Graphics card and Processor suggestions.

Hey everyone ^_^ another one of these threads, I am looking to replace two main components in my computer at this point, I got really bothered with the fact I can't run Far Cry 3 on optimal settings which is far fetched but I am a stickler when it comes to these kinds of things. I am looking for the suggestions of the community at this point on which graphics card and processor I can get the best bang for my buck and the best performance with.

Currently I have the Radeon HD Sapphire 6950 I paid roughly 300 bucks for it at a pawn shop brand new about 6-8 months ago, and the second thing is the processor which is an i5-2500 which I paid roughly the same as the graphics card and then the price dropped right after I bought it.

As well additionally I would like to replace my mouse and keyboard for something else I have had my mouse for about 6 years its a razer death adder and the mouse is wearing. Suggestions for that as well would be fantastic thank you very much and have a Happy New Year :]

Well im no gfx expert so im not even going to go there but as your only talking cpu and not mobo then i take it your sticking with the LGA1155 (?P5Q Pro) socket so depending whether your board supports 22nm gen 3 ivy chips or not will be a factor and then your price limited to what you want to get but IMO thats not a bad processor and cant see it limiting you in games but if you are going to change it then its how much you want to spend and if you want to step up to i7

My budget is open to suggestions, my motherboard has been changed recently so I don't have the most up to date on my spec sheet at the moment I have a Asus P8H77-V now.

Just had a look at your mobo specs, which look good by the way, and it says it does support ivybridge chips but if not already done it will definately need a bios update to run one (think you will need 0701 min maybe later), so if you do change your chip make sure you update bios before removing your old chip as the new one wont work a few of us have been caught with that scenario lately, another bonus if you do upgrade to ivy chip your mobo will run PCI 3.0 so consider that when looking at new GPUs

Thanks for the heads up, I certainly will take that into consideration when looking for a graphics card. Although I do agree I have run into the problem more or once where I had to completely reinstall my operating system .

Before you go spending money, maybe have a look through this thread,

Far Cry 3 - Graphical Tweaks & Problem Solving - Guru3D.com Forums

and see if there is anything that helps. Don't have the game but from what I can see, it tends to be a bit of an unoptimized mess (typical of most console ports).

Can you tell us exactly which Sapphire 6950 you have? There are a few different models.

kbrady1979 said:

Can you tell us exactly which Sapphire 6950 you have? There are a few different models.

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SAPPHIRE HD 6950 2GB GDDR5 Dirt3 Edition

That is the graphics card I currently own.

I don't see why you cannot run it with what you currently have. Maybe go to the link that Stormy gave you and see if there is an issue there. I know for a fact that your CPU is fine, and I'm willing to bet your video card is more than fine........sounds like there is either a driver issue or the game is buggy. I would look into that before shelling out for new parts.

kbrady1979 said:

I don't see why you cannot run it with what you currently have. Maybe go to the link that Stormy gave you and see if there is an issue there. I know for a fact that your CPU is fine, and I'm willing to bet your video card is more than fine........sounds like there is either a driver issue or the game is buggy. I would look into that before shelling out for new parts.

Click to expand...

I can run Far Cry 3 no problem what I am bothered with is the fact on system requirements lab it is telling me my two components are not optimal to play the game, I know it sounds stupid but I guess at the least upgrading my CPU would put me at ease.

point is, your current processor is around on par with the best gaming processor around (i5 3570k), and if overclocked it can even be better than it (the 2500k is a very good overclocker, but you seem to have the non-k version).

Anyway I think the main gripe about your stuff is the board. If I'm not mistaken its H77 chipset does not allow you to overclock the CPU. Yes even the non-k can be overclocked to decent levels if the board has some features.
Boards with z77 chipset usually have a feature called "multicore enhancemnt" or "no-k oc" or whatever, that allows you to run all the cores of the processor at its Turbo Boost clock, which is 3.7 Ghz for the 2500. Then again in z77 (and z68 I think) boards you can raise the Turbo Boost max clock by around 4 bins, up to a total clock of 4Ghz or so.
Check your BIOS options anyway.

If you want to upgrade, take a 3570k, and possibly a mobo with chipset z77. Nothing stops you from buying stuff in socket 2011, but atm it's more or less the same.

While it's new and whatnot, PCIe 3.0 is kind of unnecessary for the hardware you can find around atm. I've seen benchmarks of modern cards on 8x and 16x PCIe 3.0 and on 16x PCIe 2.0 and they show little if any difference (PCIe 3.0 is double the bandwith of the 2.0 so a 8x 3.0 slot is equivalent to a 16x 2.0 slot. For one-year old stuff and modern mid-end, the performance hit is still unnoticeable when on a 8x PCIe 2.0 slot.

Btw, who bleep cares of what system requirements lab thinks? If it runs at max it runs at max, there is no way around that.