Upgrading for TKoH... CPU or GPU?

[karstux 10]

I have a fairly old gaming computer which played ARMAII okay-ish, and I want to upgrade a bit for TKOH. I have a fairly limited budget to do so, so I need to decide on a component... GPU or CPU.

My rig is currently built like this:

• Core2Duo E6600
  
• GeForce 260 GTS
  
• 8 GB RAM
  
• 128GB SSD
  

RAM and HD are big and fast enough, I just wonder if for the ARMA engine I'm currently more CPU- or GPU-limited. If GPU-limited, should I go for AMD (Radeon 6850?) or nVidia (GeForce 550 Ti?), and if CPU-limited, should I choose parallelism (Core2Quad Q8400 @2.6 GHz) or clock speed (Core2Duo E8400 @3GHz, more cache)?

I'd appreciate some opinions! :-)

[kotov12345 10]

graphic card upgrade will give you more fps.What kind of mobo you have ?

what screen resolution you use ?

[b101_uk 10]

Myself I have always preferred the GPU being the bottleneck as that leaves spear CPU cycles for other things.

So I would suggest the fastest quad core that is compatible with your motherboard and within budget.

However you should really fire up task manager and leave it to run in the background while you play some games to see how your CPU is being used (graph), i.e. if it’s at or near maxed out all the time then you would probably be better off with a new CPU, if on the other hand if each core is well beneath maximum use then look at the graphics card usage with e.g. MSI afterburner to see if that is working at 100% most of the time.

Once you have observed how your CPU vs. GPU are being utilised across a few games it will give you an idea where any deficiency or gain will be, hopefully either the GPU or CPU will show its self as being maxed out most of the time which will make the decision easer BUT by the same token if the GPU & CPU are well matched they could be evenly maxed out all the time it will make the decision harder.

As for the 550ti it I hear murmurings that it may be one to avoid even over the likes of the prior series like the 460 and above so you may want to look into the relevant merits/comparisons in reviews on tech based websites like tomshardware, guru3d etc inc their forums.

[PuFu 4591]

Changing your CPU to a new one worth spending money one means changing the MainBoard and Ram as well (i really doubt your MB for e6600 supports DDR3).

My opinion is that your first priority is the CPU, not the GPU. That said, if you are on budget, AMD is the way to go. Otherwise, the best bang for the buck are still the new i5s. But that would cost you quite a bit

[karstux 10]

@b101_uk:

Benchmarking current performance is a good idea! Do you think that performance under ArmAII is a good indicator for TKOH?

@PuFu

Well, the mainboard supports the latest Core2 CPUs, which aren't too pricey (100-150 EUR will buy a E8500 or Q8400) and would give a decent (single-thread) performance boost over the E6600 at stock clock speeds, and in case of the quadcore even more cores, if the game can make use of them.

However I googled a bit and found that the E6600 is apparently a good candidate for overclocking... I have a good heatsink attached, maybe I'll try how much speed I can get out of what I have.

[PuFu 4591]

@b101_uk:

Benchmarking current performance is a good idea! Do you think that performance under ArmAII is a good indicator for TKOH?

It should be yes, since the engine is just a mildly updated one.

There will be less AI per mission i suppose than in A2, so a clean editor dick-about as benchmark would be a good place to start.

@PuFu

Well, the mainboard supports the latest Core2 CPUs, which aren't too pricey (100-150 EUR will buy a E8500 or Q8400) and would give a decent (single-thread) performance boost over the E6600 at stock clock speeds, and in case of the quadcore even more cores, if the game can make use of them.

100-150EUs for a dual core, old generation is ANYTHING but a good deal for me.

However I googled a bit and found that the E6600 is apparently a good candidate for overclocking... I have a good heatsink attached, maybe I'll try how much speed I can get out of what I have.

I used to have a e6600 as well till the MB burned down and i had my second rig updated...It can push towards 3Ghz if you run on a proper aftermarket fan and have a decent MB.

Edited September 17, 2011 by PuFu

[Nicholas 5]

I highly recommend a new CPU. In most cases the CPU bottle-necks the GPU, and I believe that is the case here.

[karstux 10]

100-150EUs for a dual core, old generation is ANYTHING but a good deal for me.

As 'luck' would have it, my mainboard died last night in a BIOS update failure. So I guess I'm in for a more extensive upgrade than I originally thought! :) After researching prices for the new Sandy Bridge CPUs, I've come to see you're right... a socket 775 CPU would have been a bad investment. A Core i3 2100, a decent new mainboard and 8 GB of DDR3 aren't as expensive as I thought, either.

[b101_uk 10]

As 'luck' would have it, my mainboard died last night in a BIOS update failure.

After flashing the bios did you remove/short a jumper which effectively clears the currant (old) BIOS setting from the CMOS allowing the new bios setting to be used, which in the case of a major bios revision is needed as the old setting may not be in the same place as new settings as things get added, so cause a failure/conflict when the new bios reads the old bios settings in the CMOS.

Sometime you can add command line switches to the flashing utility which can do the above as a “soft reset†but sometimes you need to do a “hard reset†by removing/shorting the jumper (or the battery) for 30 to 60sec to clear the CMOS properly.

Granted you probably know and applied the above anyway and read the handbook, but in case you didn’t it may be worth a look to see if the CMOS is/was cleard after the bios flash. ;)

Edited September 18, 2011 by b101_uk

[karstux 10]

Yes, my mainboard (ASUS Commando) even has a 'CMOS reset' button which supposedly should restore factory settings - doesn't work. There's also another failsafe mechanism which should restore a corrupt BIOS from a ROM image on a USB key - doesn't seem to trigger. I'm not even getting a display signal from this MoBo anymore...

My error was using the Windows-based BIOS flash utility. It failed on the first attempt, then crashed when trying to open it. After that, the system didn't boot anymore. From now on - only DOS flashing tools!

[jumpinghubert 48]

I highly recommend a new CPU. In most cases the CPU bottle-necks the GPU, and I believe that is the case here.

true. My Q6600 @3,8GHZ (similar to a Q9550) idles my GTX570 @50% in most situations.