Hey all!

I am upgrading my comp coming up here in the next couple weeks. wondered if anyone had suggestions? I'm only looking to spend about $400. I'd like to get something easy and upgrade the machine in a few years. I always build my own, so much easier, but its been a few years. Currently i'm running an old pentium d 945 3.2ghz, on lowest settings. I'm probably looking to go with AMD, mostly because they're less expensive. Any advice on the fx 4100? Thx in advance.

Well, without knowing the rest of your system's specs, the FX4100 should be a huge upgrade in any way.

But according to this review you will have to overclock it to get better results than with some older processors. And remember that you will have to get a new mainboard sporting the right socket (AM3+) to use the FX.

 

What about the other parts of your computer? If your video card is as old as your CPU, you'll have to replace that and probably your power supply unit as well...

 

Just for reference:

 

I am playing SWTOR at medium settings on 1280x1024 quite okay with the following old machine:

 

Athlon 2 x64 7750

HIS Radeon HD 6750

4 Gigs of DDR2 memory

 

But I guess I'll face problems when I finally try out 8 or 16 player OPs...

Edited September 13, 2013 by Count_Haake

I'm upgrading the whole machine. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8210250&sku=B69-0708

This basic setup with a radeon 6450 is what i plan. I really want to be able to turn the graphics up all the way, but i'll settle for the game just running correctly and being able to do pvp. I just don't want to buy a new machine and still have the same problems that i have now.

4 gb of ram decent? I guess that's where i'm questioning my logic. I have 4 now, and it runs like crap. but i think its my other parts that make it run so poorly. On my new one i'm looking at a minimum of 8gb. and a video card of 1gb, radeon 5 or 6 series.

I run a 2400 i5 with a 6950 2gb radeon with 16gb of ram off a SSD. Pretty much run on very high settings, however did notice some issues when doing 16m ops when action got really heavy.

Anyone know out of the a series amd and the fx series amd cpu's, which is better?

I used to run 4G RAM with a standard hard drive and a GEforce 560Ti vid card on winxp and my game ran like ****, constant lag, disconnects etc,,,,

I upgraded to WIN 7 64 bit, 16G RAM a Solid State Hard drive and an i5 processor using the same video card and the game runs like a new world. RAM and Processor and hard drive might be the biggest issues, not so much the video card. From what i understand with other players, myself included, is that a big lag is created with the Hard drive ability to read/write from the game server and the RAM needed for your OS to keep every other Windows process functioning optimally.

Also, if you're using WinXP you cant use more than 4G RAM, if you use WIN7 64bit or higher you're ok to use more RAM.

Anyone know out of the a series amd and the fx series amd cpu's, which is better?

 

The A series CPUs are something like a dead end. The stronger versions of them are a bit better than the entry level FX CPUs, as far as I know (at least when not overclocked), but they require a special CPU socket that is not compatible with the newer AMD CPUs (requiring AM3+ sockets). So I'd go with a FX CPU and a matching mainboard. This probably gives you the possibility to upgrade later.

 

You really shouldn't be cheap on the graphics card. The Radeon 6450 is a really really really weak GPU, you won't have any fun playing the game with that piece. As a rough reference I use this site: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/mid_range_gpus.html

 

You shouldn't take a graphics card that scores below 1200 points in that benchmark tests. And should you buy the rig you posted with that FX 6100 any GPU scoring below 2000 will bottleneck your system's gaming power massively. If you are on a budget, go for something like the Radeon 7770 or 7790, GeForce 650 Ti or something like that. Spending more, around 150 - 200 $ would get you the best solution, though.

I had to go back and look to make sure this wasn't a necroed post. I completely agree. The Radeon 6450 is a $30 card and you want to run it on high settings? Buying those bundles like that is really kind of silly. For one, that's someone else's idea of a good computer. Read up on the many, many websites about this kind of stuff. Don't take any one source's opinion. Research and then come back with an idea of what YOU want.

 

Post your old rigs parts and we can see what you do and don't need. That bundle just makes me cringe. Not for what it is, but for all the crap you don't need. For one, my case is only my second case, after 20 years of computing. Only because I liked the clip in, tool-less cases they have now. Plus I no longer have to give blood to the Machine God when I work on it. Definite plus. If you can find all of the parts of your current rig on the net and post the links so we can see them, that would be great.

Edited September 22, 2013 by Thylbanus

Try this:

 

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/CYRI/Requirements/star-wars-the-old-republic/11174?p=a

 

run the app, and post your link here (like mine above)

 

Gives people an idea of your rig

 

(note: yes, mine is a bit outdated But runs smoothly)

Sorry my subscription ran out, and i couldn't reply again, until i renewed. Weird. Anyway, I ended up going with an AMD 6100 FX unlocked processor with 8gb RAM and just a simple crap video card to get me to my next big payday. Everything works great, except the video card only has 1GB so that slows it down and keeps me from getting any graphics higher than the lowest settings. At least it runs tho, without stuttering too. THx for the advice!