Pc upgrade...
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No. A powerpack is a type of battery used for powering devices such as cameras and games controllers, a Powersupply is an AC to DC converter used to supply the correct voltages to a PC's components.Jack and Calumon said:
They are NOT the same thing, please dont make stuff up on the spot.
It would be so much easier if you just said "I'm willing to spend $xx dollars on a graphics card.gameo53 said:
I'm not. Everyone around my area calls them Power Packs. Perhaps it is a local misconception, like how Thomas Crapper never actually invented the toilet, and was just a plumber.flaming_squirrel said:
Calumon: We're being honest here.
Well even 2 years later you'd be hard pressed to beat the "bang per buck" of good old ATI Radeon 4870 or 4890.gameo53 said:
GTX 260 is good if you go for the highest clocked/spec'd version.
EDIT: on second thoughts, considering the specs you currently have I suggest you do NOT upgrade unless you are happy to sell and/or trade components as it really isn't worth while
I mean Quad-core, 4GB
The only place you are slightly short is GPU, that is all you'd really need to upgrade and then it depends:
-what games you want to play at what quality... and
-how much you are willing to spend:
Around $100:
N/A
all would be a step down or equal performance with your current ATI-4770
Around $150-$200:
Something like ATI 4890, 4870, 5770 or GTX 260 will all give moderate improvements over your 4770, it may just make the difference between OK and playable frame-rates, most are also quite reasonably priced as well.
Around $200-$350
ATI 5850 ($280) & GTX 470.
Now these are pretty serious cards and prices not to squabble at, the GTX470 is a good new offer though I have personal experience with the GTX-280 (earlier version of GTX-285) and it plays every modern game perfectly smoothly, though Crysis only managed 30-40fps on very-high (at 1280x1024 resolution) and with GTX 285 you can expect smooooooth 60fps for virtually everything bar bugs in the code.
$400+
This is getting ridiculous, the GTX 480, GTX 295, ATI 5870, 5970 and so on, a lot of these are dual cards. Personally, I think they are over the top, too expensive for the performance they give and overall give the whole concept of building and upgrading your PC and PC gamign as a whole a bad reputation as a spuriously expensive pursuit.
Only for those who REALLY want to push to the absolute limits, these cards alone can cost as much as an ENTIRE gaming PC. Ask yourself if that last 10fps is REALLY worth that much?
Bottome line: you shouldn't be spending this much withotu a GORGEOUSLY huge monitor to justify it.
The GTX260's no longer in production unfortunately, you'd be doing well to buy one for a reasonable amount now.Treblaine said:
You can also buy a 5830 for only £10 more then the price of a 260, and whilst it's a gimped version of a 5850 it's still a good card with the benefits of Dx11 and improved efficiency.
Edit: Actually there are still a fair few floating about, which is surprising as they've not made them for a while. Still not really worth it now though.
To be honest, I don't know why he's upgrading, it seems too soon. 4770 has another year's life in it at least considering how well it handles the latest releases at his stated screen resolution.flaming_squirrel said:
Hmm actually, hold on a minute:
Could you find out if your Motherboard supports a Pair of 4770's in Crossfire Mode?gameo53 said:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-4770-crossfire,2288-13.html
because that article details how well a pair of 4770's work in Crossfire, a 2nd 4770 is only $100 or so. Sure, the article's over a year old but it shows CF-4770 keeping up with the GTX-280 which is in the same ball-park as ATI's new Radeon 5850.
Yeah there's not that much point tbh, you'd be able to wack the AA right up and have a very solid constant FPS but unless it's dipping too much then meh.Treblaine said:
I very much doubt it's got crossfire, cant find actual mobo info but looking at the specs of PC's with it in it's not intended as a gamer platform.
For simultaneous gaming and FRAPS recording, the CPU is going to be the biggest hurdle. If your motherboard BIOS isn't locked down, overclocking is an inexpensive way to improve performance. The Q6600 in your system is an especially good overclocker. 3 gHz+ is a very reasonable expectation; a lot of folks have pushed theirs close to 4.
Just make sure to get a decent cooler to help dissipate the additional heat. this one [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103064] is solid and frequently goes on sale for $20 shipped.
Aside from that, you could look into a video card upgrade, but the 4770 should really be fine for MW2 at 1680x1050.
Just make sure to get a decent cooler to help dissipate the additional heat. this one [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103064] is solid and frequently goes on sale for $20 shipped.
Aside from that, you could look into a video card upgrade, but the 4770 should really be fine for MW2 at 1680x1050.
If you want to FRAPS with decent FPS its CPU and RAM that matter the most. The graphics are already being processed at decent rate and its mostly the use of memory that clogs recording software.
Then again i suppose that you would need to change motherboard to use 8GB+ RAM, i don't know much about Dell's hardware since it not really popular here.
Eventually you could go for a high memory GPU, which could put some ease on the software as well.
I have similar configuration to your, just with more RAM and motherboard that supports it, i needed it for work on high-resolution images/renders.
Then again i suppose that you would need to change motherboard to use 8GB+ RAM, i don't know much about Dell's hardware since it not really popular here.
Eventually you could go for a high memory GPU, which could put some ease on the software as well.
I have similar configuration to your, just with more RAM and motherboard that supports it, i needed it for work on high-resolution images/renders.
Depends. Your PSU will probably be okay for a bit, but in the near future that will most defininately not be the case. Already the Radeon 5000 series needs a decent PSU. It's even worse for nVidia based cards.gameo53 said:
I think your RAM isn't running at its proper speed, unless you didn't post the correct number. 400mhz RAM is usually DDR1. You have DDR2 which should give you 600-800.
If I'm not mistaken, the actual encoding process of Fraps uses the CPU more than the GPU (which would allow for widespread utility). Even under ideal circumstances however, where the sofware uses the GPU for encoding when available, you'll find with your current model of video card you'd be out of luck. Most of the available video memory (if not all) and most (if not all) of the GPU's power will be dedicated to running MW2 at the settings described. In order for encoding to "work" in this case you need a few things. First, you need a memory buffer sufficient to hold at least a single frame (and likely several frames at once). Once all post processing is done, at the very worst, this amounts to the resolution multiplied by the color depth (at my current settings, that works out to ~ 55 megs per frame). Then, you need the actual processing power required to do the encoding process (converting still images into video, applying the audio track, compressing the result) which more or less amounts to GOBS of simple number crunching. Finally, you must stream the result to the hard drive.
You therefore have three potential bottlenecks: the hard drive, the video card, and the CPU itself. If your GPU has insufficient power for the task, the processing and buffer job is relegated to the CPU and RAM (and that's without actually knowing precisely what parts of the machine Fraps leverages). If either of those are insufficient, you are going to have to start losing frames somehwere. The Hard Drive bottleneck is a bit trickier to describe. Since the resultant video has to go somewhere after it leaves the register, the probable first stop is the system memory. Given just how quickly high quality Fraps consumes storage space, you'll obviously want to stream it to a larger storage device. If the hard drive cannot write as quickly as the data is being produced, your "finished" buffer will start to fill the system memory. Once system memory is full and your hard drive is maxed out, swaps to and from memory will be tricky at best, resulting again in lost frames somewhere.
Some people have asserted that the problem may lie in lesser areas like memory clock speeds and whatnot, but this is almost certainly not the case. The average system's true bottleneck does not lie in the rate at which memory can be read or written, or on the speed of memory operations on the register (the memory on the CPU itself - any operations actually take place here and thus it is actually silly fast and incredibly tiny) but on the bus itself (that is, the path between devices the data must take). That said, it is possible that you would see an improvement with faster more efficient memory, but it would be the very last thing I'd examine.
It is actually easy enough to determine at a glance if the probelm is system memory or CPU. Simply run perfmon (or a fancier equivalent), select the appropiate things to moniter, fire up the game and do a quick fraps capture. The results will show you quickly enough if the problem lies in the most likely areas. There are programs that will also track the performance of the GPU but their name escapes me at the moment. I am currently unaware of a pure software solution to monitering register, bus and memory performance at a granular level as any option I've encoutnered relied on (rather expensive) hardware in conjunction with software.
Also, it is worth noting to those who suggested SLI (or crossfire) as an option: This may actually harm performance. The reason is simple enough - if the FRAPS process relies on the CPU itself, the use of dual video cards will reduce the available power. On most (by which, I've never seen a motherboard that did otherwise) systems, the CPU is actually used to play traffic cop for the cards. When SLI was first released for example, only the most taxing games available at the time actually saw an improvement in framerate (Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Far Cry) because the bottleneck in other games was not video performance when using a top tier video card but rather CPU performance.
You therefore have three potential bottlenecks: the hard drive, the video card, and the CPU itself. If your GPU has insufficient power for the task, the processing and buffer job is relegated to the CPU and RAM (and that's without actually knowing precisely what parts of the machine Fraps leverages). If either of those are insufficient, you are going to have to start losing frames somehwere. The Hard Drive bottleneck is a bit trickier to describe. Since the resultant video has to go somewhere after it leaves the register, the probable first stop is the system memory. Given just how quickly high quality Fraps consumes storage space, you'll obviously want to stream it to a larger storage device. If the hard drive cannot write as quickly as the data is being produced, your "finished" buffer will start to fill the system memory. Once system memory is full and your hard drive is maxed out, swaps to and from memory will be tricky at best, resulting again in lost frames somewhere.
Some people have asserted that the problem may lie in lesser areas like memory clock speeds and whatnot, but this is almost certainly not the case. The average system's true bottleneck does not lie in the rate at which memory can be read or written, or on the speed of memory operations on the register (the memory on the CPU itself - any operations actually take place here and thus it is actually silly fast and incredibly tiny) but on the bus itself (that is, the path between devices the data must take). That said, it is possible that you would see an improvement with faster more efficient memory, but it would be the very last thing I'd examine.
It is actually easy enough to determine at a glance if the probelm is system memory or CPU. Simply run perfmon (or a fancier equivalent), select the appropiate things to moniter, fire up the game and do a quick fraps capture. The results will show you quickly enough if the problem lies in the most likely areas. There are programs that will also track the performance of the GPU but their name escapes me at the moment. I am currently unaware of a pure software solution to monitering register, bus and memory performance at a granular level as any option I've encoutnered relied on (rather expensive) hardware in conjunction with software.
Also, it is worth noting to those who suggested SLI (or crossfire) as an option: This may actually harm performance. The reason is simple enough - if the FRAPS process relies on the CPU itself, the use of dual video cards will reduce the available power. On most (by which, I've never seen a motherboard that did otherwise) systems, the CPU is actually used to play traffic cop for the cards. When SLI was first released for example, only the most taxing games available at the time actually saw an improvement in framerate (Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Far Cry) because the bottleneck in other games was not video performance when using a top tier video card but rather CPU performance.