Spring RTS Engine

I have an Intel e2180 2.0 ghz OC at 2.7ghz with 2 giga ram and an ati hd 4850 with 512 ram.

When I play big games, like ffa with big eco and tons of units, my cpu often goes to 100% usage if games take longer than 40 or 50 minutes, and game become too slow for me and others players.

I have more fps since I use spring MT and I can play a bit longer, but it's not enough.

I dont have much money to invest into my computer, so what do you suggest?

My motherboard support lga775, I can invest 150 or 200 euros maximum.
My videocard have 2 dead capacitors but my system seems to be stable..

Do you suggest to buy a cpu and pray for videocard? do you think that quad core would work fine with 945gc chipset? Do you think that a good core2duo would be far better than my cpu? Or maybe you think I should wait to have more money to invest?

I need advices plz :)

on a budget (especially for a game without the best threading support like spring) I'd just recommend a fast dual core.

quad will pull way more power (which your motherboard/psu might not be able to handle), and have worse price to performance ratio for single-threaded apps

what's a site you would buy computer parts from?

ldlc maybe

get a 3ghz dual core for winz and sausages

recommended site: http://www.ebuyer.com/

get quad core

http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00082858.html

and for video card, you could do:
http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00095778.html
or
http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00096393.html

and you'd be around the 200Ôé¼ mark

Thx for your answers, but would I have more fps and less cpu lagging with the proc aegis recommend to me?

you get more FPS with a good GFX card.

I dont think a new GPU will help you too much with late game speed. But I would recommend an intel e8400, and a decent cooler. Then you can overclock it to at least 3.5 ghz, and it should run much faster than your current cpu.

Edit: the e7500 seems to be at a much nicer price point.

an advice: never overclock anything.

even when its done by the factory, it still fails.

i have intel core 2 quad Q6600 quad processor, and i have never felt i need more speed. its really cool too. has powersaving option also so it uses less power when 3 other cores arent used. (or none of them). it switches the GHz lower when its not using the cores much.

you know how they make different clocked CPUs in one series?
it is factory made overclocking.

just buy moar fps.

TradeMark wrote:an advice: never overclock anything.

even when its done by the factory, it still fails.

Lol fail

yes, it failed. luckily i still had warranty left...

Heres my view on overclocking:
If you buy in a shop (I do) you get at least 1 year warranty on the part, and since the shop has no way of telling wether you oc-d it, they will have to replace it. I find that the best way to go is just play dumb on return and dont say anything besides 'it doesnt work'.

Your chances of killing the part are highest before reaching a stable overclock - which one usually does after purchasing.

If your overclocking your not knocking that much off the lifetime of the part (since oc ppl dont tend to use a part for more than 3 years) and youll get back your value on a part that performs like a more expensive one.

Edit: to clarify, this goes for cpu and ram. GPUs already seem to operate at their very limits, with usually not more than 10% headroom.

overclocking is so 1999... used to be a trend back then. srsly, you dont need to OC anymore, things are enough fast already...

TradeMark wrote:overclocking is so 1999... used to be a trend back then. srsly, you dont need to OC anymore, things are enough fast already...

Unless you happen to be an engineer like me who runs simulation software for a job. At work I've got a relatively new (less than 1 year old) computer where I often max out it processors (dual quad cores, for a total of 8 cores/16 threads). The processors run at 3.00 Ghz. Most modern engineering simulations are multi-threaded, so I can easily get all 8 cores to 100% and keep them there for hours on end, depending on the complexity of what I'm running. Thermal/Fluid simulations are by far the worst. Even a small overclock (lets say 3.5 Ghz) could save me an hour per simulation.

All that being said, some of us just enjoy overclocking for the heck of it. It's fun to see what kind of speed you can squeeze out of a processor. My 4-year-old laptop has a GeForce 7400 Go, which is set to automatically overclock when I start a game. I push the core clock to 590 (from 450) and the memory clock to 940 (from 700). I've been running this for almost four years now with no adverse effects.

Anyways, to answer OP's question:
Unless you're regularly using software that takes advantage of more than two cores, I'd just get a dual-core for now and run a modest overclock if you feel like you need it. From what I understand of Spring, your CPU is often the bottleneck in big games, and that a faster clock speed will net higher FPS.

Mav wrote:Even a small overclock (lets say 3.5 Ghz) could save me an hour per simulation.

buy more cores.

triton wrote:Thx for your answers, but would I have more fps and less cpu lagging with the proc aegis recommend to me?

yes.

Almost everything you can buy is factory overclocked, and for the most part there are no problems. Sometimes even the lowest clocking available in a line is technically "overclocked".