After mainly using my desktop for "Office" type duties I now want to start playing games on it as well. But, I suspect that it may not be up to modern gaming.

I tried running UBISoft's Cliffs of Dover recently and found that although it installed, loaded and ran the 2d graphics and sound, it wouldn't show 3D graphics in the actual flying bit -although it did sound and controls OK. Whereas, I previously had been running UBI's IL2-1946 without difficulty on Vista 64 on the same machine, the later didn't run well under Windows 7. I did try doing an "Auto" tweak + unlock, through the system BIOS, on the Athlon processor and GPU, but that made no difference on COD and only succeeded in degrading the Windows System Performance indicator by one decimal point.

From reading various info on the web I'm reasonably certain that Cliffs of Dover won't run because graphics processor capability has moved on substantially since my motherboard was issued in 2010 and that COD is perhaps more demanding in that respect than some other recent simulations.

Therefore, I am considering partially upgrading my existing desktop system so that I can run modern games/simulations. Basically, i just want to establish whether my upgrade path is feasible.

I am currently running an Asus M4A88TD-M EVO (AM3+ socket and integrated ATI Radeon 4250 GPU) and an Athlon II x 4 core 2.8Ghz with 8 GB memory and 500GB Seagate hard drive.OS is currently Windows 7 64 (And i have Vista 64 on another partition).

UBISoft, on first release of COD made the following statement as regards kit spec:-

Operating system: Windows® 7 / Vista SP2 / Windows XP SP3

Processor: Pentium® Dual-Core 2.0GHz or Athlon™ X2 3800+ (Intel Core i5 2.66GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 2.6GHz recommended)

RAM: DirectX® 9.0c compliant, 512Mb Video Card (1GB DirectX® 10 recommended) – See supported List*

Video card: DirectX® 9.0c compliant, 512Mb Video Card (1GB DirectX® 10 recommended) – See supported List*

Direct X: DirectX® 9.0c or DirectX® 10 (included on disc)

DVD-Rom drive: 8X

Sound card: DirectX 9.0c compatible

Hard disk: 10GB

Peripherals: Mouse, keyboard (joystick with throttle and rudder control recommended)

Multiplay: Broadband connection with 128 kbps upstream or faster

*Supported cards at time of release:

ATI® 4850/4870/5830/5850/5770/5870/6870/6950/6970

NVidia®: 8800/9800/250/260/275/285/460/465/470/480

Not being replete with funds at the moment, I was thinking along the lines of :-

Sapphire HD 6850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (PCI-E 2.1 x 16) -

(My motherboard supports PCI-E 2.0 x 16)

And

AMD Phenom II x 6 core 1055 2.8 Ghz (Motherboard supports Phenom IIs - including this one)

Does that sound feasible ? Has any body any experience of this combination.

My main concern is whether a PCI-E 2.1 x 16 board will fit in my motherboards PCI-E 2.0 x 16 slot. And if so, whether there would be any loss of functionality or speed operating in a 2.0 slot ?

Also, I think may have problems laying my hands on a Phenom as they appear to be a bit thin on the ground now.

Could an AMD Bulldozer be substituted ? And if so, would it be as capable as the Phenom ?

I also noticed when attempted to unlock the existing Athlon II that it reported having x 6 cores - but the on-board software could only access x 4 of them . Assuming this wasn't a false report, is there a way of acessing cores 5 and 6 ?

Nick

Edited 1 March, 201214 yr by Clunkclick

PCI 2.1 and 2.0 (and 1.0) slots are physically compatible.

The difference between 2.1 and 2.0 are not that you'll miss much, so I wouldn't worry.

Just confirm the card can operate in 2.0 mode. It shoudl as the specs mandate that 2.0 cards can work in 1.0 slots (Albeit slower) so you should be fine.

Not sure hex-core is worth the money for budget gaming, most games can't utilise all the cores fully because of the way the threads are; I'd consider you may get better performance in-game with a quad-core (the theory being the individual cores should be more powerful). Only true way to know is research some benchmarks.

The 6850 is a nice solid mid-range card, I'm running an XFX 6870 myself and my only bug-bear with it is that the games I play the most run better on nVidia cards (should of checked before buying, DOH!) My motherboard, off the top of my head is a Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3P-B3 (which is a PCIe 2.0 board I think) and I'm running the 6870 on it with no issues.

Edited 2 March, 201214 yr by ckyliu

I have a 2 year old PC.

Spec is now mid range at best. I only play Red Orchestra 2 on it regularly. I have ran COD4 / 5 / 6 / BO , BFBC2 / BF3 and MW3 on it no issues.

Spec is AMD [email protected] , 12Gb 1333 , OCZ Agility 120Gb , 2x Asus HD6850's , Dell 27"WFP Screen. ( I Ran COD Black Ops / BF3 on a slightly older spec of 1x6850 and a Momentus XT Hybrid Hard Drive no problems also )

As said , most games do not employ all the cores ( RO2 only uses 2 ) , but the 10XX's are so cheap now anyway that it makes little difference.

The factory OverClocked Asus 6850's are a bit of a bargain right now. Great card, lots of bang for buck. Incredibly quiet also. What PSu do you have?

The factory OverClocked Asus 6850's are a bit of a bargain right now. Great card, lots of bang for buck. Incredibly quiet also. What PSu do you have?

Corsair Enthusiast Series TX 750W V2 High Performance '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply

Nick

Corsair Enthusiast Series TX 750W V2 High Performance '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply

Nick

No worries there then