A little bit of help regarding buying a new rig

[utxpress99]

Good day to everyone, this is just my first post here in the Nexus Forums, so please forgive me for anything wrong I might post.

 

Well, my last PC died and my mother finally agreed to get me a new rig. However, she said that the specs I initially wanted were too expensive.

It composed of a Nvidia GTX 580 and i7 and other good stuff.

 

So as I expected she just went off to her friend and asked for help regarding this matter. These are the specs he has given her.

 

Motherboard : ECS A890 GXM-A Black Series

Processor : AMD Athlon II X4 640 3.0 Ghz. Quad Core

Hard Disk : Seagate Barracuda 1 TB.

Ram : Kingston 4 GB 1333

Graphics : Sapphire ATI Radeon HD5670 1 GB 128 bit Gddr5

Casing : Orient Transformer or Orient Max 600

DVD : LITE ON 24X iHAS224 SATA LS

 

So apparently I do not know a single thing about these specs, but I do know a 5670 isnt gonna cut it.

 

I have decided to turn the 4GB RAM into 8GB. Then, i'm gonna replace the 5670 with a 6870, or if possible, a 5870.

However, due to my lack of knowledge, I have decided to ask here for some answers first before she goes off buying something I may not like

 

Note: Playing Crysis 2 would be nice, however the only thing I really want to play flawlessly is a heavily modded Oblivion and Fallout New Vegas, which is also why

I decided to ask here in the Nexus Forums.

 

Main Question 1 : Will the 6870 or 5870 be bottlenecked by the rest of the rig? If so, what can I do to fix it?

 

Main Question 2 : Will this rig run a heavily modded Oblivion and Fallout New Vegas without dropping lower than 20 fps?

 

Thank you all for your much appreciated help. Have a nice day!

[utxpress99]

BTW, I also noticed my mother's friend didn't give her a specified power supply and audio card. Was this intended or he just left it out? If it was left out,

what should I get for the audio card, and power supply.

[CommanderCrazy]

An audio card is not really required to play games, as the onboard systems can do it all quite well.

 

As for the PSU, read up on the power requirements of all the hardware you have going, add them together and then add another 100 or so watts to the power output of it. That should be a sufficient PSU.

 

PS: Btw, make sure that the power output on the PSU is not the peak rating. For example, if PSU A has 720 watts of output, then it will most likely only have 650. Look up on the website for it, and the real number will most likely be in fine print somewhere on a chart.

Edited May 25, 2011 by CommanderCrazy

[utxpress99]

Thanks CommanderCrazy for answering my question.

 

Well I know this rig can amazingly handle Oblivion and Fallout New Vegas on max settings, even though these specs dont actually cost much.

 

However, I am worried that it may not be capable of running Oblivion and Fallout New Vegas full of mods and still run it on max settings.

[uberness23]

*sigh* Oblivion. My AMD Phenom II 1090T six core with a Radeon 6990 has trouble with it. The game is simply outdated, and even the mightiest rig on the market will be brought to it's knees. eventually. Keep in mind that processor cores matter less with Oblivion. Multi core is poorly utilized. This means your Quadcore Athlon may only use half its power. New Vegas will run well though. Much more updated engine. Always remember that a good CPU in Beth's big, open world games will make a much bigger difference than in most other games. Oblivion and Vegas are CPU intensive. AI, scripts, quests, combat behavior, really takes it's toll on the CPU.

 

While an audio card isn't required, it does take pressure off the CPU. You can get cheap USB sound cards for like $30 that will do the trick and then some. Athlon Quad core isn't bad, although with AMD's new "Bulldozer" series coming out soon the Phenom series CPU's are dropping in price and will likely drop further. (My 1090T Black edition can compete with some of the best of the I7's and is much cheaper.) As for PSU, always get 100 or so more wattage then you need. This gives you margin for error. Additionally as a PSU ages it's efficiency decreases. Always want to have plenty of juice available. I personally swear by Corsair. Very good company, reliable.

 

If you can, grab a 6950. Very good card that can be easily unlocked to a 6970. They're more expensive though.

[Xenno]

Here are few advices i will say to you:

 

You choose case in the end you will use the PC so u gotta like it.

 

Do not buy HD 5670 its far too weak card, it has 400 shaders ,i saw you will go with HD 6870 and thats very nice card good choice you could save a lil money and buy HD 6850 but you did not tell one big factor in this on what resolution you play your games???

 

You dont need 8 gb of ram , 4 is more than fine, you wont find ANY game need more than 4 gb

and btw you will need to have 64-bit OS to use more than 3.2 gb of ram, i would go with Windows 7 x-64 doesnt matter what version too much.

 

PSU brands i recomend are Corsair, Antec, and Seasonic i personaly use 620W Seasonic PSU and its the best one i used so far.

 

Crysis 2 is very good optimised game u will play it better than some older games that love to eat hardware too much

[anthonydrew13]

I just want to thank you for this awesome post. You did some good points in here. Thanks!

 

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