Upgrade my CPU or GPU ??

[Zyco187]

sup I am looking to upgrade my rig and I am having problems deciding which i shuld upgrade. I only have $120 avail for upgrade but if you think that I need to up the cpu i can borrow more. I am looking to upgrade for Dayz mod and DayZ standalone aswell as bf4 and what ever comes out in the next year.

i am looking to get another sapphire amd 7770 and crossfire them but I dont know if that will be enuf performace boost or if that is just too much for my amd 1045t and it will just bottleneck it

rite now on Dayz mod i get about 35 FPS at 720p on High with my current rig. and on bf4 i get 40 fps on med 1080p. also another games im looking to get is far cry 3 and tom clancy the divsion. i want to beable to run on 1080p

Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1045T
RAM 8GB DDR3 1866
Motherboard Asus M5A97 2.0 EVO
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 7700 1GB DDR5
Monitor 24in LED Toshiba + 20in LED HP
Sound Card 5.2 Surround Sound
Keyboard: Logitech G105
Mouse: Gigabyte
Mouse Surface: US Army
Wheel: Logitech Driving Force GT

thank you

[Rabbit]

My girlfriend is looking to sell a AMD Phenom II X4 p65 processor 3.40 GHz she had no use for if you are interested. Never even opened. I have the same CPU and love it.

[LITOralis.nMd]

1. What PSU do you have?
2. the crossfire on Arma2 and DayZ is a bit complicated, but is possible, have to edit crossfire profiles .
3. If you can bump your budget up to $135ish , and find a few good Black Friday deals, this is doable.

You should

1. buy aftermarket CPU Cooler. Cooler master Hyper 212 Evo or Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus , and thermal paste.
2. learn how to OC using FSB.
3. Buy your HD 7770

You have a great motherboard, it's made for overclocking.
You have a very good CPU, still competitive and no reason to replace on your budget.
Even with a easy overclock, it can hit 3.4Ghz, once you start to understand what you are doing, 3.8Ghz is possible,

If you are lucky and have a "cream of the crop" CPU and motherboard, you could hit 4.2Ghz on that combo. But start with the easy 3.4Ghz overclock, and work your way up to something more.

download this:
OCCT if you don't have it: Home

AMD CPUs Ultimate Sticky Thread - Overclockers Forums

First of all to get 3.5ghz or higher on that processor you need to know about voltage tweaking.
Your processor has a locked multiplier so you simply cant raise the multiplier and overclock it,thus you have to overclocking using raising the fsb,I would suggest you to start with minor increase at first because overclocking is something that you will learn step by step,first target the 3.4ghz mark.
To achieve it fist turn off all the power saving features in BIOS,disable cpu spread spectrun and AMD cool & quiet. Disable offset overclocking and do the oc part manually. Raise the FSB by a notch (the default is 200,you make it 220 mark) in the motherboard bios,once you increase FSB your ram frequency will also increase so you can adjust the ram frequency using ram multiplier.Don't change anything else,save the settings and reboot,if you can enter windows then run prime 95 for around two hour and see you don't get any BSOD (blue screen of death).
If you get a BSOD you need to raise the cpu vcore by a notch from the stock voltage and set the LLC (Load line calibration) to High.
Now again boot back and see if you get any BSOD,if it survives two hours of stress tesing (prime95) you are fine with overclock.
Once you achieve a stable overclock you need to fine tune it with North Bridge overclockig and ram overclocking.
Stduy about it over net,overclocking is something you'd not learn in a day,its a vast thing,so start with small overclock and experiment with the cpu frequency further once you get used to overclocking.
Hope this helps you,if you face any sort of problem do reply we are here to help you,good luck.

From: [Processor] AMD Phenom ii x 6 1075 T + Asus M5A97 R2.0 Overclock Help ~

Best solution
Z1NONLY OVERCLOCKING MASTER March 16, 2012 6:06:11 PM
Here's a cut and paste from my post on another 1045t thread the names tha gigabyte uses may differ slightly from your Asus BIOS:

I have my 1045t OC'd to 3.4 Ghz with all 6 cores running. It could go higher but, I'm limited by heat because I can't fit a bigger cooler in my case.

I recommend getting some free software first. CPU-Z and HWmonitor, and prime95.

CPU-Z will show you frequencies, voltages and ram timings.

HWmonitor will show you temps. *Be warned* HWmonitor was showing my core temps 10 degrees lower than they actually were. The temp labeled "TMPIN2" was actually tracking perfectly with the core temps shown in AMD Overdive. So look for the highest temperature other than your video card. (many video cards can safely run at hotter temps than your CPU.) The hottest one on my Gigabyte 990 fxa ud3 (other than the video card) is the core temp. Try to keep it below 55C under full load.

Prime95 is the program that will stress test your computer to see if it can remain stable and cool under load. 2hrs of the blend test with no errors and no overheating is a general rule of thumb for a stable OC.

Now for the fun stuff.

Go into your BIOS and lower the multiples for your CPU and your Ram by a few steps. (The 1045t won't let you increase the multiplier above stock)
Then disable turbo (aka "core performance boost" )
Then find your CPU Host clock control and set it to "manual"
Then You should be able to change the "CPU Frequency" (I'll call it FSB) (This is before the multiplier, so it will be low. Mine started at 200)
Now increase that variable by a bit.

I recommend balancing your FSB and your "memory clock" (RAM) multiplier to a point where your ram is back down to stock speeds after you bump the FSB. So raise your FSB to something like 250 then adjust your RAM multiplier down so that your RAM us running at or near stock speeds.

Now move on to your CPU clock ratio. With the faster FSB, you will be able to run your CPU at higher frequencies with a lower-than-stock multiplier. I eventually took mine all the way back up to 13.5 with a final frequency of 3.4 Ghz.

I would recommend starting with a lower multiple that gets you just a couple hundred Mhz boost over stock at first. Then test for stability and heat. Run prime 95 for at least 30 minutes if you want to see your hottest temps. The blend doesn't get things hot until about the third bank of tests.

If things look good, go back into the BIOS and bump the multiplier some more and re-test.

My MB got rather ambitious with the voltages when I left it in auto, so use CPU-Z to keep an eye on core voltages. Many recommend just staying under 1.45 volts. I recommend not going any higher than you need to for a given clock speed. This will help keep heat down. I ended up using a negative offset "CPU voltage control" of -0.075 volts. This brought my core voltages down to about 1.344v at full load.

*note* I'm scraping the floor on voltage with my particular chip/speed. One notch lower and I get BSOD. You may be able to go a little lower or you may need a little more voltage for your chip and clock speed.

Now just test and adjust and repeat.

Generally speaking:

BSOD means you need more voltage, and/or less speed.

Overheating means you need less voltage and/or less speed. (or a better cooler for your CPU.)

If you get to the point where your temps are good and your computer is sable, and you still want to go faster (than ~3.4Ghz), you can go back and bump up the FSB. But remember to adjust your RAM multiplier back down to stock-ish speeds.

You can OC your RAM later, but that gets a little more complicated as you may have to adjust CAS timings and RAM voltages to make it work. Keeping your RAM at stock speeds should give you one less thing to worry about while you probe the limits of your CPU.

Good luck!

from: AMD 1045T on ASUS M5A97 Basic Stable OC [Solved] - AMD - Overclocking

[Daniel]

Also some additional information here (can you approve, Litoralis?)

Phenom II x6 1045t - AMD - Overclocking

[LITOralis.nMd]

AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1045T
CPU Passmark scores go from 4900 baseline, to 6000 average overclocked score.

AMD FX-6120 Six-Core
CPU Passmark score 5,814
Price: NA


AMD FX-6100 Six-Core
CPU Passmark score5,418
Price: $119.99

As long as your PSU has the wattage to support an OC,
Spend the ~$30 on the CPU cooler and thermal paste.
You won't gain any performance by upgrading CPU in your price range.

[LITOralis.nMd]

Daniel, the motherboard in your link is a piece of ****, that link won't do Zyco much good,
Zyco187 has a motherboard right near the top of the class for AM3+ mobos.

The big list of AM2/AM3/AM3+ mobos:
AMD Motherboards - VRM info database

[Zyco187]

thanks for you input guys.

i am against overclocking so their will be no chance of that.

here are the to potential items i am looking at. i already have a big corsair cpu cooler and a 750w psu


to go with my amd 1045t with another 7770 in crossfire
SAPPHIRE 100358L Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Video Card - Newegg.com

or

to go with my single amd 7770, but i would have to borrrow more money that I really dont have. but i will if i need it to be worth the investment.
AMD FX-8150 Zambezi 3.6GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8150FRGUBOX - Newegg.com
AMD FX-8320 Vishera 3.5GHz (4.0GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8320FRHKBOX - Newegg.com
AMD FX-8350 Vishera 4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8350FRHKBOX - Newegg.com

[LITOralis.nMd]

Not sure what to tell you. The overclocking is your clearest upgrade path.

Every other option at $125 is not worth the time really.

some games are CPU bound,
others are GPU bound.
some do not work with crossfire, others do.

At this point you might consider fleebaying your 7770 and buying a 7850 or 7870 on fleebay.

I'd just put the money aside and reconsider this closer to Christmas sales events.

EDIT: in the mean time, unpark your cores using processlasso

Download Bitsum ProcessLasso Free. Make sure you download the correct version, Free 32 bit or Free 64 bit, Process Lasso - Automate and optimize process priorities, CPU affinities, power profiles, and more!
-- Start PR, alt tab to desktop, open ProcessLasso window, right click on PRLauncher.exe, PRBF2.exe and and give them default priority status of High, set the PRBF2.exe to gaming mode, and give both of them high or higher access to RAM.

Unpark your CPU Cores in ProcessLasso->Options->Configure CPU Core Parking->UNpark your cores. explanation of how and why to do this: ParkControl - Tweak and monitor core parking in real time!

set the bf4.exe arma2oa.exe etc to same settings as prbf2.exe in the above quote.

[Rabbit]

That AMD Phenom II X4 p65 processor 3.40 GHz my girlfriend is selling is only $80.

[Zyco187]

rabbit not interested

on my windows experince index it gives me these ratings for my cpu and gpu

cpu .......................7.4
graphics ................7.4
gaming graphics..... 7.4

so would this mean that 2 7770s would be worthless ??? and bottleneck the cpu

[DesmoLocke]

so would this mean that 2 7770s would be worthless ??? and bottleneck the cpu

:d uh: No. Graphics cards don't bottleneck CPUs. A weak CPU bottlenecks graphics cards. Not even going to mention chipsets and PCI-E bandwidth.

Get a second 7700 if you're only looking to spend a little.

[Careless]

Don't get me wrong, but 35 to 40 fps is fine?

I mean, I don't think you'll get that much of a performance boost with 150 bucks, really.

Just save up?