Starcraft 2 is coming out in a week or so, and coincidentally I’ve found myself with about $150 in birthday money. I’m thinking of blowing it on some sort of upgrade for my 3-year-old computer.
The computer is a Gateway GM 5424, with a GeForce 8600 GT card, dual Intel chips at 2.13 GHz, and 2 Gb RAM.
I’m figuring there are three main options for a good upgrade:
-New CPU
-More RAM
-New videocard.
Does anyone have any ideas on specific things I could get? I’ve added RAM and videocards before, but I’ve never replaced a CPU. I know you have to make sure it’s compatible with the motherboard ([my motherboard[/url), but I’m not sure how to check on that.
$150 isn’t going to get you very far. The big problem is SC2 is a CPU-heavy game and your CPU upgrade options are limited. The 8600 GT is good enough for medium. I’d get 2x 512MB of DDR2 RAM ($40~) and take whatever cash you have remaining and hit the local for sale ads to get the best LGA 775 CPU you can afford: E8400 or Q6600 being the most popular higher-end CPUs in that bracket, but Core 2 QX8xxx > Core 2 Q9xxx > Core 2 Q8xxx > Those.
If you want to leave medium settings, you need more money.
Yeah, I definitely know I won’t be getting top-end graphics: that’s money I’d rather put into my mortgage. The money I have I see as a windfall, so rather than thinking, “What can I do to get the best graphics?” I’m going to think, “What can I do with $150?”
Is LGA775 the language I need to look for regarding a CPU to make sure it’ll work in my computer? I’m planning to shop TigerDirect and NewEgg for bargains.
There’s also this one: Intel Core2 Duo E7500 Wolfdale 2.93GHz 3MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor BX80571E7500. It’s cheaper, meaning maybe I could get another couple gigs of RAM, but you didn’t mention the Exxxx series in your listings, making me think it might be risky.
The CPU is only off by 300 mhz or so from the recommended spec. The GPU is off the recommended by a larger margin, so I would suggest you go for the GPU for now, and invest ina better CPU the next time you have some cash to burn. Another $150 should get you a decent CPU for that socket. Or save money and bring over your new GPU to a new CPU + mobo + RAM setup (probably another $350 or so).
As for GPU’s at that price, I’d look into the ATI HD5770 for around that price. You should be able to max out the graphics, and you might only see a frame rate drop in maps with a ton of units. As I said, the CPU is only a few mhz away from recommended, so you should be ok for the single player campaign at least, but might have turn down some CPU heavy features in multi-player.
The Q8300 is a good CPU, but I’m not sure about that price. I’ve never been very good at following how prices decay over time. My biggest concern with it is how SC2 is going to run on 2 GB of RAM, but DDR2 is pretty cheap and if you know someone in the tech field, they probably have some to give away. I had a box of the stuff, but I ditched it in a recent move.
The LGA775 is the name of the size and shape of the CPU socket on your motherboard. Only an LGA775 CPU will fit in it, so it’s important to check that. Pretty much all of the Core 2 series uses it, except for the high-end Extreme CPUs (which you can’t afford) and the efficient low-power ones (which you don’t want).
The difference between the E-series and the Q-series is that the E-series uses two cores and the Q-series uses four cores. More cores is better (in general). The E7500 isn’t a huge upgrade. You’d want either a high-end E-series (like the 8400) or a quad core. Actually, don’t get an e8400 either unless it’s dirt cheap.
Don’t get a 5770. Your video card isn’t bottlenecking SC2.
Dual cores would actually be better if SC2 is your main concern as SC2 specifically and most games in general still don’t take advantage of more than 2 cores.
I don’t know enough about GT 8600 to know whether it would make a better upgrade than the CPU but from the benchmarks I’ve randomly googled it looks like it performs only around 1/2 to 2/3s as well as the recommended 8800. So the GPU is probably the way to go. I can say from experience the GTX 260 is enough to run SC2 at the highest settings and is just above your price range.
It looks to me(though I’m far from an expert) like your processor and gpu would need to be upgraded about equally though. That is to say upgrading either would likely just make the other bottleneck. So if this is the only upgrade you plan to do I’d suggest trying to get both a CPU & GPU upgrade such as this GTX 240 & E5300 combo which would make you exceed the recommended stats, albeit not by much and with a 20$ mail in rebate might allow you to grab .5-1 gigs of ram as well. But if you plan to do any further upgrading then I’d suggest going for a good graphics card or processor now and the other one later. Probably either a GTS 250 or a Radeon 5750 if you go for the GPU or the E7500 you linked if you go CPU.
What’s your monitor’s native resolution? If it’s 1680x1050 or higher I’d definitely recommend upgrading the GPU.
I wouldn’t worry about RAM too much. In a 4v4 I just ran with quite a few units running around SC2 only uses about 1.2 Gigs of ram with medium textures. Which should be fine so long as you don’t leave a lot of superfluous stuff running in the background. With ultra textures it does pop up to about 1.65 Gigs though. So if you ever get to the point where you want to be running at ultra you’ll need a bit more RAM.
Have you seen benchmarks to indicate that SC2 bottlenecks on the CPU at that level? I ask because it’s fairly rare under typical setups for the CPU to be the most common bottleneck. For a few games that is indeed the case, and sc2 may be one of them, but I’d want to see comparitive benchmarks with different CPUs and video cards before I’d say the video card isn’t the bottleneck. I would guess that the 8600 would be a bottleneck at 1680x1050+.
Geforce 8600->HD5770 is a bigger general gaming upgrade then E6400 conroe to a faster dual core (and possibly a quad depending on how well the game is multithreaded) unless SC2 is one of the rare games that CPU-bottlenecks much earlier than most. If that’s the case, and if the game scales well with multiple cores (which I assume it would, but have no evidence) then a quad core then the q8300 would be a good upgrade. But these aren’t assumptions I’d make without seeing evidence that that’s the case for sure.
The ram issue - 2gb sucks, but it’ll work, you’ll probably just have to close everything running in the background to insure you don’t have your page file very active during gameplay.
Adding cooling has no performance benefit on its own. It’ll allow greater overclocks, which is definitely a potential solution to this issue, but you make it sound as if adding cooling by itself will somehow improve her performance. I’m not sure if the OP feels confident about trying to OC, and it would also depend on the quality of case. And “ramsinking” is silly - ram never gets that hot.
The CPU performance benchmark page is interesting, although they say “We’ve seen that StarCraft II is a CPU-limited title at the medium detail setting, so just how much CPU do you need to run the game comfortably? Let’s start with some CPU-speed benchmark” and then show benchmarks from ultra detail, giving conflicting info.
On medium settings, the game does seem CPU-bound much faster than pretty much every other game I’ve ever seen. There’s no difference in performance between a 5870 and a 5770 for example. Or, on medium resolutions, even a 5870 vs 5570. That is very unusual, but it does suggest a CPU upgrade is your best bet. It’s hard to say that the performance won’t drop out with your 8600, because it’s inferior to everything on this benchmark list, but it does suggest a CPU upgrade is the way to go.
If they’d have done the cpu comparison with medium details instead of ultra, it would’ve been a lot more useful. Instead they conflated two seperate factors making it difficult to understand the difference at the settings you’ll be looking to play at.
In any case, that page seems to demonstrate that there’s not much benefit from more than 2 cores, but there’s a benefit to clock speed. So if you are trying to build specifically for starcraft 2, you’re better off with a dual core with a higher clock speed like an e8400 or e7500 (which is similar just with half the cache, which shouldn’t be a big deal, IIRC). For general computing and futureproofing, a quad might be the better option, but for SC2 specifically, clock speed is what’s important.
It’s hard to say for sure, because they don’t benchmark your actual video card, which is about half as powerful as an 8800GT. Your card may be below a threshold where it switches back over to being GPU-bound. You might be able to find benchmarks someone has done for your specific hardware by googling it.
The other option you have is to buy the game, see how it runs, and then test out what’s bottlenecking it. Record the framerate, change the settings to be more CPU bound (lower graphical details/resolution) and see how much it improves. If turning down graphical settings and resolution has a significant effect on the frame rate, you’re GPU-bound and you’d rather have a new graphics card. If it doesn’t, then you’re CPU bound and want a new cpu.
Wow, thanks for the feedback, confusing though it may be! Although I’m comfortable with limited hardware stuff, I’m afraid of overclocking: I can’t really afford to risk components at all, and don’t trust myself not to screw it up.
What do folks think about Spectralist’scombo deal? For $116.98 after rebate, I’d get:
-Intel Pentium E5300 Wolfdale 2.6GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80571E5300
-GIGABYTE GV-N240D5-512I GeForce GT 240 512MB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
For an extra $37.99, I could get 2 GB RAM (Rendition by Crucial 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory Model RM25664AA667).
This would put my total close to $160.00, but if these three upgrades would be significant, I suppose I could swing an extra $10.00.
That’s a modest CPU upgrade, a substantial GPU upgrade (probably about 50-60% faster) and a noticible ram upgrade (you won’t have to worry about closing everything down to run the game). I’d shoot a little higher on the CPU if you can manage to use something else with the deal, but that should be fine for starcraft at medium/high settings at typical 22" monitor resolution. Good for the price.
I’d recommend sinking a little more money into it and going for a more beefy cpu upgrade.
While that combo is not terrible, there are much better deals.
Judging from the Starcraft 2 benchmark that have been released, it seems that more cores than 2 and a high cache, is of little importance.
Since Starcraft 2 is such a CPU bound game, I would recommend getting a faster CPU than the e5300. Luckily, Intel has recently released the Pentium Dual Core E6700 which is much faster than the E5300 , and it only costs $100. (Intel Pentium E6700 - Pentium Wolfdale Dual-Core 3.2 GHz LGA 775 65W Desktop Processor - BX80571E6700 - Newegg.com) This processor will give very good CPU performance in Starcraft 2 (similiar to the E8400 I should say). The only downside is you might need to upgrade your BIOS from the Gateway website, but that should be fairly painless.
As far as graphics cards go, you get the GT240 you picked, but I’d highly recommend spending just a bit more and get the Radeon 5670 (like this one: SAPPHIRE 100287L Radeon HD 5670 (Redwood) 512MB 128-bit DDR5 Video Card w/ATI Eyefinity - Newegg.com) for about $75 (with rebate). I realise this is $25 over budget, but well-worth it IMHO
If you really want to stay in budget, get the E6500 CPU ($80) instead of the E6700.
All this should give you a computer that can run Starcraft 2 on the highest settings.
“Highest settings” probably not, since it’s surprisingly beefy with its requirements for ultra detail, but your advice is generally good. The e7600 is a good value there, and since the game seems to scale almost purely with clock speed, that’s significnantly better than the e5300. I’d take the 2gb of ram anyway even if you had to pay extra out of your own pocket - it just makes general computing much smoother.
Well, at 1680x1080 it should run about 45 frames per second (40 minimum), which, while not buttery-smooth is playable for an RTS game. In any case, it would have no problems at all on the Medium setting.
The benchmarks in post 9 suggest an i7 920 + 5670 does 30.7 average 20 minimum, which is adequate for RTS games. It’s mostly GPU bottlenecked at that setting/res/video card but it might run a tad slower on a core 2. So playable, but you’d probably want to scale down a few settings to medium to keep it smooth. But yeah, e7600+5670 would give you good results.
Indeed, you are correct. I had looked at some other benchmarks (Legion Hardware and Guru3D) where they used a higher-clocked processor and I assumed that it was GPU bound at that resolution, but seems that better CPU help quite a bit even if the graphics card is slow.
Just to clear up any confusion, the CPU I mentioned was the Pentium E6700, not the Core 2 E7600 (which is about $50 more expensive).
Although I’m comfortable with limited hardware stuff, I’m afraid of overclocking: I can’t really afford to risk components at all, and don’t trust myself not to screw it up.