I have a AMD Phenom X4 9850 2.5GHz 2MB L2 cache 2MB L3 cache, 7GB DDR2 800MHz Ram, a 1TB SATA HDD. A GTX 760 2GB GDDR5. A ASUS M4A785-M motherboard. Windows 7 64 bit ultimate. When I play Shift 2 Unleashed the game is not fluid motion. I am thinking my CPU is the bottleneck. I want your thoughts, thank you.
Mark
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It could be your system-RAM: DDR2, 800 MHz. Even with 7 GB of RAM (which is good), higher-end 3D games will tax your system. That means a motherboard and RAM upgrade are probably in order. Going up to DDR3 at 1600 MHz would probably make a noticeable difference, even if you only had 4 GB instead of 7. Adding more RAM @ 800 MHz probably won't make any difference. Faster RAM is always the first thing you can do to increase performance, but I'm betting that your MOBO doesn't handle faster RAM ???
All things considered, your CPU is very good but your L1 and L2 caches are also extremely important. 2 MB for an L2 cache is not very good for high-end gaming. Look for 6 or 8 MB in your L2, for a better experience.
If you want to get a more "fluid" 3D gaming experience at this point, you're probably looking at spending a little money for a major overhaul to your system.
Anonymous
Absolutely, your CPU is the bottleneck. Anything from AMD is useless garbage. Change your motherboard and CPU to Intel, and that should solve all your problems. I don't know why people buy garbage from AMD in the first place.
Get the Intel DH87RL motherboard (or DH87MC if you need PCI slots as well)
and the Intel Core i5-4670 CPU (i7-4770 if you need hyperthreading).
You also need some DDR3-1600 memory.
wdy_67
Easy enough to check. Start task manager (bottom center of screen right click and select start task manager) write down the cpu usage and memeory usage down.
Start your game.
Click the windows icon on the bottom left of your keyboard and now look at what your cpu and memory usage levels are. If your memory is using over 50% of available ram or CPU is over 80% you have the culprit.