PSVita when it comes out this holiday season, but thats just me

#14

Yeah Vita is tempting.

Assuming that Bobcat is not DDR2 compatible though? If so I probably won’t do that because then I’d be buying RAM and CPU. :<

#15

Where do you guys normally go to double check what processors are compatable with your motherboard. Google seems to wanna dork on me when I search for specifics, so I wonder if there is a general comparison website that I am not aware of.

#16

Well when looking on Newegg it tells you the socket type of the mobo as well as typically the general categories of cpus it’ll take. Mine for instance said socket LG1156 and is i5/i7 compatible.

#17

motherboard manufacturers site

#18

Sites like newegg will usually say stuff like "this is compatible with ", but they do not necessarily list all the compatible processors. But usually it’s just a matter of matching the socket, but there can be some incompatibilities sometimes.
So… what sersoft said.

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