My new (to me) PC

[Sigma85]

Lmao. i love these forums, its great to see all this after being offline for a few days.
And yes, the assumption I didn't buy the OS is correct. I am slowly realizing that the guy I got this PC from kind of talked it up and made it out to be more powerful than it is.

Its custom built alright, but not quite the "Custom gaming rig" he claimed. And the GPU, while it IS 2gb dedicated, even an ATI, it is also apparently not quite what one would expect when they hear those words. To be exact it is a Radeon R5 230...which is apparently a 5450 "rebadge"(?) Link.

And I am glad that the OS is 64 bit, not 32, but no I don't need Ultimate, and will not be using bitlocker, although I may do some things with Windows Media Center and my Xbox I couldn't have done before. But for $200, a 64 bit, dual-core 3Ghz processor, 2GB GPU, 4GB Ram PC, with a flatscreen monitor and this *super* cool Ford Mustang (sarcasm) mouse seemed like a good deal and certainly capable of running minecraft...

Since I got rid of Optifine, for the most part ,y fps is around 25-30. Render dist. is "short", most everything else is off, decreased particles, not minimal because I like rain sounds too much. Its tolerable, but not what I expected.Although now that I have the PC, I am considering upgrading it. The socket is 775 and it looks like I can get a quad core in it for under $60 if I wanted to, perhaps some more RAM, and a 2GB video card thats actually worth having, maybe this could become a decent gaming rig ? For right now though, I am just happy to be ABLE to play at all.

I've heard that without an official API, playing modded minecraft is like frankenstein's monster, a mish mash of coding habits and styles all flung together, I wonder if something like Oblvion would run faster on here...Hmmm. If I'm going to play last gen games though, I'm likely to mod the %$#@ out of them as well, maybe I'll stick to FTB and the "X" series for now...lol

 

[midi_sec]

your video card will play battlefield 4. just sayin.

 

[Sigma85]

Alright now, I was looking at my power plan earlier and went to the screen savers section, then clicked one, I dont remember which, let's just say "Mystify"; it doesn't matter. They're all the generic windows 7 bs. In the preview it said "The screen saver can't run because it requires a newer graphics card or one that supports Direct3D." ALL of the screen savers say this. I guess they are all "3D" nowadays...Anyway, my point is, are you telling me that this 2GB graphics card can't run a flipping screen saver !? I was better off with the crappy 128mb card I paid to have swapped out if this is true ! SURELY something is wrong right ? The AMD Catalyst Control Center reports I have Direct3D 9.14 something something and I have Direct X 11. WHY even MAKE this video card if it is not even capable of actually doing anything !? More importantly, why put 2GB of memory in it ? I don't understand...I could at least play Oblivon on my old laptops crappy Intel 128mb SHARED memory gpu. This new video card's box speaks lies I tell you. LIES !! "AMD HD3D - Sterescopic 3D Ready" ,"- Bullet physics engine for real-time 3D", "Ultimate Gaming Experience". LIES !!

Should I put my old card back in or am I missing something ? -it was a-n nvidia 7800 -LE 128 mb

And yes before anyone points it out, I know I said ATI before. MY bad y'all...it's AMD...

 

[midi_sec]

sounds like we may have found your problem. uninstall all nvidia drivers and software and do a clean install of some up to date ATI drivers for your card.

 

[Giddimani]

your video card will play battlefield 4. just sayin.

I don't know the real requirements of BF4, but according to this site it's a 3870 at minimum and the R5 230 doesn't come close to half the power of a 3870.


@Sigma85

I hate to say it, but the R5 230 is one of the slowest cards you can get for a dedicated gpu. It's raw power is only slightly above the 7800, but the (ridiculously oversized) 2GB make it superior so leave it in, but don't expect much from it. If I remember correctly it uses DDR3 which is incredible slow for a gpu.

But I don't understand why your friend put this card into it, the card goes for about 40€ but you can get a R7 240 for 50€ or a R7 250 for 65€ which have about 3-5x the power of your card.

 

[Sigma85]

I don't know the real requirements of BF4, but according to this site it's a 3870 at minimum and the R5 230 doesn't come close to half the power of a 3870.


@Sigma85

I hate to say it, but the R5 230 is one of the slowest cards you can get for a dedicated gpu. It's raw power is only slightly above the 7800, but the (ridiculously oversized) 2GB make it superior so leave it in, but don't expect much from it. If I remember correctly it uses DDR3 which is incredible slow for a gpu.

But I don't understand why your friend put this card into it, the card goes for about 40€ but you can get a R7 240 for 50€ or a R7 250 for 65€ which have about 3-5x the power of your card.

MY "friend" was an online local PC builder. Im sure he knew that if I heard 2GB Radeon card, I would assume it was a powerful card and bite. It worked. Maybe he bought the card thinking the same and wanted to pawn it off on me to pay for his mistake because he gave me the box it came in and everything like it wasn't too old. I guess I should do a little more research next time. Still though, for $200, this PC has some potential I think. Im open for suggestions but this is my plan:

Pentium Dual-Core @ 3Ghz -> upgrade to Q6600(?)
Radeon R5 230 -> Upgrade to ??? DEF need to do some research. A DDR5 1gb at the very least
4GB DDR3 Ram -> Upgrade to 8 (4gb x2)
This PC came with a 350 GB HDD & a 1 TB HDD, maybe I can trade one towards an SSD specifically for minecraft, or at least buy an SSD.

I can to these upgrades one at a time, and get the quad core for under $75 nowadays. This seems better for me than building a whole new PC. And then maybe when I get a tax return or something, THEN think about building a new more powerful machine.

Suggestions on what to upgrade first, and what to upgrade to are welcome. Last time I "built" a machine on PCPartPicker, I had a very nice build going for around $700 with 64 bit windows, an SSD, huge amounts of RAM and a great GPU, heck even some extra case fans and a fan controller, but like I said, that will have to wait until I'm not living paycheck to paycheck...

 

[TheReduxPL]

I think that for now you can just change your GPU and leave the rest. That way, you'll be able to build a new PC with way better configuration
Also it depends on how much you want to pay for a new GPU. Radeon HD7750, HD7770 or R7 260X seem to fit well for your PC. Also what PSU do you have?

 

[midi_sec]

I don't know the real requirements of BF4, but according to this site it's a 3870 at minimum and the R5 230 doesn't come close to half the power of a 3870.

Well, the video of it playing bf4 I looked at was for the 5450.

which is apparently a 5450 "rebadge"(?) Link.

Maybe he bought the card thinking the same and wanted to pawn it off on me to pay for his mistake because he gave me the box it came in and everything like it wasn't too old.

It's certainly possible that your "friend" heard a hot tip from the hardware modding community about this card. Sometimes rebadges do happen. Other times, you buy what should be a rebadge, but it's the wrong revision number and you end up with a $80 paperweight. I've got a couple of em myself that I've collected over the years.

 

[Giddimani]

MY "friend" was an online local PC builder. Im sure he knew that if I heard 2GB Radeon card, I would assume it was a powerful card and bite. It worked. Maybe he bought the card thinking the same and wanted to pawn it off on me to pay for his mistake because he gave me the box it came in and everything like it wasn't too old. I guess I should do a little more research next time. Still though, for $200, this PC has some potential I think. Im open for suggestions but this is my plan:

Pentium Dual-Core @ 3Ghz -> upgrade to Q6600(?)
Radeon R5 230 -> Upgrade to ??? DEF need to do some research. A DDR5 1gb at the very least
4GB DDR3 Ram -> Upgrade to 8 (4gb x2)
This PC came with a 350 GB HDD & a 1 TB HDD, maybe I can trade one towards an SSD specifically for minecraft, or at least buy an SSD.

I can to these upgrades one at a time, and get the quad core for under $75 nowadays. This seems better for me than building a whole new PC. And then maybe when I get a tax return or something, THEN think about building a new more powerful machine.

Suggestions on what to upgrade first, and what to upgrade to are welcome. Last time I "built" a machine on PCPartPicker, I had a very nice build going for around $700 with 64 bit windows, an SSD, huge amounts of RAM and a great GPU, heck even some extra case fans and a fan controller, but like I said, that will have to wait until I'm not living paycheck to paycheck...

I thought you bought the system from a friend, my mistake. 200$ isn't too much for the setup especially with a monitor, but it's quite limited.

Minecraft isn't good at multithreading so I don't know how much you really would benefit of upgrading to a quad-core cpu.

First please check your motherboard, the E5700 is a LGA775 cpu and there are socket775 motherboards that have DDR3 but the majority has only DDR2 support.

I would say upgrade the gpu, SSD is always good but not cheap so probably a little later. For now I would leave cpu and ram as it is and wait how the system performs with the new parts.

Regarding the gpu, at the low cost segment AMD is imo king, depending on your budget I would say the R7 250X (~80) or the R7 260X (~100) are good choices.

/edit: Prices in €, no idea how much $ the cards cost.

Well, the video of it playing bf4 I looked at was for the 5450.

Oh ok, I am quite surprised it runs on this card, I don't have BF4 so I don't know how well you can adjust details and how low the resolution was.

 

[Sigma85]

After manually reinstalling the drivers from the CD, I got direct3D working, I KNEW something was wrong, there's no WAY any modern card should have problems running a screen saver right ?! I had to let windows detect the card, then update the drivers with the CD once i logged in, THEN do a manual install with the CD to get it working right. not sure why, but everytime i let it do the auto install Diect3D support wasnt working. Anyways, the online info on this card makes it sound awful, but if the crappy 128 mb SHARED card I had on my laptop could at least RUN Oblivion, surely this one stands a chance right ? Fallout and Oblivion didnt even start before, even in windowed mode, now they're both running so I will see how well they really perform with the card actually working properly...
The ram i have is ddr3. I was only considering upgrading the processor because it would be so cheap and for other games than minecraft. With the card actually working, now I am thinking RAM is my next choice for an upgrade. Unfortunately I think this board only has one bank ! *grumble*

 

[midi_sec]

i never let my pc auto-do anything, especially driver installs.

you're using the drivers from the CD? honestly I would use current drivers, unless you see adverse performance with them.

 

[Sigma85]

i never let my pc auto-do anything, especially driver installs.

you're using the drivers from the CD? honestly I would use current drivers, unless you see adverse performance with them.

Well its not actually the drivers from the CD, when you use the cd it downloads them off the web unless you have no internet connection then an option to use the ones on the cd pops up. Even downloading direct X and direct 3D manually wasnt fixing my problems anyway. Must have been something that I installed with manual installation that fixed it, so its w/e to me. As long as it works for now...

 

[midi_sec]

Right on, congrats.