PC configuration,can someone do me a favor :)?

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PC configuration,can someone do me a favor :)?

Hello,I'm thinking of upgrading my PC(I'm super bad with building PCs) just so I could have an amazing TW2 experience replaying it on my new 1920x1080 monitor,so I want to upgrade a PC just for that,and maybe a little better for TW3,but I'll probaby upgrade it even more 'till then.I do not want to upgrade all of my parts,because I have a limited budget,I think GPU is the most important.

I'm thinking of buying a new GPU,so I would like to know which one is great for running TW2 on high graphics,high FPS,but not something too amazing that would run BF3 on Ultra.Or maybe I need a new CPU,or GPU is more important?My RAM(4 GB) and Motherboard(DDR2) are kind of bad too,but RAM and Motherboard aren't important,right?

My current PC specs are:
GPU:GTX 550 Ti
CPU:AMD Athlon(tm)II x4 640
Resolution:1920x1080
System:Windows 7
EDITED:
RAM:4,00GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 332MHz (5-5-5-15)
Motherboard:ASRock A770DE+ (CPUSocket) 41 °C
Hard drive:
75GB Western Digital WDC WD800JD-00MSA1 ATA Device (SATA)
298GB Western Digital WDC WD3200AAKS-00VYA0 ATA Device (SATA)
466GB SAMSUNG HD502HJ ATA Device (SATA)

So my question is,which part should I improve for a great high graphics,high framerate The Witcher 2 experience on my high res monitor?And what specific model should I buy.

Thanks for helping me out and for your time.



EDIT:Should I lower my resolution,or would it make my game look a lot uglier?
Oh,and just tell me everything that needs to be upgraded :D,but also I want to know what's most important.
 
That processor is pretty old and TW2 is very processor hungry.

RAM speed matters, and you should check to see what you have. 4GB of fast RAM is better than 16GB of slow RAM for games.

And before you even think about upgrading, checking the motherboard model is very important. I recommend Speccy. If it's an old MoBo then there might not be any good CPU upgrades available, in which case it would not be worth it to upgrade the GPU or anything else.
 
Wazhai said:
That processor is pretty old and TW2 is very processor hungry.

Not as much as it is hungry for GPU power.

And before you even think about upgrading, checking the motherboard model is very important. I recommend Speccy. If it's an old MoBo then there might not be any good CPU upgrades available, in which case it would not be worth it to upgrade the GPU or anything else.

No need. Just read the brand that shows up first, when you boot up your PC.
 
Thanks Wazhai,I would like your further assistance,so let's get back to work:

RAM:
4,00GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 332MHz (5-5-5-15)

Motherboard:
ASRock A770DE+ (CPUSocket) 41 °C

Is this enough for RAM and Motherboard or do you need additional information

Anyways,wazhai,is hard disk important for anything?

Hard drive:
75GB Western Digital WDC WD800JD-00MSA1 ATA Device (SATA) 44 °C
298GB Western Digital WDC WD3200AAKS-00VYA0 ATA Device (SATA) 41 °C
466GB SAMSUNG HD502HJ ATA Device (SATA)

Edit:Additional question,how to determnie which PSU I need?
 
Use speccy, also it might be interesting to know what power supply is in there. Just in case, not that you buy parts and then you find out you need a better one.

edit: ninja, still power supply is always interesting.
 
The power supply has usually a sticker on the side, just open the case and check wattage stated there.
 
I think that upgrading this PC might not be a very worthwhile investment. If I were you, I'd stay with what I have and save up for a brand new PC. Your MoBo is old and it doesn't support the newer and faster DDR3 RAM. It might not work with new AM3 processors.
 
Wazhai said:
I think that upgrading this PC might not be a very worthwhile investment. If I were you, I'd stay with what I have and save up for a brand new PC. Your MoBo is old and it doesn't support the newer and faster DDR3 RAM. It might not work with new AM3 processors.
Hmm...do you think that getting a new,motherboard,RAM and Processor is smarter then getting a GPU?.
 
Don't bother with a CPU upgrade. DonSwingKing is right; this game does not burden the CPU. Also, the only upgrade on that motherboard is to a Phenom II, which gives you L3 cache and not anything else.

The GPU is your bottleneck. In nVidia, you should upgrade to at least a GTX 660, preferably a GTX 670. Anything less isn't worth the trouble. You may need to upgrade the power supply in order to do that.

With those disk drives, it's most important that they be not overfilled and have been defragmented recently. Chasing bits in sectors scattered all over a mechanical disk is the slowest thing you can make your computer do. The Samsung (Spinpoint F3) is the fastest of your disks and should be the one you install resource-intensive applications like games to.

Another 2GB to 4GB (making 6 or 8 GB total) would be nice if you have a 64-bit OS but not essential. Always increase memory in pairs: 2x1GB or 2x2GB.

But the GPU is a triumph of nVidia using numbers to obfuscate. They managed to create customer confusion between the low-performance 550Ti and the completely different 560Ti by making model numbers that use the "Ti" suffix.
 
IceEpicX said:
Hmm...do you think that getting a new,motherboard,RAM and Processor is smarter then getting a GPU?.
A better GPU than what you have right now will most probably be severely bottlenecked by the rest of your system. If you keep your current GPU and use it for the new PC, it will in turn bottleneck the rest, but not by that much.
 
sanamia said:
The power supply has usually a sticker on the side, just open the case and check wattage stated there.

It's 400 wattage,my friend said it's not very good despite having 400 wattage,he said that there are other elements that make it a bad power supply,what other elements I wonder?
 
GuyN said:
Don't bother with a CPU upgrade. DonSwingKing is right; this game does not burden the CPU. Also, the only upgrade on that motherboard is to a Phenom II, which gives you L3 cache and not anything else.

The GPU is your bottleneck. In nVidia, you should upgrade to at least a GTX 660, preferably a GTX 670. Anything less isn't worth the trouble. You may need to upgrade the power supply in order to do that.

With those disk drives, it's most important that they be not overfilled and have been defragmented recently. Chasing bits in sectors scattered all over a mechanical disk is the slowest thing you can make your computer do. The Samsung (Spinpoint F3) is the fastest of your disks and should be the one you install resource-intensive applications like games to.

Another 2GB to 4GB (making 6 or 8 GB total) would be nice if you have a 64-bit OS but not essential. Always increase memory in pairs: 2x1GB or 2x2GB.

Is it even worth upgrading disks,they don't affect gaming preformance,or do they?
 
IceEpicX said:
Is it even worth upgrading disks,they don't affect gaming preformance,or do they?

The whole point of disks is to use them as little as possible, because they're the slowest things in your system. But resources have to be read from somewhere. The only big improvement you can make is to add an SSD. These read many times faster than mechanical disks, and it will pay off big in loading times.

I have to disagree, bluntly, with Wazhai's comments. You do NOT have a setup that would bottleneck even an extremely powerful graphics card. You have a CPU that AMD has not really improved upon. You have memory that is the equivalent of DDR3 with twice the clock number. You have sufficient memory and a motherboard that can run that memory at full speed.

The biggest waste of money you could possibly commit with that system would be to replace the CPU, motherboard, and RAM and keep the other inferior components.

IceEpicX said:
It's 400 wattage,my friend said it's not very good despite having 400 wattage,he said that there are other elements that make it a bad power supply,what other elements I wonder?

Many power supplies are designed to the minimum the manufacturer can get away with and made with inferior components. These power supplies are so bad you could call them counterfeits, because the specifications on the label are just a work of fiction.

A few manufacturers and resellers are well known for all or most of their power supplies being of top or at least good quality. Seasonic, Corsair, Enermax, Antec (except Basiq), Thermaltake (only Toughpower; other Thermaltakes are junk).
 
GuyN said:
The whole point of disks is to use them as little as possible, because they're the slowest things in your system. But resources have to be read from somewhere. The only big improvement you can make is to add an SSD. These read many times faster than mechanical disks, and it will pay off big in loading times.

I have to disagree, bluntly, with Wazhai's comments. You do NOT have a setup that would bottleneck even an extremely powerful graphics card. You have a CPU that AMD has not improved upon. You have memory that is the equivalent of DDR3 with twice the clock number. You have sufficient memory and a motherboard that can run that memory at full speed.

The biggest waste of money you could possibly commit with that system would be to replace the CPU, motherboard, and RAM and keep the other inferior components.

Thanks a lot,you have been of great help.

I'll buy a PCI-E GAINWARD GeForce GTX 660 Ti, 2GB DDR5, DualDVI, HDMI, DP, HDTV

But I have noticed that there are other more expensive versions of it:
PCI-E GAINWARD GeForce GTX 660 Ti Phantom, 2GB DDR5, DualDVI, HDMI, DP, HDTV
PCI-E GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 660 Ti Ultra Durable, 2GB DDR5, DualDVI, HDMI, DP, HDTV

Is there a major difference?

Anyways,with my 660 Ti,what kind of power supply will I need :D?

A side question as I see you all are experts in PCs:My computer sometimes either frezzes while he's turning on or sometimes just the screen turns black,but when it works it works like a charm,strange :/.

Sometimes it can work perfectly for a month and nobody can find and error to it,when the error appears it's mostly solved by plugging all of the wires out from the PC and putting them back in.And my headphones jack doesn't work,so I have to use USB ones,does anyone have an idea what part is broken?The service couldn't solve a thing :D. Well this question is kind of non-related,so you don't need to solve it,since nobody so far could have,it just looks like my PC hates/loves me,depends on the weather and his mood.

Anyways I was going to ask you for my further improvement later what kind of RAM,motherboard and CPU should I buy,but I have already wasted so much of your time so I will leave that question for another day when I get more money.

Thank you so much for your AMAZING help.
 
Yeah , what he means to say is that less powere gets turned into heat ! so u could have a 400w A brand one that can actually give 400w or u have a less A ish one wich says 400 but will almost melt out of your pc's wall while doing it :)
 
oeh the Ti i dont know .. i did get some normal 660's a while back and those only have 1 6pins power conn so i dont think they pull to much watts :)
 
The rated wattage of a PSU doesn't really tell you anything if the PSU is crappy. You just basically have to check reviews to find out if a PSU is decent or not. About overrated and cheap PSUs: JonnyGURU
 
Different manufacturers (Gainward vs. Gigabyte in your case) do slightly different things with the card and its configuration. This can be a different cooler, different factory clock settings, sometimes even a different board layout. In this case, the Gigabyte model is a well-done non-reference design; its cooler is thinner and easier to keep clean than others, while the Gainward model uses a cooler that works just as well but takes up three slots.

So if you have other cards to plug in, the Gainward will take up the two slots down from your first PCI-e slot; the Gigabyte will take up only one adjacent slot. Beyond that, the Gigabyte card is slightly the better performer. I would prefer the Gigabyte card if my choice were between those two.
 
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