Help in upgrading a pc.

[ThermalReaper]

So, I've talked to Goku a bit and I guess I've found a good and cheap GPU that would work fine with the games I'm unable to play in this current form of my PC.
Would the current PC support: Radeon HD7750? And if not, what would I need to upgrade?
Another few GBs of ram when I eventually upgrade to 64 bit?

Specs:
Amd phenom II 710 X3 2.6 ghz
3 Gb of ram(DDR2, don't know how many sticks)
32 bit windows 7
Gigabyte GA-MA785G-UD3H
450 Watt psu(Don't know model yet)
And the piece of garbage I'm sure is making me unable to play games:
Amd Radeon 4200 HD.
As for resolution, I'm considering in the range of 1024x800 to 1200x1024

The games I'm unable to play:
Tribes ascend, black light retrubution: Absolutely terrible 11-17 FPS even on 600x400 and tweaks, barely playable.
Splinter Cell conviction, mirrors edge and dragon age origins: 25-19 FPS, playable, but barely fun compared to playing on my brother's laptop.
Sniper Elite v2, Crysis 1 and 2, The Mass effect series, The F.E.A.R Series, The Assassins creed series, borderlands, Deus ex:Human Revolution, and Bioshock: Unplayable. The maximum I've seen was 5 FPS.
My computer barely overheats and the only time I've truly felt that it needed a rest was 3 or 4 years ago, on a continuous week of 40+ temperatures.
I usually have on low settings but I don't want to max anything.
Also, is it worth it to upgrade my PSU a bit to support a 7770?

[Ieyasu]

AMD recommends a 500w or higher psu with one 75watt 6pin pci power connector for the 7770. You might be able to get by with your current psu, but I would look into getting a new one to be on the safe side.

the 7750 is compatible with your current motherboard so you shouldnt need to upgrade there if you dont want to. It also lists itself as requiring a 400w or larger psu as opposed to the 500w or better req on the 7770.

would help to know make and model of your psu as they are not all created equal.

with your lower resolutions you mention I dont think your cpu will bottleneck your performance until your fps get up to the 30s or above, but keep in mind that your cpu could also be the cause of some of your low frames youve seen in the listed games. have you monitored your resource usage to see what % of your gpu and cpu are being used when you experience these unplayable framerates in these games?

[Rbstr]

You need a new graphics card and a power supply. 450 is going to end up too low.
Overall you're not a disaster...more ram would be nice...but you'd need to go to 64bit Windows.

How much are you looking to spend?

[Goku]

I talked to the OP before in a other thread. He is from Egypt just FYI.

The 7700 series do not require any additional power connectors and are extremely power efficient. He probably get away with using a 7750 in that. Hes only playing 1024x768 to 1280x1024. He doesn't need that much GPU power as a result.

[Absentis]

Before I start, I should give a fair warning that I am no professional when it comes to this. The following is based on my research of your current system for compatibility with new parts and my personal experiences with parts where applicable.

Your PSU should be able to support a 7770, but not at its recommended power. I'm not entirely sure the 7770 would work with your motherboard since it requires PCI Express 3.0 x16 while your motherboard has PCI Express 2.0 x16. Your processor should be fine for a little while but you may want to think about overclocking or upgrading. Considering this, I'd suggest looking into a whole new PC since your motherboard and PSU may not support the 7770. You could also use more RAM. I wouldn't go with anything under 4GB, but I'd recommend 6GB just to be sure.

Here's what I suggest as a new system for all of those games assuming you're building your own PC (if any of this can be improved, feel free to correct me):

• Intel i5 (3570(k) if you're going to overclock, k-series tend to be more expensive, 2500(k) for cheaper variant) or AMD variant
• ASUS P8H61-M LE/CSM
• At least 4GB of RAM
• Radeon 6850 HD
• At least a 500W PSU
• Case and other parts such as a hard drive, disc reader, etc.

I'm not sure of the price at your location, so you'll have to figure that out yourself. This also may be slightly overkill.

[Ieyasu]

Originally Posted by Goku

The 7700 series do not require any additional power connectors and are extremely power efficient. He probably get away with using a 7750 in that. Hes only playing 1024x768 to 1280x1024. He doesn't need that much GPU power as a result.

the 7770 requires a 6 pin pcie power connection. the 7750 does not.

[Ailos]

PCIe x16 3.0 is backwards-compatible with PCIe x16 2.0, the card just won't have access to the higher bus speeds - which isn't a problem anyway, since the PCIe x16 3.0 interface hasn't actually yet been enabled in either NVidia's or AMD's drivers, and all 3.0 cards currently operate at 2.0 speeds, and they're just fine. The 3.0 is more for future generations anyway, modern cards can barely max out the 2.0 speeds given to them.

Also, the 500 W minimum is a conservative standard bottom line that all card manufacturers put there as a cover-your-ass measure. The 7750 ACTUALLY needs just 55 watts to run, so it'll pull everything it needs from the slot. The 7770 needs 80 watts, which is more, but not unreasonably so. From the sound of it, your PSU should be fine with either card, even if it is a little underrated.

I'm not too savvy with what retailers are available in Egypt, but assuming prices don't fluctuate too much around the world, I recommend the 7770 over the 7750 simply because you'll get a little more bang for your buck. But given the rest of your system, you might want to do this instead:

Your motherboard is has dual-channel configuration for ram, so I'm gonna guess what's in there is 2x1GB and 2x512MB sticks. Invest the $30 you save by going to the 7750 into a 4 GB kit (2 sticks of 2GB each), and plug them in in place of the 512 ones. Of course, you'll need to upgrade to 64-bit Windows to take advantage of all 6 GB of RAM, but doing so might improve your performance more than just buying the 7770.

[ThermalReaper]

Thank you all for the replies. I had a relative who knows in upgrading pcs who happened to come by today, and he took a look at the PSU and said that it's a good one and I probably won't need to change it for a few years.
Power supply is HEC-450TN-2WX.

Also, can someone explain the diffrence between 64 and 32 bit in using RAM and in general? Thanks.

[Goku]

My bad on the 7770. Thankfully I haven't recommended that to anyone yet I think.

That PSU seems to be ok as long you aren't looking for a higher end card. What do you have for power cables on it, like is there a six pin needed for the 7770? I still think a 7750 would be best for you though.

Your processor also is a quad core, but with one core disabled to make a tri core. There is a possibility you can unlock it to a quad for a potential performance boost. Read this guide here to see if you can get it to work.

64-bit vs 32 bit? 64-bit allows for using more than 4GB of ram, while 32-bit won't let you use more then 4GB.

[Ailos]

64-bit and 32-bit windows are different builds of windows that use different instruction sets at the most basic level (transistor logic level kind of thing), not dissimilar from the way that most ARM chips (like the kind in a smartphone or tablet) differ from computer chips. Your operating system serves as the system's manager and has to be able to communicate with everything in your PC at that most basic level of logic.

64-bit systems are the successors to 32-bit ones, just like the 32-bit ones replaced 16-bit ones. A 64-bit operating system contains instruction sets that can more efficiently manage larger amounts of resources, chief among which is the system memory. The biggest practical difference is this: any application running in a 32-bit system can address a maximum of only 2 GB of memory (not necessarily RAM, but just memory in general) because the address table as a whole in a 32-bit system is only 3.25 GB in size. An application in a 64-bit environment doesn't have that limitation. This means that if you're playing (for example) World of Warcraft on a 32-bit system, there's a chance that not all of the map may be loaded into fast memory, and at some point, you'll experience a slowdown when the next portion has to be loaded. In a 64-bit system, the whole thing gest loaded once, and you see no further slowdowns. The address table limitation is also the reason why a 32-bit system cannot recognize more than 3 GB of RAM. (If you install more, Windows 7 WILL show it as installed because the BIOS is reporting it, but it won't actually be usable.) So if you are going to install more RAM, you are going to need to upgrade to a 64-bit edition of Windows to be able to actually use it. There's not getting around that (unless you want to get into some rather serious drive management stuff... which I don't recommend).


TL;DR version: 64-bit systems are the successors to 32-bit ones, and are built to handle more resources more efficiently, things like more RAM, more caches, more cores and threads. Without it, adding more resources doesn't necessarily increase performance.