Computer help on specs! Please.

[King_Turk]

i Have a Windows home perm 7
intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @2.13GHz 2133Mhz 2logical processors
Ram 3.50
ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 series
resolution 1280 x 1024x 60 hertz
Adapter ram 512 MB
Download speed 20mps

Is my computer that bad to run games?
I want to play games such as World Of Tanks and World Of WarPlanes and Planet Side 2 or even BorderLands 2 but my FPS hangs around 5 on all these games... I'm running razor game booster and all it really does is gives me a extra 2 or maybe 3 FPS.. I have all my game settings on low as it can get but then it just screws me over more because i can't see anything!
Should i just give up playing on this computer or just give up totally on anything with this computer? Im no comp wiz but all the signs say it sucks.

Posted this on Help and Tips Sorry for the double post!

[Rove]

Hey man, what you really need is a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit, AKA Graphics or video card) upgrade, that is the ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 that you could switch out to get the cheapest and easiest performance boost.

I'd think there are some games that you should be able to play with it, but it is very slow relative to a current high-end PC graphics card. Your current ATI Radeon HD 4350 or 4550 graphics card runs at 96 GFLOPS and the current best by ATI (which has now been rebranded as "AMD" after becoming the same company) is the AMD Radeon HD 7990 which does 8200 GFLOPS. That means the best card they make is about 85 times faster than your current card.

For what it's worth there are lots of nice 3D games that you should be able to play on that card, but most newer games may choose not to support it even if they potentially could.

I think that it might be time that you upgrade that graphics card and lucky for you it is really easy and you do not have to replace any other parts except maybe the Power Supply.


I recommend that you get a graphics card at minimum as good as the one that will be coming with the upcoming Playstation 4 console, or better. You may want to build a entirely new computer eventually but start with the graphics card and get one that you could also use with a new system if you ever upgrade the rest of it.

Personally I would recommend the AMD Radeon HD 7790 overclock 1075 Mhz which has 1.92 TFLOPS (1 TFLOPS=1000 GFLOPS, so 1.92TFLOPS=1920 GFLOPS) of processing power versus the Playstation 4's graphics card which will have 1.84 TFLOPS of processing power. This is about 20 times as good as your current card in terms of speed and also has 2 times the built on RAM. You can also share RAM from your system with it which kind of makes the GFLOPS or TFLOPS speed more important than RAM amount.

Either one of these two is $120 after rebate and there is 3 free games:

PowerColor TurboDuo AX7790 1GBD5-TDH/OC Radeon HD 7790 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support Video Card
Free Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Bioshock & Tomb raider, limited offer
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131491

SAPPHIRE 100356OCL Radeon HD 7790 OC 1GB DDR5 PCI-Express Video Card
Free Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Bioshock & Tomb raider, limited offer
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202029

You may require a new power supply to run these cards, they have 85w TDP (thus use no more than 85 watts I assume) and are the most power efficient cards available on the market in terms of performance per watt. I am able to run one of these cards (by ASUS, also a 1075Mhz overclock edition with 2 fans) at 1200mhz and -20% maximum power, so no more than 70 watts.

This card is also good enough to use in a brand new system, which you probably will eventually have to build. All your other parts are getting old. Tthe nice new GPU should get you gaming and being able to play at least at low settings. The rest of your system might however slow it down and cause "bottlenecks" that will not use your new GPU to the full potential.

You can build a good system including this graphics card for $530~ and if you ask me to I will link you to a post with the build in it.

I'm unsure of your budget. If you are looking to spend the minimum possible for now then just get the graphics card because in comparison your current card is horrible and only 1/20th of the performance of the HD 7790 and your current card is "bottlenecking" your other system components like CPU and RAM.

The gaming cards from the ATI HD 4000 series could do as much as 1360 GLFOPS or 1.36 TFLOPS on a single GPU and they also made some dual GPU cards that had 2 graphics cards in one and could do up to 2400 GFLOPS or 2.4 TFLOPS. So the card I'm recommending is a little better than a real gaming card from your generation, something your current card is not. Take a look at this chart for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Radeon_R700_.28HD_4xxx.29_Series

As you can see the graphics card's processing power is measured in GFLOPS on this chart and your card is the very lowest.

One day you will probably need to replace the rest of your system if you want to play the very latest games. All your other parts are probably worse than a Playstation 4 or Xbox One, they are said to be coming sometime next year or near the end of this one. and specifications have already been released. You can see on the (Sony) Playstation website what they are. It will be using a 8 core AMD CPU and 8 GB of special high speed GDDR5 RAM.

If you still aren't sold on the HD 7790 then the other options that meet or beat PS4 specs are the AMD Radeon HD 7850 or better AMD card or the Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 or better Nvidia card.

[King_Turk]

Well, thank you very much for a generous answer :) I'll look into what i can get, just don't have the good kind of money to spend on Graphics cards. I'll most likely just end up buying a new PC all together, something along the line of 400/500 $ if and if they would run games ....

[Rove]

Here for $530~
http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/11/828939978469612542/
If you buy or like it please comment on the post.

You can also build something with a AMD A10-5800K APU for less, simply remove the HD 7790 GPU from the above build and swap the CPU for a AMD A10-5800K APU because it has a built in graphics card right on the CPU.

Alternately there is this kit on Tiger Direct:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7907025&CatId=7747

I think this one has everything you need except a copy of Windows to get up and gaming, beware that not all "barebones" kits are as complete as this one. It also comes with a free game, Sim City. You can upgrade it later with a discrete graphics card to increase performance.

Lastly: http://pcpartpicker.com/ is a great way to build your own computer.

In the meantime may I suggest that you just look at the system requirements of the games and try and find some that you can play?

Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War 2: Retribution might play on your machine. Dawn of War : Soulstorm certainly should. Wait for a 75% sale to buy either one, it should come this summer sale.

You can play Age of Empires 2 HD for sure.

If you want a free game I guess you could play Team Fortress 2 because you meet the requirements. Personally I don't like free games unless they are charitably free (like Alien Swarm or many open source Linux games or BZFlag) and not free with Item or Boost stores but many people do enjoy Team Fortress 2 besides me.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is also a really really great game if you like singleplayer fantasy RPG games and it should run on your computer with no problems.

[Rove]

If you buy a prebuilt PC for $400-500 the odds are that it will NOT "run games". On that sort of budget you really do need to build your own.

[banzaigtv]

A PC with an AMD A10-5800k running onboard graphics will be significantly better than your current system. Otherwise, you can get an Intel Core i3 and a GTX 650 for less than $800 and still have much better performance.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/192BX

[King_Turk]

Thanks again guys :) was helpfull like i stated above this computer is coming to be 7 years old, everything in this box is outdated. I had one of my mates come over and check it some time ago and he said putting a new graphics card in here could just compltly kill the comp so i'd rather not screw with it anymore and just build a PC or buy one
thanks for the help and have a goood day/night