Gaming My New Computer!

ThePowerOutage

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Just bought this PC *clicky*
Well, I didn't my dad did. But now we want to buy an better grafix card and possibly some more ram.
Any suggestions?
The last few Computers we have had have been custom builds so we haven't had to worry about this stuff.
PassMark (the first benchmark test on google) only gave it 735 when some computers are getting 1500+
Have any idea why?
I'll post details after school tomorrow.
 

nathancnc

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The reason for the low score is because of its low specs, sorry about your luck. This computer would be a high end rig about 5 years ago.

Firstly the AMD Athlon is very dated, around the times of the Pentium 4
3 GB of RAM is also low, most cheap computers come with at least 4, again high end rigs are 6 or 8
Hard Drive is a good capacity, no problems there
The graphics card is terrible
frown.gif
I have a computer that is 4.5 years old, and it came with a nvidia 9500 gt, which is a better card then yours.
 

ThePowerOutage

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I'll post more specs after school tomorrow.
Still got 28 days ( i think ) to return it so maybe...
Wish my Dad hadn't bought it without me
Any good alternatives under £500?
 

gov78

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well the thing about amd athlon is true BUT this is a amd athlon II x4 which is quad core which run on the AM3 socket which is the latest socket. The processor it self is just average basically i honestly would of went for a AMD Phenome II or Intel I Series. Ram isnt bad just get a gig stick or if u do swap it for a new 1 try n get 4gb. hard drive = fine. like everyone said the graphics card is pants. is about a good 3 years old.
 
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Just thought I'd throw in there, that if you plan on upgrading the processor/GPU you'll definitely also want to look into getting a decent PSU, as the one this computer came provided with is most likely crap and won't be able to support a dedicated card/stronger processor.
 

Rydian

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nathancnc said:
Firstly the AMD Athlon is very dated, around the times of the Pentium 4BULLSHIT, that's an Athlon II x4, which is one of the most recent processors.

QUOTE(nathancnc @ Oct 7 2010, 05:58 PM) 3 GB of RAM is also low, most cheap computers come with at least 4, again high end rigs are 6 or 8
3 is enough for gaming.
 

Advi

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nathancnc said:
The reason for the low score is because of its low specs, sorry about your luck. This computer would be a high end rig about 5 years ago.

Firstly the AMD Athlon is very dated, around the times of the Pentium 4
3 GB of RAM is also low, most cheap computers come with at least 4, again high end rigs are 6 or 8
Hard Drive is a good capacity, no problems there
The graphics card is terrible
frown.gif
I have a computer that is 4.5 years old, and it came with a nvidia 9500 gt, which is a better card then yours.
whut
the athlon series has been updated by AMD forever. that particular model is very recent
and you don't need that much ram to play games, the GPU and CPU will be doing most of the work, hell even 2gb is enough with the right parts
and of course the graphics card is shit, it's integrated. he can buy a new one whenever he wants, and even then it'll suit him just fine until he wants to play games
 

Joe88

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nathancnc said:
The reason for the low score is because of its low specs, sorry about your luck. This computer would be a high end rig about 5 years ago.

Firstly the AMD Athlon is very dated, around the times of the Pentium 4
3 GB of RAM is also low, most cheap computers come with at least 4, again high end rigs are 6 or 8
The graphics card is terrible
frown.gif
I have a computer that is 4.5 years old, and it came with a nvidia 9500 gt, which is a better card then yours.
theres so much wrong in this post

but I guess I will focus on the last statement

how did your 4 and a half year old computer somehow come with a 9500GT when it was only released 2 years ago...?
 

Hakoda

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Joe88 said:
nathancnc said:
The reason for the low score is because of its low specs, sorry about your luck. This computer would be a high end rig about 5 years ago.

Firstly the AMD Athlon is very dated, around the times of the Pentium 4
3 GB of RAM is also low, most cheap computers come with at least 4, again high end rigs are 6 or 8
The graphics card is terrible
frown.gif
I have a computer that is 4.5 years old, and it came with a nvidia 9500 gt, which is a better card then yours.
theres so munch wrong in this post

but I guess I will focus on the last statement

how did your 4 and a half year old computer somehow come with a 9500GT when it was only released 2 years ago...?
LMAO. There were so many things wrong with that post but I didn't even notice that one.

The one that caught my eye was the comparison between an AMD Athlon X4 and the Pentium 4. That CPU is pretty recent and I'm actually running as a matter of fact, goin' as smooth as a baby's butt.

@OP as said before the CPU and the GPU does most the work, not the RAM. New GPU and you'll be fine.
 

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Since the video card is shared 1024MB, you really only have 2GB of available ram. Still that's enough for most gaming, just don't expect to run the newest games on high settings. It also shouldn't have problems playing HD video, as that is mostly CPU/GPU intensive, and 1 gig of video memory is plenty, and as others have stated, the Athlon II X4 is more than adequate.

edit:
The main reason you're probably getting low bench scores is the onboard graphics. Whether that can be fixed is unclear based on the website you gave, all it says is that it doesn't have dedicated graphics, it doesn't say whether it actually has a PCI-E slot.
 

air2004

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First off stay awy from amd, I only had headaches with them ....2 , 3 gigs of ram is a enough and 8 gig will be pointless ifthe OS doenst use it all , or in the case of IE uses it all while it crashes
 

0ddity

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air2004 said:
First off stay awy from amd, I only had headaches with them ....2 , 3 gigs of ram is a enough and 8 gig will be pointless ifthe OS doenst use it all , or in the case of IE uses it all while it crashes

Nothing wrong with AMD, I've had both Intel and AMD systems, overclocked both, and had both run reliably for many years. Both companies have fan bases and haters, but they both have horror stories too. Your 2nd point, he only has 2 gigs of ram, 1 gig is shared with video. Its true that x86 only uses about 3.4 gigs max, but Win 7 64 can support 8 gigs, Home Premium 16 gigs, and Ultimate 128 gigs, and he has a 64 bit CPU.
 

lukecop80

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Rydian said:
nathancnc said:
Firstly the AMD Athlon is very dated, around the times of the Pentium 4BULLSHIT, that's an Athlon II x4, which is one of the most recent processors.

QUOTE(nathancnc @ Oct 7 2010, 05:58 PM) 3 GB of RAM is also low, most cheap computers come with at least 4, again high end rigs are 6 or 8
3 is enough for gaming.
lol my computer only has 1gb ram
 

Originality

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0ddity said:
Nothing wrong with AMD, I've had both Intel and AMD systems, overclocked both, and had both run reliably for many years. Both companies have fan bases and haters, but they both have horror stories too. Your 2nd point, he only has 2 gigs of ram, 1 gig is shared with video. Its true that x86 only uses about 3.4 gigs max, but Win 7 64 can support 8 gigs, Home Premium 16 gigs, and Ultimate 128 gigs, and he has a 64 bit CPU.
There is something wrong with AMD, but it has a good reason. For gaming, Intel CPUs can handle more Instructions Per Second which makes them better. To that end, Intel chips are generally 30% stronger than AMD chips with the same speeds. On the other hand, AMD chips are generally cheaper across the board, thus more suited to budget systems (the £200-400 range - at £500ish you can get a better Intel system than what AMD can offer).

With a £700 budget or more, there's no reason to use an AMD processor unless you're either looking for a specific purpose (certain applications do run faster on an AMD CPU - but not games) or if you're compromising (e.g to put more money into getting a better graphics card). Anyway, this is all academic, since the OP's computer has already been bought, and the budget was around the £500 mark anyway.

If you want to improve your computer, as has been said before, get any graphics card and stick it in. Look at your budget, see where up the graphic card scale it can land you (scan.co.uk is a good place to look for this), then double check to see if the power supply provided by Acer is powerful enough to run the computer with the graphics card added on (basically, find out if it's more than 400W or so). In your link it says it only uses 47W when powered, so that implies it only has a 250W PSU, but open it up and check to make sure.
 

ThePowerOutage

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After searching through the Acer website to no avail I managed to find this
"This model has two PCI Express expansion slots, one of which is x1, the other x16."
And thats it...
I'm trying to get the psu info atm, will post back then
 

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