Quote:
Originally Posted by Hayamaneko
My question is if upgrading the GPU would improve overall performance to warrant doing or would I be better off saving money to upgrade everything else (CPU/RAM). Due to the limitations of my motherboard I cannot install any of the i3/i5/i7 processors or DDR3 RAM sticks, so I am wondering whether those limitations make upgrading the GPU rather pointless. To be clear I am looking for overall performance improvement on most regular PC task, such as internet browsing in video watching. I also play PC games and emulate old console games. The console games (specifically PS2) do not run smoothly so I am wondering if upgrading would improve those game running more smoothly
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No, upgrading the GPU won't help much with anything. I haven't been following PCSX development over the last year or so, but it has traditionally been heavily CPU-based and offloaded little to the graphics card. If things have changed recently then disregard that advice.
To determine what would result in the biggest performance boost you need to look at what's currently holding you back. Is your CPU usage frequently going up to 100%? If so then you've found your bottleneck and a newer CPU will improve your performance. Is your RAM usage frequently maxing out such that you have a large page file? If so then you've found your bottleneck and upgrading your RAM to a higher capacity will improve your performance. Are things just seemingly taking a long time to load even though CPU usage is fairly low and RAM usage is minimal to moderate? If so then the bottleneck may be your hard drive, and upgrading to a SSD will result in a more responsive system.