Squeezing the last drops of life out of an old gaming PC

I have an old gaming computer and am wondering if i can just squeeze a little more life out of it before i buy a new one later this year.

The important bits of the spec:
AMD Athlon FX57.
Asus A8N-SLI (socket 939) motherboard (supports 16x PCI-E).
3GB DDR1 400MHz RAM (recently upgraded from 2GB). 3 sticks of 1GB each.
2 x 256MB NVIDIA 7800 GTX, in SLi mode.
I'm running 64-bit Windows XP Pro.

I'm thinking of a GPU upgrade to a £50-£60 card (some damn impressive ones available for less than that according to the latest issue of MicroMart), but i'm struggling to work out if i'm likely to get any noticeable benefit out of a better card because of the CPU bottleneck - the FX57 was one of the fastest single core processors, but games are multi-threaded these days so it lags far behind. I'm also concerned because i'd lose the SLi benefit so maybe it wouldn't even be much of an upgrade. Upgrading to the FX60 CPU is a no-no on cost basis, and there's not any other upgradeability left in the socket 939. I can't afford a new rig now, so is it worth spending the money on 'upgrading' the GPU? Or perhaps upgrading the RAM to 4GB would be more cost-effective? Maybe i should stretch to a more expensive GPU and take it to my next rig too?

Also consider cleaning out the existing systems of all unnecessary processes, services and old data; cleaning the registry; defragging the drive and registry.

Most systems operate at less than optimum efficiency, due to sneaky processes and services. Adobe, Media Player, Java, and HP are examples of companies which install startup services which do not need to be there.

See: http://www.camieabz.co.uk/startup.png

The grey ones are disabled startup processes. 35/41 disabled (85%). You can do similar things with the services if you know what you're doing.

Speed up boot times, reduce memory overhead. Get your system doing your stuff, and not its stuff.

Registry cleaner? I hope you're not serious. They do more harm than good.

The Java process should be left alone, otherwise, how will people know when to update?

You should certainly add the extra memory. With three memory modules installed, the controller will be running asymmetrically, which will slow things down. Make sure that the memory module you buy matches the other three exactly.

Once you have got your memory sorted out, you should do some benchmarking to establish where the bottlenecks in your system are. I'm no gamer but I would think that upgrading dual graphic cards on a mono-processor system is not going to get you very far.

You might want to look at getting an SSD drive. Even if the CPU is struggling, it will be able to pull stuff off the disk faster. This may give a significant improvement if the software is paging owing to lack of memory. You should do some system monitoring to see if this is happening.

Finally, are you gaming on-line? If so, is your internet connection fast enough for your gaming software?

it depends on what power supply you have to and what games you play alot of games these days are almost fully off loaded onto the GPU so CPU is left pretty much free

personally depends what make of GPU you want id raid ebay and find a cheap ATI HD6570 or something around the mid range from ATI or a Nivdia card mid range you will loose the crossfire but your current setup is DX9 and most new games if not all are DX11 so your card has to work twice as hard to dumb down the graphics so it can read and render it to the graphics cards setting

The Ram even though its 3 sticks shouldn't make much of a difference unless your running loads of programs so i wouldn't really bother with that

check your PSU the ATI HD6570 low profile dosnt need special connectors its all drawn from the board on the lowprofile version so should be fine with everything there

and just because its a nice small card it packs a hell of a punch like all new cards from the HD6xxx and HD7xxx and Nvidia GTX5xx GTX6xx

all in all shouldn't cost you more than £50

also check if your using a IDE or SATA 1.5 if its IDE id upgrade to a cheap SATA drive
id only invest in a SSD if i was taking it into my new Computer

In reply to a post by Zadeks:

Registry cleaner? I hope you're not serious. They do more harm than good.

The Java process should be left alone, otherwise, how will people know when to update?

Since I've been using a registry cleaner for ten or so years, I beg to differ. What harm do they do (in the right hands)?

The Java process is fine disabled for two reasons. First I know when to update if some applet doesn't work (e.g. TBB speedtest). Second, automatic updates for anything are not a great idea. Always better to wait a bit to see what effect they have on systems around the world. Not all updates are trouble-free.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Since I've been using a registry cleaner for ten or so years, I beg to differ. What harm do they do (in the right hands)?

The problem is sometimes they remove and change things that they shouldn't be doing. It doesn't matter if they are in the right hands or not, you are putting your trust in the person who programmed the registry cleaner in that they know what they are doing.

As it happens I do use them on my own computer every now and then, but that's because over the past years I've installed a fair share of junky software what what not which probably does cause issues, and a registry cleaner is likely to fix more issues than it creates.

However I wouldn't run them on servers or where only well written and behaved software has been installed.

Whether you should run them or not really does come down to each system on an individual level.

Registry cleaning cannot be automated without nasty consequences. How does a cleaner know the difference between a valid entry and an invalid entry? They are frowned upon for a reason. If you have proof of a registry cleaner doing more good than harm and improving performance, please link to it.

The majority of JVM apps will continue to work even if Java is out of date. Haven't you heard about the major Java exploits? Even US Homeland Security has issued a warning. http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/625617

The solution is to keep it up-to-date or even better, disable it in the browser. The same goes for all other software as malware loves to take advantage of vulnerabilities in out-of-date applications.

http://faceless39.hubpages.com/hub/Review-CCleaner-F...

I suggest we continue this elsewhere. It's getting far too off topic, and the point of my post was to save the OP hassle on upgrading hardware without checking the existing system for fixes first. It was not to get into a debate on what works for you or me.

Proper benchmarks, not a vague "review". Most people use the cleaner part of CCleaner, not the registry tool.

Edited by Zadeks (Sun 27-Jan-13 15:53:06)

It's possible to get a 3.6GHz quad-core AMD A8-5600K processor, a basic motherboard and 4GB of DDR3-1600 memory for about £130 in total. The A8 has on-board graphics that should easily beat a pair of SLI'd 7800s.

And the board will have a PCIe 16x slot so the option is there to fit a good graphics card later on.

During the last scare about a Java update that caused security flaws, I removed it from my systems. I haven't noticed the slightest difference.

Pretty impressed by the sheer number of directions you've all gone in. Thanks for the detail, although i'm in the computing field so it's mostly acting as reminders: i'll address things one by one:

The XP 64 bit is a clean install as of a couple of weeks ago, so no extra crapware. Don't do anything with the machine bar basic browsing and games so there's not much installed to clog it up. Have already disabled a few services etc, but don't see the need to take that too far and end up with a "why doesn't X work" headscratcher down the line, not for the few megs of RAM saving (better off just sticking another RAM module in if in doubt).

The old debate on registry cleaners does not apply as this is a clean system with minimal apps installed.

Having to run the RAM in single channel mode is not a major concern for me as the difference to performance is very minor, although considering the incredibly cheap price of RAM I might well add the extra matched stick as i suspect modern games might want more than 3GB even on low settings...

SSD/Hard drive performance is not relevant to me, it's not going to help my in-game FPS, as both mediums are several magnitudes slower than RAM and no good for use in-game (HDD is a 500GB SATA2 WD Black Caviar anyway, so no massive slouch). If any system is using it's pagefile, it'll crawl. The best solution is adding more RAM to prevent it having to use the pagefile!

Internet connection is 16Mbps+ down, 1Mbps up � fine for gaming (important point, mind).

The thing is, in previous years when I was bang up to date on hardware, you could and would get the CPU badly bottlenecking the GPU, and it's hard to know if that's really no longer the case or not with 'modern' games, as i'm concerned that the FX57 is a huge potential single-core bottleneck.

Nice to hear how cheap the new hardware is, but how would an A8-5600K compare? Would I regret not saving up something like an i5 i3570K build? I'm very reluctant to ever trust an onboard graphics solution for games though, they were always shockingly bad performers in the past... (there are also other factors such as a new case and PSU unfortunately, so this option will still have to wait, but if it's that cheap, perhaps not as long).

Edit: Just had a look and am very pleasantly surprised by GPU benchmark figures - the '£40' HD6570 benches about 3-4x faster than the 7800GTX. At that kind of money, i can afford to take the chance that the CPU will bottleneck it!

Edited by deleted (Thu 31-Jan-13 13:07:19)

Been doing a bit more reading, and for the noticeably better performance, i'd probably prefer the HD6670 - comparison to HD6570: http://www.hwcompare.com/10820/radeon-hd-6570-oem-1g...

I can take it with me to my new rig later this year then. Worth the extra £15. Probably.

Edit: Power is not going to be a problem. 7800 GTX's need 80W each from what i can find from Google. Both the ATi cards needs less, and i'd be replacing BOTH GTX's with ONE ATi card. My only concern is having the right connectors, so would need to do some checking on that.

Edited by deleted (Thu 31-Jan-13 13:17:40)

In reply to a post by BloodRazor:

Pretty impressed by the sheer number of directions you've all gone in.

Well, what did you expect?

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. Let us know how you get on.

The first thing I would suggest is doing a complete re-install.

This will clear out any junk which has gather on the system over the years and will give an immediate speed improvement.

A new GPU may also help but the processor isn't very powerful so it may not make much of a difference.

Have established through CPU benchmarks that the situation is worse for my existing build than i thought - the FX57 is somewhere around 5x slower than even the cheap A8-5600K processor, and probably around a tenth the speed of the decent i5.

There's no point upgrading graphics, or indeed, any of it, further with such a massive bottleneck in place, so will be looking at the new rig as the only sensible option.

As much as i like the A8 and i5 processors, i'm not going to go with either of them because they aren't the most future-proofed socket types. I want upgrade options, as a major priority. I'm looking at an AM3+ based build because i don't think the new Intel socket is established well enough yet to have a decent choice of 'cheaper' processors (hell i don't even know for sure that the new socket is available yet!)

If i was buying today, i would be going for a "Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition" (as recommended here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-cpu-review-over... ) with an ATi 1GB 6670 GPU. I can probably re-use my existing PSU, and maybe case too. I'll need new DDR3 RAM (i'm undecided between 2 x 2GB or stretching to 2 x 4GB to start with, although i want a board that can take 4 sticks for cheaper upgradeability), and as implied, the most future proofed AM3+ motherboard i can find. Hard drive will be the existing WD SATA2 Caviar 500GB to begin with. Irritatingly, i can't buy this build right now as 'life' has got in the way, although fingers are crossed for next month!

Upgrade path from that will be basically PSU/CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD HD/bigger monitor/keyboard/mouse on an as-and-when basis (Why the last 3 items? I'm using a 19" Viewsonic TFT monitor with a native resolution of 1280x1024. It was an awesome monitor ~8 years ago! Along with a cheap roller ball mouse and keyboard. Utterly woeful).

Looking back at the above, i must appear like an obcessive, i've got a build completed in my head, that i don't even intend to buy! (yet, i must add).