What should I upgrade for better frame rates?

[BaldEagl]

I'm afraid there's not much you can do to gain FPS with your budget.

I'm not familiar with AMD CPU's but maybe there's an upgrade you can do.  You really don't need more than two cores to play AH and even for video editing four is fine so a possibility would be a move to a dual or quad core at the same clock rate but that won't do a lot.  As I said I'm not familiar with AMD CPU's so I can't say.

More RAM wont help, crossfire might add something but might also be problematic and the next step up in video cards appears to be beyond your budget.

Either save the money or, if you don't have one, buy a nice SSD so your GF feels good about getting you something plus it will make your overall computing experience a little nicer.  If there's money left over take her out to dinner for being so thoughtful.

[Bizman]

Almost everything has already been said, this is rather a sum up:

Your current rig seems to be a balanced example of the top quarter of modern gaming rigs. If you want to improve performance, a total rebuild would be needed except for the RAM sticks! Definitely not in the $200 range, you already are in the range where the prices of frames rise exponentially.

If you don't get great frame rates in AH with that, it isn't in the lack of power, it's in where it's used. In AH, you should be able to max everything with a couple of exceptions: Leave AA and Environment mapping to "none". At least that works for me with a resolution of 2560*1600 with a dual core E8500@3.16 GHz, 8 GB ddr2@800 and Radeon HD 6970 2 GB gddr5. 30 processes running on Windows 7 64 bit...

I wouldn't even invest into an SSD since it does absolutely nothing for frame rates. It makes things load faster, though, so if you really are in a hurry it would get you into the virtual skies a minute sooner starting from pushing the power button. Personally, I'm using that minute to get my gaming gear into position. BaldEagl has a point in suggesting saving the money or taking her out to dinner. Split the budget and do both! If your GF still wants to get you something to improve your gaming, a screen cleaning kit is very useful to get rid of extra dots on the screen.

[zack1234]

Take someone elses girlfriend out for dinner

[MrRiplEy[H]]

If he's not getting full pegged monitor refresh fps using that hardware and AH2 there's some setting problem. If you have the environment slider turned up, turn it down. It gives nothing visually to the game but eats up all your resources.

[Serenity]

Almost everything has already been said, this is rather a sum up:

Your current rig seems to be a balanced example of the top quarter of modern gaming rigs. If you want to improve performance, a total rebuild would be needed except for the RAM sticks! Definitely not in the $200 range, you already are in the range where the prices of frames rise exponentially.

If you don't get great frame rates in AH with that, it isn't in the lack of power, it's in where it's used. In AH, you should be able to max everything with a couple of exceptions: Leave AA and Environment mapping to "none". At least that works for me with a resolution of 2560*1600 with a dual core E8500@3.16 GHz, 8 GB ddr2@800 and Radeon HD 6970 2 GB gddr5. 30 processes running on Windows 7 64 bit...

I wouldn't even invest into an SSD since it does absolutely nothing for frame rates. It makes things load faster, though, so if you really are in a hurry it would get you into the virtual skies a minute sooner starting from pushing the power button. Personally, I'm using that minute to get my gaming gear into position. BaldEagl has a point in suggesting saving the money or taking her out to dinner. Split the budget and do both! If your GF still wants to get you something to improve your gaming, a screen cleaning kit is very useful to get rid of extra dots on the screen.

I think I've got AA turned rather high, that might be what's slowing it down. Thanks for the synopsis! I'm really new to having a computer with which I can actually care about the hardware rather than just knowing I have to have everything turned to the minimum and pray it still runs lol.

[38ruk]

I don't expect my card to bring the price down into the $200 range, and it would leave me without a video card in the meantime. A bigger better card may go on the list later on.

I've got a 32" LED TV. I get about 49-59fps normally, but in a big fight, it ducks down to about 30. In DCS I average 30 which drops to 11.

Something seems up here.... looking at benchmarks for your cpu and it hangs in there right with mine stock vs stock till real high res.  What resoulution are you running? you have a ton of stuff open in the background or something? 

[save]

Overcklocking normally needs a bigger fan to dissipate extra heat, you can probably get some extra HP on it, its not hard work to figure out what you system can do, and still keep it reliable.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Overcklocking normally needs a bigger fan to dissipate extra heat, you can probably get some extra HP on it, its not hard work to figure out what you system can do, and still keep it reliable.

That's especially true on the AMD part, the FX 8350 has a TDP of 125 watts! That's more than an overclocked i5 just running at stock speed.

[Serenity]

Something seems up here.... looking at benchmarks for your cpu and it hangs in there right with mine stock vs stock till real high res.  What resoulution are you running? you have a ton of stuff open in the background or something? 

Nothing runs in the background except TrackIR. This computer is dedicated to just gaming.

1920 x 1080 IIRC for the resolution.

[Skuzzy]

Nothing runs in the background except TrackIR. This computer is dedicated to just gaming.

1920 x 1080 IIRC for the resolution.

If it is a Windows machine, there is always things running in the background.  For a decent Windows 7 system there are about 40 to 45 processes running all the time.

[Serenity]

If it is a Windows machine, there is always things running in the background.  For a decent Windows 7 system there are about 40 to 45 processes running all the time.

This is my first forray into Windows 8, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make heads or tails of it. I guess I have to go find a rundown on how to streamline windows 8.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

This is my first forray into Windows 8, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make heads or tails of it. I guess I have to go find a rundown on how to streamline windows 8.

Your best advice is to leave it alone. Just do a clean install without any OEM bloatware and you're fine. You're most likely going to do more damage than good if you start to strip Win8 processes, not the least because Microsoft has started to merge functionality. Already in Win7 there can be surprises, for example if you choose to strip 'power' service from your desktop machine that doesn't need power handling, you end up losing networking.

Keep in mind that Win8 is designed with hybrid use in tablets in mind.

[Serenity]

Your best advice is to leave it alone. Just do a clean install without any OEM bloatware and you're fine. You're most likely going to do more damage than good if you start to strip Win8 processes, not the least because Microsoft has started to merge functionality. Already in Win7 there can be surprises, for example if you choose to strip 'power' service from your desktop machine that doesn't need power handling, you end up losing networking.

Keep in mind that Win8 is designed with hybrid use in tablets in mind.

This was a custom build from cyberpower pc, so it SHOULD have been a clean install.

[morfiend]

This was a custom build from cyberpower pc, so it SHOULD have been a clean install.

   I would still look at the task manager and see how many processes are running.  Then you could look at blackvipers website and see what if anything you can shut down.

  My custom build with win7 had something like 68 processes running,I have it down to 45 ATM.

  Oh and set your updates to manual install,last thing you want is winblows updating while ingame!



   

[Masherbrum]

43 on 8.1 here.