What's holding back my PC?

[Musketman007]

I am currently having problems playing starcraft 2 and I was wondering if one of my PC components is holding back my systems performance.

Tech Specs:

Dell XPS 400

CPU- Intel Pentium D 2.8 Ghz

Memory- 4GB (2GB at 533 MHz and 2GB at 667 MHz)

I just upgraded my memory from from 2GB to 4GB and didn't really notice that much of a change, especially in SC2.

Video Card- Radeon HD 4850 1GB at 1280 x 1024 resoultion

PSU -375W

When playing starcraft 2, my screen often goes black during loading screens and takes over two minutes to come back to normal. I have removed old display drivers and updated them and still no change. Also my FPS is very low in game (reaches 1 sometimes and usually hangs around 2-11 in big battles). It recommends ultra settings, but I can hardly manage playing on medium settings. I was hoping that doubling the RAM to 4GB would solve the problem but it hasn't. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Alex N.

 

[Abstract Hero]

What's your OS? 32 or 64 bit?

 

[iPROTechman]

Might be a wild guess but Ive had this problem before. Your power supply might not be powerful enough to supply the juice to your system, especially when under load. I'm guessing it's a cheap unbranded one. you may want to upgrade the power supply to something bigger to ensure stability such as :

OCZ StealthXStream 2 500W Power Supply - Aria Technology

or :

OCZ OCZ400SXS-UK StealthXStream 400W Silent ATX2.2 Power Supply - Aria PC

That's just my thoughts as the restof your system seems fine.

- Josh.

 

[Abstract Hero]

Might be a wild guess but Ive had this problem before. Your power supply might not be powerful enough to supply the juice to your system, especially when under load. I'm guessing it's a cheap unbranded one. you may want to upgrade the power supply to something bigger to ensure stability such as :

OCZ StealthXStream 2 500W Power Supply - Aria Technology

or :

OCZ OCZ400SXS-UK StealthXStream 400W Silent ATX2.2 Power Supply - Aria PC

That's just my thoughts as the restof your system seems fine.

- Josh.

+1 I didn't see till now what your psu was that's definitely a downer

 

[Musketman007]

32 bit, and the PSU is the stock one that came with the xps 400. I just spent 200 bucks upgrading my system, I feel like I'm slowly replacing every component in my system. I have never replaced a PSU before though, Is it difficult? Many of the wires seem to go into places that I won't be able to get into.

Also, you guys don't think my CPU is holding back my system at all do you?

 

[Fat.Clown]

your CPU is probably bottlenecking your HD 4850. however, it shouldn't cause black screens.

2 possible causes I think why the black screen is occuring;

1. same as above, your power supply is not providing enough power.
2. something is over heating.

 

[Abstract Hero]

With a 32-bit operating system you can only fully harness 3 gigs of ram so 1 gig isn't doing anything and It MIGHT being throwing off your balance for dual channel.

Would you kindly download cpuz and HWmonitor and post a screen shot of cpuz on the memory tab, hwmonitor, and "My Computer" properties?

This way we can see if you're running dual channel and see your temps

 

[Musketman007]

 

[Fernade10]

you should probably update your BIOS for better performance

 

[Abstract Hero]

So you're only harnessing 3.5gb of ram out of 4 so thats one issue that would be fixed by upgrading to 64bit but besides that I don't know why it would lag besides being underpowered