Graphic Card or CPU upgrade?

[Cris117]

I have an old LGA 775 rig (ASRock G31M-GS + 2.13 Core 2 Duo E6400 + Inno3d Geforce 9500GT Graphic Card). I'm an average gamer who doesn't care much about max settings/high graphics quality. I'm satisfied to play games above 30fps at 1366 x 768 resolution (Dragon Age: Origins, Crysis, Dawn of War 2, Left 4 Dead 2). I'm considering a CPU upgrade (probably a 2.8Ghz Pentium Dual Core E5500) or a graphic card upgrade (probably an ATI Radeon HD 5670 or 6670) to make playing these games a bit snappier. I have a tight budget & these are the specs I can afford. I'm a bit confused where to choose, a higher clocked dual core CPU or a mid-range video card? Please help. Thanks to any recommendations or suggestions.

[D.8080]

How much ram you've got? If you have 1gb, maybe going for 4gb would help a wee bit

A gcard is always better than the processor, especially in your case.
If you want to go with both, better.

[mavroxur]

Well, your system isn't really up to par video or CPU wise for some of the games you listed. First of all, a Pentium Dual Core E5500 would be a downgrade from a Core 2 Duo E6300.

If you're on a tight budget, i'd overclock the E6300 and invest in a better video card, maybe a used Radeon 6870 or something along those lines. If you can spring for it, maybe get a used Core 2 Duo E8400 and overclock that. The E8400's respond well to OCing, and at stock speed, would outrun that E6300 even if it was overclocked to 3+, no problem. One thing that people often overlook is the hard drive. A faster hard drive or a RAID 0 setup works WONDERS on older systems. Either a RAID 0 of some regular drives, or even a cheaper SSD as your boot drive, and your existing hard drive as storage. Your motherboard doesn't support RAID, but a cheap PCI-e x1 RAID card and a pair of matching drives striped really boosts performance. (e.g. if you have a 320gb drive, get another matching one and stripe them). Now, with a RAID 0 you will lose all data if one drive in the stripe fails, so you'd need to back up anything important on a regular basis, but the performance is worth it in my opinion. I run a pair of WD VelociRaptor 2.5" 10K drives in a RAID 0, and it sustains just over 400MB/sec in sequential reads, and just over 3500MB/sec random 16k reads. Not bad for spindle hard drives.


And RAM, like D.8088 mentioned, i'd go with at least 4GB of PC2-6400 (pair of 2GB sticks).


There's a lot you can do to breathe new life into that system. You just need to know where to start first. Personally, OC'ing the CPU, adding some RAM (if you have < 4GB) and a faster video card would be the best start.

[Qwerty]

An inexpensive upgrade path would be purchasing a quad core Q6600 and overclocking it to 3.00 GHz simply by setting the FSB from 1066 to 1333 Mhz. (In case your motherboard supports 1333 FSB)

You won't need any sophisticated cooling - any good air cooling system would do.

[Marcin]

I recommend ATI 4850 from Vertex3D with DDR5 256 bit. New card with warranty in shop cost about 80 USD and there is no other so good new card at that price I think.

You will see how games are working after that upgrade and if that will not be enough then try Overclock actual CPU to ~ 3GHz.

I have E5200 Wolfdale and OC it from 2,5 to 4,36 GHZ and nobody will say it is downgrade from E6300 That CPU + 4850 + 4 GB DDR3 = Crysis 2 with Ultra (maximum) details at 1920x1080

[Cris117]

Thank you for all your suggestions. However, honestly, I don't know how to overclock. This endeavor should be performed by a skilled professional beside me if ever I will try overclocking. If ever I do, I still need to buy a big CPU cooler for that matter which will make the cost quite higher. Anyway, its safe for me to stay within stock settings at the moment just to preserve the lifespan of the equipment.