Upgrade Help

[Thresh25]

Hi all,

I am considering an upgrade but am not sure if it will be worth it.

Here are my specs:

Intel Core i5-3450 Ivy Bridge Quad-Core 3.1GHz (3.5GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2500 BX80637I53450 - Newegg.com

BIOSTAR TZ77B LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS - Newegg.com

Newegg Premier Membership, Now Starting at $19.99 - Newegg.com

I also have a gtx 780 video card.

Essentially I want to get closer to maxing out Rome 2 total war and Attila Total War when it comes out.

I see that my processor has a "turbo" to 3.5ghz. I have no idea how to take advantage of this, will I see an improvement from 3.1 ghz to 3.5ghz?

Also, my motherboard can hold more and faster ram. Would I notice much of an upgrade from 8gigs to 16? Or instead just changing the 8 gigs of ram to the faster ram that my mobo can support? The motherboard specs say the faster times are with overclock, but I have no idea how to do that either.

Thanks in advance

 

[PP Mguire]

Turbo is automatic.

No you will not see a difference for that game going to 16GB or getting faster RAM.

The game is pretty much a CPU bound game but your processor isn't holding it back any. It's just not very optimized either.

 

[Thresh25]

That's pretty disappointing lol. I bought this video card this past summer thinking I'd be able to max out just about anything.

Would an upgrade to an i7 be worth it? I've never upgraded my cpu with the same motherboard, I've always done full system upgrades in the past. If I bought a new processor how does that process work, can I just pop it in and its good to do? Or do I have to reinstall windows and everything?

Thanks again

 

[PP Mguire]

No an i7 won't help you any. The game has a problem with the AI and it's pretty much not something you can really fix. Sort of like Supreme Commander, except in a different way.

The 780 is a great card, you're just in the wrong territory for it to shine.

Edit:

If you like you can run the vanilla game benchmark and I'll make some comparisons using my rig.

 

[Thresh25]

On Ultra settings (not extreme) I averaged 65 FPS. It did drop to 31FPS at one point for short bit though.

I should say these are ultra settings with some modifications. I turned depth of field on high, turned anti aliasing on, put texture filtering on x16, and turned vegetation alpha on.

I also checked the box for unlimited video memory, not sure if I should have that checked or not

 

[PP Mguire]

If you're running 1080p I'd turn AA off and turn DoF off regardless. DoF is a really dumb post process effect IMO and just hampers performance for blur.

 

[Thresh25]

I mean I kind of bought a 780 to play with AA on. Would I need a better graphics card to do this?