Maximum PC

Hello all - was wondering if you wouldn't mind providing me with some insight. I am looking to upgrade my current build to be able to play some of the newer games out there (SWTOR, BF3, etc.) on a 24" monitor (running 1920x1080) at the moment. I thought my current build would be able to handle these games at around low settings, but it seems my processor is too dated to keep up.

There is a small caveat to this build that I will throw in - I have roughly $500 in BBY gift cards, so a good portion of what I would like to do for upgrades will have to come from BBY.com - so I will likely pay a little over what I would like, but the gift cards were free from work and I'd like to put them to use!

Current build:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz
Mobo: Intel DG33TL
Memory: 4GB PC6400 Corsair XMS2 @ 800MHz
GPU: GeForce GTX 560 (1024MB DDR5) - recently purchased off Newegg ($180 + $30 for warranty), having some second thoughts around if this will be powerful enough
Power Supply: Corsair GS600
OS: Win 7 Pro (32 bit) - I have access to Win 7 Pro 64Bit that I will be using for this new build
HDD's: I have a 1TB drive that currently houses Windows, and a few others that I use for backups

Upgrades I'd like to make:
New CPU, Mobo, Memory, and possibly GPU (if Newegg lets me return)

Found on BBY.com
Intel® - Core™ i5-2500K Quad-Core 3.3GHz Processor ($224.99)
Intel® - Core™ i7-2600K Quad-Core 3.4GHz Processor ($319.99)
Bundles
i5-2500K/ASUS Deluxe ATX Mobo (P8P67DEL) and Corsair Vengeance 8GB (not sure on speed) - $529.99

i5-2500k/ASUS Deluxe Mobo (P8P67DEL) - $429.99

i7-2600K/ASUS Deluxe ATX Mobo (P8P67DEL) - $529.99

i7-2600K/ASUS Deluxe ATX Mobo (P8P67DEL) /8GB Memory - $649.99

Not sure if it makes the most sense to do a bundle or not as I do not know a whole lot about the Mobo/Memory that they are pushing. I also realize that these prices are inflated because it's BBY but due to the gift cards I'd like to get as much off of their site as I can up until the $550 limit, then the rest I will do on Newegg/etc....

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'd probably go with the first bundle, and keep the graphics card.
SWTOR should run on your current build.


You meet all of these.

As for BF3,


You should be able to play both on Medium quality or better.

^don't listen to him, he's new, doesn't play modern games and doesn't know jack. I'm cool because I do know jack, he's pretty swell... until he lost his arm in the war. Now he's one arm creepy jack who scares kids at local parks with the "pull my arm" jokes... He uses blood die packs for special effects... Its kinda cool if it wasn't so damn sad... Still I laugh my ass off.


Anyhow, you have a decent video card, but as you know, its not paired with a modern cpu to take full advantage of it. Your cpu is holding your GPU back a lot by as much as 50%. When I jumped from my e8400 to an i7, my 5870 gained 120% in frames just from the faster cpu and memory in modern games like BC2 at the time. Your GTX 560 should have be able to play most games at medium/high at 1080p with AA pre and post off.

However you can bring new life to your cpu by overclocking the crap out of it and bring that power up to par with current low end modern cpu's, without much money. At stock, you should be getting around 25 GFlops, an stock i3 dual core nets around 32-35 GFlops. Adding a cheap Cooler Master 212+ cpu cooler should net you around 3Ghz or possibly 3.2, depending on a few other factors and settings. Although, you are running an Intel DG and if my memory serves me right, that doesn't allow overclock... nevermind...

Ok, start from scratch.

Mobo: Asus P8Z68-V LE $140
CPU: i5 2500k quad core $224.99
RAM: Kingston HyperX 8gb (2x4) DDR3 1600 cas9 1.65v $46.74

Total: $411.73

With a few bucks left, you can throw in a Cooler Master 212+ cpu cooler for $30 for a little overclocking headroom and spend the rest on games...

Of course I don't know Jack, cause I'm on the other side of the continent.

This looks good, but I still don't know why you can't get it to run SWTOR or BF3

I use a CM Hyper 212+. It works well. I have my cheapo P4 overclocked from 3 GHz to 3.5GHz.

because the CPU and ram is his bottle neck. Not his GPU.

He has a q6600. The requirements specify at least a dual core at 2.4GHz. He exceeds that. He also exceeds the RAM reqs by 2GB on SWTOR and meets them for BF3. You are correct in that they are the bottleneck, but they shouldn't be preventing him from playing them.

... dude... don't go by min requirements... I'm telling you what is happening. You don't even play games, stop trying to give false advise.

The q6600 just doesn't have enough processing power and the ddr2 bandwidth is half that of ddr3 1600. Its a 6 year old processor at this point.

Last thing I'm gonna say before I go away: I play Portal 2 below the minimum requirements on the processor (single core 3.5GHz P4), my RAM is DDR, and my graphics card is a 10$ 520.

...Dude... Portal runs on the source engine that was made for half-life 2 back in 2004... Anything since then will play portal 2 just fine... And besides, the source engine is an extremely scalable game engine and designed to work on a multitude of systems.

It's hard to compare a game engine that has been refined for the last 8 years that has been designed to work on every system imagined while more modern games try to take advantage of the latest and greatest API's. You can even play portal 2/tf2 on an Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics with no issues.

but... below system requirements...

Please stop trying to give bad advice and false information.

Thank you both for the input. I have been able to play the games at times, but a majority of the time my PC just isn't able to handle it, and it seems as if the CPU might be the issue. When I look at my resources when opening games and playing them, I hover in the 90-100% range which seems to be the bottleneck.

Thanks for the advice, and I will take a look at the links you provided.