I just dropped 600.00 on a new evga classified 3 gig 580 graphics card because my old 295gtx was crapping out. I have it installed and while the graphics look better I am still not getting any better FPS.

My Specs.

ASUS mobo

evga graphics card

AMD phenom X4 940 @ 3.30

4 gigs of ddr2 1066 ram.

My question is is my CPU the bottleneck or is it the ram. Will going up to 16 gigs of ram help very much?

Going up to 16GB of RAM will do nothing, even 8GB won't aid you in any games right now. BF3 for example runs perfect for me @60 FPS on ultra at 1920x1080 with 4GB RAM. If I was building new I'd get 8GB because it's so cheap, but I don't plan on upgrading to 8GB on this machine until a game actually requires it, that'll be at least another 2 years I expect.

Your CPU should be okay, barely a bottleneck as most games are GPU limited, I would recommend sticking to Intel in the future as AMD are definitely having a rough few years, they are on the backfoot of Intel big time.

EDIT:So much for reading comprehension...

You should get decent FPS out of decent setting with that rig, but you probably can't raise the graphics a lot compared to before.

Both the RAM and CPU are a bit weak but you might have to change MOBO to upgrade, so it might not be worth it.

Well, depending on how much you upped your graphics, a higher fps isn't necessarily guaranteed. If you're not getting higer fps with the same settings you were using earlier though, I'd say something is wrong. I assume you made sure your mobo is good enough to fully utilize the new GPU?

Unfortunately I don't know much about AMD CPUs, but my first thought is that the CPU may be bottlenecking it. My second thought would be to upgrade your memory to 8gb DDR3 1600 RAM. But, I'm not expert.

@Sooty said:

Going up to 16GB of RAM will do nothing, even 8GB won't aid you in any games right now. BF3 for example runs perfect for me @60 FPS on ultra at 1920x1080 with 4GB RAM. If I was building new I'd get 8GB because it's so cheap, but I don't plan on upgrading to 8GB on this machine until a game actually requires it, that'll be at least another 2 years I expect.

Your CPU should be okay, barely a bottleneck as most games are GPU limited, I would recommend sticking to Intel in the future as AMD are definitely having a rough few years, they are on the backfoot of Intel big time.

So basically there is nothing I can do with my current mobo/cpu/ram setup to get games to run better?

what exactly are you trying to play? your specs are good. wait is that a phenom or phenom II?

@Funzzo said:

@Sooty said:

Going up to 16GB of RAM will do nothing, even 8GB won't aid you in any games right now. BF3 for example runs perfect for me @60 FPS on ultra at 1920x1080 with 4GB RAM. If I was building new I'd get 8GB because it's so cheap, but I don't plan on upgrading to 8GB on this machine until a game actually requires it, that'll be at least another 2 years I expect.

Your CPU should be okay, barely a bottleneck as most games are GPU limited, I would recommend sticking to Intel in the future as AMD are definitely having a rough few years, they are on the backfoot of Intel big time.

So basically there is nothing I can do with my current mobo/cpu/ram setup to get games to run better?

Spend any money you are thinking of spending on RAM on an SSD instead, now that will be a noticeable upgrade!

Also in regards to you not getting better FPS, if the graphics look better then you have the settings higher right? If so that obviously explains why the FPS hasn't increased a dramatic amount, I'm sure if you run the game at the same settings as your old card you will see a dramatic FPS difference, make sure you disable v-sync to see the correct numbers.

I struggle to see how a 3.3Ghz quad core is being a bottleneck here, unless those CPUs are just bad. It seems to hold up well enough against an older Intel i7 at least, I'm on an older, but 4Ghz quad core i5 and my card doesn't seem to be bottlenecked at all. (my card is a heavily OC'd GTX 470 which is identical to GTX 570 performance)

My mobo is kinda old but it has PCI-E 2.0 and can only use DDR2 ram. I only have the funds right now to upgrade the ram and I figured more ram would make the games run better. also my CPU is at 10% overclock.

@Funzzo said:

My mobo is kinda old but it has PCI-E 2.0 and can only use DDR2 ram. I only have the funds right now to upgrade the ram and I figured more ram would make the games run better. also my CPU is at 10% overclock.

Ahhhhh. I can't comment on the RAM then, I have the fastest type of DDR3 available, I'm not sure how much better fast DDR3 is vs slower DDR2, maybe it has more of an impact than I think. (I mean on gaming)

I don't think increasing the amount of RAM will really help though as games just don't utilise it all.

@hughesman said:

what exactly are you trying to play? your specs are good. wait is that a phenom or phenom II?

its a Phenom II. I am trying to play most new games like saint row 3 or BF3.

@Sooty said:

Spend any money you are thinking of spending on RAM on an SSD instead, now that will be a noticeable upgrade!

This isn't a bad idea. When I built my computer I installed a SSD drive as my boot drive and for main applications. I then installed a 1TB drive to house my games, videos, music, documents, etc. I can't believe how frelling fast the SSD is! My machine boots in 8 seconds.

@bonorbitz said:

@Sooty said:

Spend any money you are thinking of spending on RAM on an SSD instead, now that will be a noticeable upgrade!

This isn't a bad idea. When I built my computer I installed a SSD drive as my boot drive and for main applications. I then installed a 1TB drive to house my games, videos, music, documents, etc. I can't believe how frelling fast the SSD is! My machine boots in 8 seconds.

That's pretty much my set up, I use Steam Mover to move games I currently play a lot onto my SSD and it's flawless. I have BF3 on there too and the loading times are like halved, BF3 maps with 64 players load in like 10-15 seconds, it felt closer to 30-40 on my old drive.

Whats games are you playing, TC? Your specs seem fine to me. I'm running an I7 950 (stock speeds), 2 x EVGA GTX 460 SC, and I can't quite remember what my mobo is at the moment but I'm pretty easily maxing most stuff.

A 580 isn't a huge upgrade from a 295; the 295 was a powerhouse when it came out and is still superior to what most people are using now.

@Sooty said:

@bonorbitz said:

@Sooty said:

Spend any money you are thinking of spending on RAM on an SSD instead, now that will be a noticeable upgrade!

This isn't a bad idea. When I built my computer I installed a SSD drive as my boot drive and for main applications. I then installed a 1TB drive to house my games, videos, music, documents, etc. I can't believe how frelling fast the SSD is! My machine boots in 8 seconds.

That's pretty much my set up, I use Steam Mover to move games I currently play a lot onto my SSD and it's flawless. I have BF3 on there too and the loading times are like halved, BF3 maps with 64 players load in like 10-15 seconds, it felt closer to 30-40 on my old drive.

Nice! I don't know anything about this Steam Mover. Does it allow you to easily and flawlessly move games back-and-forth between drives whenever you want?

@bonorbitz said:

@Sooty said:

@bonorbitz said:

@Sooty said:

Spend any money you are thinking of spending on RAM on an SSD instead, now that will be a noticeable upgrade!

This isn't a bad idea. When I built my computer I installed a SSD drive as my boot drive and for main applications. I then installed a 1TB drive to house my games, videos, music, documents, etc. I can't believe how frelling fast the SSD is! My machine boots in 8 seconds.

That's pretty much my set up, I use Steam Mover to move games I currently play a lot onto my SSD and it's flawless. I have BF3 on there too and the loading times are like halved, BF3 maps with 64 players load in like 10-15 seconds, it felt closer to 30-40 on my old drive.

Nice! I don't know anything about this Steam Mover. Does it allow you to easily and flawlessly move games back-and-forth between drives whenever you want?

Yep you pretty much just select what games you want moved over and it runs a batch file, can take a few minutes but after that all is done, makes it really convenient. Reversing is the same process...just in reverse!

From the sounds of it I need to upgrade my aging mobo, get a SSD, some ddr3 ram, and an intel CPU. Ouch that's gunna cost me. Thanks for all the help guys. I now know what I need to do.

AMD...bah! I just don't trust those guys.

@Sooty said:

@bonorbitz said:

@Sooty said:

@bonorbitz said:

@Sooty said:

Spend any money you are thinking of spending on RAM on an SSD instead, now that will be a noticeable upgrade!

This isn't a bad idea. When I built my computer I installed a SSD drive as my boot drive and for main applications. I then installed a 1TB drive to house my games, videos, music, documents, etc. I can't believe how frelling fast the SSD is! My machine boots in 8 seconds.

That's pretty much my set up, I use Steam Mover to move games I currently play a lot onto my SSD and it's flawless. I have BF3 on there too and the loading times are like halved, BF3 maps with 64 players load in like 10-15 seconds, it felt closer to 30-40 on my old drive.

Nice! I don't know anything about this Steam Mover. Does it allow you to easily and flawlessly move games back-and-forth between drives whenever you want?

Yep you pretty much just select what games you want moved over and it runs a batch file, can take a few minutes but after that all is done, makes it really convenient. Reversing is the same process...just in reverse!

I'll look up Steam Mover. My TB HD that contains all my games seems pretty darn fast (7200rpm 6.0gb sata), but I'd like to see what my SSD can do for games.

Definitely something for Funzzo to consider.

A good SSD will be part of my next build for sure.

@Funzzo:

Here is what I would do: refund your 580 cause that thing is totall overkill, get an i5 2500k plus new mobo and ram, buy a temporary crappy card until nvidias new cards drop in april or just buy a gtx 570 instead. Cause unless you play at resolutions above 1080p this build will give you way better result than your current one. Did I also already mention that a 600 dollar 580 is ridicules?

Also an ssd is nice for windows boot up times and reducing load times but will not give you better frames at all so that is not "needed" for what you want to achieve.

@Funzzo Yeah, you got yourself an AM2+ cpu right there, and those cpus don't have DDR3 memory controllers in them. I have a 1090t x6 which is an AM3 socket.(got a really good deal on it a while ago) and while its never failed me and im getting good FPS with it i would have to agree with others here go with an intel. They are a tad more expensive but they're worth it.

@JoMate said:

@Funzzo:

Here is what I would do: refund your 580 cause that thing is totall overkill, get an i5 2500k plus new mobo and ram, buy a temporary crappy card until nvidias new cards drop in april or just buy a gtx 570 instead. Cause unless you play at resolutions above 1080p this build will give you way better result than your current one. Did I also already mention that a 600 dollar 580 is ridicules?

Also an ssd is nice for windows boot up times and reducing load times but will not give you better frames at all so that is not "needed" for what you want to achieve.

not sure if I can get a refund from newegg plus I opened it already. Also I still have my 295gtx.

@Funzzo Newegg will give you a refund if it hasn't been too long, but they will probably charge you a re-stock fee which is a percentage of the purchase price. If it's in good shape i recommend you sell that 295gtx on amazon if your looking for money to spend on other upgrades.

*shrug* Personally, I was running into grief (read: memory swapping) with 6GB RAM. I'm sure that 4GB is adequate, but if you are like me - you don't want to have to shut down your browser with 200 tabs, or any of the other software you've got running, just to start a game - or even want to run multiple games (hey! it happens!).

Since I upgraded, I can run all the stuff I want to without worrying about slowdowns and stuff. Quality of Life ftw.

@hughesman said:

@Funzzo Newegg will give you a refund if it hasn't been too long, but they will probably charge you a re-stock fee which is a percentage of the purchase price. If it's in good shape i recommend you sell that 295gtx on amazon if your looking for money to spend on other upgrades.

just got card yesterday. My 295 is so shot but it works. I dont want to take a huge hit on returning plus shipping loss and the cost of sending it back. But it sounds like I might have to. 15% restocking fee OUCH!!!

@Funzzo said:

From the sounds of it I need to upgrade my aging mobo, get a SSD, some ddr3 ram, and an intel CPU. Ouch that's gunna cost me. Thanks for all the help guys. I now know what I need to do.

Just to note none of that is going to give you faster framerates. 4 GBs of RAM is enough even on DDR2. Upgrading your RAM may make the game load more quickly, and cause less stuttering or pop-in (both geometry and texture pop in) but RAM doesn't really effect framerate. I'm not super familiar with your CPU, but I have an old first gen Core i7 and it has never caused a bottle neck for me. Your CPU is quad core and runs at a pretty fast clock speed so while you might seen some minor improvements, I wouldn't expect major framerate increases from that. Finally, a SSD will give you a big boost in load times, but again, won't effect framerate.

Your PC is just fine. It's just that a game like Battlefield 3 really can't be maxed out on any modern, single GPU setup. I can't comment about Saints Row, but the second one was a poorly optimized piece of trash, and I know both recent Red Faction games had major problems on the PC, so I would assume Saint's Row 3 is just really poorly coded. I wouldn't upgrade anything if I were you. What you have should work just fine for 90% of games out there. Just don't expect to run Battlefield 3 maxed out. You'd need the latest Core i7, and a dual GPU setup to make that run at above 60 fps. Keep the DX11 stuff off and you should be fine.

@Raven10 said:

I'm not super familiar with your CPU, but I have an old first gen Core i7 and it has never caused a bottle neck for me. Your CPU is quad core and runs at a pretty fast clock speed so while you might seen some minor improvements, I wouldn't expect major framerate increases from that. Finally, a SSD will give you a big boost in load times, but again, won't effect framerate.

Ahem, we are long past the days that clockspeeds determine how well a cpu can perform. As this link will show you an 2500k clocked at 3.3GHz is almost twice as good as the op's cpu without overclocks. So saying his fps won't go up by getting a new cpu is wrong better yet his framerates would greatly improve from a new cpu.

My 570 can run BF3,Saints Row 3 and Witcher 2 at 60ish fps without an issue on the very high/highest settings. Note that is is at 1920x1200.