Can I get by with a new Vid Card or do I need to completely rebuild?

[Toad]

Gentlemen:

I haven't played AH steadily for a LONG time. Rude is pushing me to get back into it and I'm open to the idea.

Right now my current setup doesn't provide good frames for air combat, especially in the heavy ack areas. It can chug FPS down into the teens in these areas and that's with most detail pretty low.

So, can I get a significant improvement with a new video card or do I need to build an entirely new hot rod system? Until I play some more and see how things are now in the game, I'm not too excited about dropping big bucks into a whole new system.

What I have now:

ASUS P7P55D Pro mobo running an i7 870 @ 2.93 GHz, 16GB of Corsair DDR3 @ 1600MHz, Win 7 Pro 32bit and the card is a Radeon 7800 series, 750W power supply.

According to Passmark, my Radeon 7800 series is roughly equivalent to a GTX 750Ti. In other words, not bleeding edge and seriously trailing the leaders of the pack these days.

I have the power and the room to drop in something like a GTX 1060 or a Radeon RX 480 for a small expense. If I did, could I get 50-60 frames with some detail in the high load areas?

Or does my basic (mobo/cpu/ram) system just not make the cut anymore?

I appreciate any input here.

[Skuzzy]

The CPU is right on the edge.  It could probably power a 1060, but if the frame rate drops it will be due to the CPU not being able to feed the video card fast enough.  Overall, it would do well though.

[Bizman]

I hope it's a typo: Win 7 Pro 32bit. If not, the first thing to do is to reinstall Windows to the 64 bit version. 32 bit systems only can use 4 GB of memory, showing even less of it.

Other than that, a GTX 1060 would give you good performance on a single 1920x1080 monitor. People, me included, have got a solid 60 FPS on weaker systems than yours by just changing the video card to 970 or 1060. Note that the power consumption is much less than that of older Nvidia cards and Radeons so it might suite your aging system better.

If you're concerned about the CPU speed, I'm not sure whether an i7-880 @ 3.06 GHz would make any difference. A dual core i5-670 or 680 @ 3.46 to 3.6 GHz might perform better. You can get one used for $70 if needed.

[TequilaChaser]

I hope it's a typo: Win 7 Pro 32bit. If not, the first thing to do is to reinstall Windows to the 64 bit version. 32 bit systems only can use 4 GB of memory, showing even less of it.

Agreed! You will see a pretty good improvement running the Windows 7 64 bit version over the 32 bit version....and most likely have a good increase in frame rate...

Then reassess whether you even need to upgrade your video card right now...

Hope this helps

TC

[Skuzzy]

I hope it's a typo: Win 7 Pro 32bit. If not, the first thing to do is to reinstall Windows to the 64 bit version. 32 bit systems only can use 4 GB of memory, showing even less of it. <snip>

Missed that entirely.  Nice catch Bizman.

Toad, that will kill your performance in AH3.  I would not bother upgrading the video card until you got a 64 bit OS.  The more memory your video card has the more it will swap into that 32 bit address space which means less memory to run the game.

The memory, above 4GB, is not being used, at all.

[Toad]

Thanks, Bizman & Skuzzy. We have identified one problem. It is running 32bit. Seems like when I loaded it there was a reason for not  doing 64bit or maybe all my previously owned software was 32bit. There was something.

Right now, the Win 7 Pro disk is AWOL in the office. I put it in such a safe place I can't find it! It will turn up but I need to figure out why I didn't do 64 three or four years ago.

Also, I was looking at the "Windows Experience" page and it seems my hard drive may be slow. Scores are Processor 7.5, Memory 7.5,  Graphics 7.9,  Gaming Graphics 7.9 and Primary Hard Disk 5.9. Seems the HD isn't up to the rest of it.

All in all with what you and Skuzzy have pointed out it seems there is another option that might be quicker/easier.

I have access to a mini-tower Lenovo H50-50 90B700EDUS. There are a few options on improving that for AH. I have played AH on it and it will do about 50 frames with every thing on pretty low settings. Seems to be able to hold that in heavy ack.

It's basic spec is: Lenovo proprietary (ugh) mobo, i7-4790 3.6 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Win 10, GeForce GTX 750 Ti with a minimal proprietary 280w power supply.

Now the quick and dirty upgrade here is to add a EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti SC GAMING, 4GB GDDR5. It's a 300w card supposedly but whats 20 watts amongst friends, right? It might not need a bigger PSU AND it is a very small card (1.5 x 5.7 x 4.38 in) which is key here. The Lenovo mobo has the end of the RAM slot sticking down inline with the PCIe 3.0 slot to where the card must be ≤ 6.4" by my measure.

GeForce GTX 1050 Ti SC GAMING shows 5826 at Passmark while the GTX 750 Ti shows 3695. It's cheap to upgrade: ~$140. Would it make a significant difference in game?

The other option is new PSU (750w @ $45), new EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING ($240/ Passmark 8556) and a cheap adapter ($15) for the Lenovo proprietary 14 pin mobo power plug. So $300 total.

Here's the catch: that 1060 board length is spec'd at 1.62 x 6.8 x 4.38 in. I have been assured by <cough> MicroCenter</cough> that this board will fit in the Lenovo H50-50. By my measure it is .4" too long but maybe there's a cut or something that clears the RAM slot. Only way to find out is get one and check it out.

So to sum up.

I'm kinda thinking that upgrading the i7-870 2.93GHz machine is not really cost effective given the CPU and the apparently slow HD.

The quick/dirty $140 Lenovo upgrade might improve it enough to let me really check out AH3, the only risk being the 280w PSU vs the stated need for 300w.

The quick $300 upgrade should run AH3 pretty well? Yes/No? Decent CPU, good GPU, enough RAM from what I have been reading.

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

[Toad]

Aha! Found the Win 7 disk!

Simple reason I did not install 64bit: It is a 32bit Win 7 Pro install disk.

[TequilaChaser]

Aha! Found the Win 7 disk!

Simple reason I did not install 64bit: It is a 32bit Win 7 Pro install disk.

Toad, you can google "jellybean key finder", it's a free program you can download to find your Windows 7 key, unless you already have it since you found your disc

Then you can go to Microsoft Downloads and download Windows 7 SP1 64bit OS.ISO and then burn it to a DVD-R or CD-R ....probably will need to be a DVD-R though


Then install and reuse your key

If you decide to do this, after installing it and loading the MB and device drivers, I recommend you check out Skuzzy's sticked thread of hints & tips in the tech support forum, and uninstall all the Windows updates, Skuzzy has listed..... I would post the link but I'm on my dumbphone...

Hope this helps

TC

[oboe]

Toad, my Windows Experience rating is virtually the same as yours, except my processor and memory are rated 0.1 pt higher each.  My hard drive also scores a 5.9; I think that's probably the nature of a 5400 rpm drive, not sure if the amount of cache affects the rating.  But it really doesn't impact AH significantly, other than start up and load times, I suppose.  Someday I'll upgrade to an SSD.

[TequilaChaser]

A ide Hard Drive that is over 1/2 to 2/3 rds used space will most times give a low reading like that from my experience....doesn't really cause any problems

[TequilaChaser]

A ide Hard Drive that is over 1/2 to 2/3 rds used space will most times give a low reading like that from my experience....doesn't really cause any problems

let me add a little to this, back when  WEI came out and we were using SATA I and SATA II drives, some new IDE Hard Drives would automatically score 5.9 from the start, some would score a little higher..... regardless if it was a 5400 or 7200 rpm drive .....now some WD Raptor 10,000  rpm and Seagate cheetah 15,000 rpm Hard Drives scored pretty high........but that changed somewhat when SATA III came around......

TC

[flyndung]

i don't know if going down to a i5-680 3.6ghz would help speed per core would would be greater but you'd be going from 4/8 to a 2/4. but the fastest i7 1156 only hits 3.06ghz and is to expensive imho to be worth upgrading too.

[Bizman]

The Lenovo sounds like a viable way to improve your FPS in a cost effective way. The rule of thumb I've learned about upgrading critical components is to double the performance, which is close enough between the 750Ti and 1050Ti. If you're going to upgrade the power supply, don't skimp! Get a quality one in order to protect the rest of your system. Some 450-500W is enough for the system you described.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to the hard disk rating. The game doesn't play any faster no matter how fast your HDD is, it all happens in RAM. Faster disks only make the game load faster. Or, before anyone starts ranting about SSD's, a fast hard disk, spinning or solid state, will make everything start faster. But I repeat, the hard disk has nothing to do with frame rates.

For upgrading your current system to 64 bit all you need is the installation key. It usually is on a sticker on the case, but you can also find it using some software like Nirsoft Produkey. Using that key you can download the installation ISO from Microsoft.

[Toad]

Again, thanks to all. I value your input.

Right now, project #1 is to get Win 7/64bit on my computer. Not necessarily to see how it does with AH (although I will do that) but more to correct the original 32bit mistake.

The Microsoft roadblock:. You can't download the ISO from them unless you have a RETAIL key. I have an OEM key on my Win7 case.

With some help I did manage to get the ISO from Microsoft though. Apparently there are ways around the retail key requirement.  So I d/l'd the ISO last night and will burn it to DVD tonight. Then a bit of backing up and a full install. We will see where that takes it.

As for the Lenovo, I played on it as it is last night. The detail sliders were pretty much full left and it didn't drop in reasonably sized furballs over water with a bit of ship ack. I started gradually moving sliders right as I played. Now they are about 1/3 of the way to the right. It still held 60. More experimenting this weekend.

I'm going to keep moving the sliders right until it starts to bog down. After that I'll probably know if I'm going to try the 1050Ti.

As for my original computer, it looks like to really improve it there would need to be a nearly full upgrade. Mobo/CPU/RAM/VidCard. At this point I'm not willing to invest that much $$$ until I see if the game sucks me in like it used to do.

Last night I got a few kills, augured a few times and got shot out of the sky a few times. All in all a decent gaming experience.

Again, I thank all of you for the leadership and guidance!

[save]

With an aftermarket CPU cooler, you can overclock the processor also :

http://techgage.com/article/overclocking_intels_core_i5-750_i7-870/3/