FPS Issues

[BananaMann]

Hello, i recently brought the GTX 660. i previously had the GTX 460, I'm sure the 660 is a decent upgrade from the 460 so surely i'd be able to see a big difference in the FPS in my games.


CPU : AMD athlon 651 x4 3ghz quadcore
MOBO - Gigabyte GA-A55M-S2V
RAM - 8 gig ddr3 corsair
GPU - GTX 660 OC (2gb)
OS - WINDOWS 7
PSU - 500W

When nobody is around me I get about 60 fps but when im in a raid I get 20.

Tried updating the gpu, creating a new admin account and also looking in the bios incase of any bottleneck.


Could someone please help, Thanks

 

[Solarstarshines]

Plain and simple your Athlon is the Bottle Neck upgrade to a BE 965 it will improve big time

 

[Contrabardus]

The PSU is a bit small for a 660 even not overclocked. At full load a 660 will use about 240w, an OCed 660 could be pushing 300w. The Atheon 651 is a 100w CPU, leaving only about 100w for the rest of your system and running the PSU at near to full capacity pretty much all the time. When your system is trying to run a heavy load [like running newer more graphically intensive games] it's probably exceeding that. That's not good and will eventually burn out your PSU. Even if you choose to do nothing else, you need to upgrade your PSU.

I recommend upgrading to a 700w PSU for a 660 gpu and a quad core CPU system. You could go higher for future proofing, but you need at least that much for what you've got.

Also, upgrading to a Phenom II [BE 965] is not an option without a new Mobo. The Altheon uses an FM1 slot and the Phenom II is an AM3 chip. He can't put a better CPU on his Mobo and would need to upgrade both to use a better CPU. The Altheon OP is currently using is about as good as you're going to get in an FM1 CPU. Not to mention a Phenom II uses about 125w, so he'd need to upgrade the PSU, Mobo, and get the new chip in order to do any better as far as his CPU go.

That said, yeah, that's probably your bottleneck, unfortunately it's not so easy as simply buying a new CPU and slapping it in there.

 

[BananaMann]

AMD , A8 3850 Fm1 Apu
2.9ghz

This is fine to upgrade to yeah? Much better than the one currently

 

[BananaMann]

Ok and if I wanted to upgrade my mobo and cpu for £200 to perform well with my 660 on big games, what am I looking at?

 

[Contrabardus]

You really do need to factor in a new PSU as well, upgrading your CPU and Mobo won't do you any good if the PSU can't handle the load. You'll just fry your current PSU and possibly damage the parts and brick your computer.

Sorry, but there's no cheap way to solve your problem. A 660 is made to work with modern AM3 GPUs, anything that will fit into an Fm1 slot is going to bottleneck. It might improve performance a little to upgrade to another FM1 chip, but you'll still not be able to get the most out of your GPU.

The good news is that you could split the cost by upgrading the PSU and then upgrading the CPU and Mobo together. Well, you could buy them separately, but the CPU and Mobo have to be installed together because your FM1 won't work in an AM3 slot. FM1 chips are actually APUs, which is a CPU with an integrated GPU. It's not very good for games at all and any FM1 CPU will bottleneck a nice card like a 660.

Honestly, you're probably looking at around a 350 ballpark figure for all three parts, if you go the absolute cheapest, bare bones, but adequate route. You don't need to drop the cash all at once and can buy them one at a time over a period of time. 100 for the mobo, 100 for the PSU, and 150 for the CPU. Parts tend to cost more in the UK so I'm giving a slightly higher estimate here.

You might be able to pull it off on a little over 200 UK if you're careful and shop for good deals. Just make sure the specs match up to what you want and make sure there's enough USB ports to and other connections to suit your needs. You should be fine with 4-6 USB 2.0 ports for a bare bones gaming rig, most any other port you might need is pretty much standard on any Mobo.

Stick with AMD if you're on a budget like that, Intel is nice, but it's also more expensive. AMD will do the job just fine and won't hurt your wallet as much. You want an AM3 Mobo with at least 1 PCIe x16 slot. Unless you also want to buy more RAM you need to also make sure the Mobo is compatible with your current RAM frequency, 2400(OC)/1866/1600/1333/1066 is what current board supports all of these so I couldn't say what you have.

Edit: You should also remember that RAM is cheap, so it may actually be slightly cheaper to get a less expensive Mobo that isn't compatible with your RAM but has all the other features you need and just buy new RAM to go with it.