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Weakest link of this system?
My specs -
ATI Radeon 5850
12 Gb (1333 Mhz) ram (DDR3)
AMD Phenom II (Quad-core) 4.1 ghz
750W Power Supply
Asus M4A89TD USB3 Mobo
2 500 GB HD's (7200 RPM)
Which component could I upgrade and get the biggest FPS improvement?
EDIT - Personally, I think its the GFX card, but I am not entirely sure.
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Comments
It depends on the game.
You would probably see a good increase going to a Sandy Bridge Motherboard/CPU but at the same time you will see a good increase from upgrading the GPU..
What kind of PSU is that 750W supply you have? If it is a cheap one then you might want to think about spending some cash on that. A lot of people are ok running cheaper PSU's but they can cause a lot of problems and are rarely efficient or safe not to mention some of them can't even stay in spec at 50% of it's advertised load.
I'd question what you're playing that you need a higher frame rate, as you're going to have to pay a lot to get a meaningful upgrade.
You've mismatched your memory channels, so you could probably improve performance a bit in some cases by pulling some memory out to leave 8 GB and the channels properly matched. That's not going to make a big difference, though.
What power supply do you have? 750 W is not a power supply any more than 1 GB is a video card. Give an exact brand name and model.
The obvious upgrade would be to get an SSD, but that won't often help your frame rates. It will eliminate hitching in a handful of games. But the real point of an SSD is to make everything except frame rates and Internet downloads much faster.
If you want a faster video card, then it's hard to justify anything less than a $550 Radeon HD 7970 that launches January 9, as that would roughly double your graphical performance. Or you could grab a second 5850 to add in CrossFire. They're long-since discontinued, though, so you'd have to find one used.
Sorry, Its a Corsair TX 750W Power supply.
Would making it 16 GB instead of 12 resolve the memory mismatch?
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Yes. If you've got three 4 GB modules, then you can add a fourth. If you've got two 4 GB modules and two 2 GB, then going to 16 GB would mean getting two more 4 GB modules to replace the 2 GB ones.
Mismatching memory channels for most systems isn't a crippling problem, but it does reduce your memory bandwidth for no good reason. If the system memory is used to feed a decent GPU in addition to the CPU, then mismatching memory channels is a much bigger problem, because the GPU needs a lot of memory bandwidth.
The power supply is a bit dated, and not what you'd buy in a brand new computer today, but that's true of a lot of parts in a 1-2 year old system. There's no need to replace it, and it won't meaningfully restrict your upgrades unless you want to do something really wacky.
But again, what do you need higher frame rates for? Unless you're running a very high monitor resolution, there aren't many games that would struggle with that configuration.
You won't be able to get anything more by upgrading. At best you can replace your video card to a higher memory one, but at this point and until they release 64-bit gaming its unnecessary.
The GFX card is what gives you most increase in FPS.
A state of the art Nvidia or ATI card is more or less the only thing that will give you a good increase in FPS.
A SSD would bring down the loading times a lot though, also worth thinking about.
But you have a mid range GFX card to a good computer, you don't need an upgrade right now but it still is the best option if you feel that you have a little too much money lying around or if you can't max out your games.
A 6950 or a 580 GTX is your best choices.: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-gaming-graphics-charts/3DMark11-Gamer,2659.html
Try xfire 5850 you will have a huge improvement if you still can manage to get one.
Overclock the cards to 5870 then its not difficult but good improvement.
Keep in mind your PSU need to be good even better upgrade that as well.
Friend of mine bought one fro 95 euros lol i say a nice cheap upgrade he got huge leap on many benchmarks in xfire.
@Loke666 the 6950 is alot cheaper then 580 maybe bit slower but differents in cost i say buy AMD.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit