Upgrade GPU.

[Sonic7 0]

Hi,

 

I'm about to upgrade my PC so that I can play some simulator games. How about this:

 

RAM = DDR2 2X1GB

 

Videocard = pcie EVGA GeForce GTX 650 TI 2GB

 

Processor = AMD Athlon x4 706K

 

I want to play Cities XL and Trainz 2012.

 

Thanks.

 

 

[Darth Apple 54]

For Cities XL, you'll want a CPU with a good clockrate and a few gigs of RAM. I'd recommend getting at least 3GB of RAM, and the higher the clockrate of the CPU, the better. (Cities XL is a single core game, so more cores don't really ease the bottleneck much. )

[Sonic7 0]

I cannot have anymore than 2G on board. I'm looking for a processor upgrade.

 

The quote function doesn't seem to be working.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

It will run Cities XL but don't expect the best results.

--Ocram

[ReneXL 16]

GPU upgrade, some rules of thumb:

 

- PCI-E 3.0

 

- Memory Interface (bandwidth) 256-bit (or more)

 

 

Read reviews, and especially overclocking (if your into that) forum topics, pick something that has excellent overclocking potential.

 

 

If you later upgrade other parts such as motherboard, ram and CPU, your GPU will already be good enough.

[kgw_games 11]

If you want a large city you need at least 4GB+  on a 64bit OS.

The GPU is OK.

In any case when the UI bogs down exit the map and reload due to the memory leaks in the game.

[ReneXL 16]

2GB is more than enough to host all the textures etc. of Cities XL. 

[Munchiez 74]

Cities XL runs great on my PC, I heard something about it having a old graphics engine from 2005 or something?

[Darth Apple 54]

Well the graphics engine is fairly old, but it's still pretty intensive. A large part of that is more or less because of the CPU bottleneck due to the gaming engine being single-core. You don't need a top notch GPU as much as you need a good CPU with a high clock rate. 

[GMT 389]

max 2gb ddr2 is like... soooo last millenium. I think my dad's almost 12yrs old pc has a 2gb max... but it's ddr1

 

hell, even my old board was able to handle more than 2gb ddr2 and it's almost 6yrs old now. go figure!

 

If I was you, I'd consider putting down some extra greens and buy a whole new system instead of upgrading.

[ReneXL 16]

2GB is more than enough to host all the textures etc. of Cities XL. 

 

I meant in the GPU, which all are GDDR5 today. Some might still have GDDR3 or AGP even.

 

I have played very very large cities, and I would save getting over 2GB of use of RAM, is not often. Medium sized cities will take around 600MB-1000MB. Of course graphics settings do apply some. And definitely mods, it's difference in performance of CXL to have some 100MB of mods than 500MB.

 

Compare CPU's that are available to your mainboard, that's what gives kick to CXL.

 

But think of, if you get mainboard, you might as well get DDR3 too, and then you'd have to upgrade CPU too or if you could find a motherboard that is backwards compatible with your current CPU, and upgrade CPU later.

 

 

Oh, on Win 32-bit Cities XL can use more than 2GB of ram.