Graphics card or processor?

[mattdanielc]

Hi guys

I have a pcspecialist pc from November 2010.

amd phenom II 965 3.4 ghz

1 gb nvidia GeForce gtx460

4 gb Samsung ddr3 dual-ddr3 1333mhz

Asus m4a78lt-m motherboard

Whenever I play games now it makes a right racket. When I play older games like medieval 2 or rome total war it does not make much noise, but when I play stuff like sims 3 or shogun total war 2 it makes a racket. I can't work out what is making the noise, maybe a faulty fan, the graphics card (fan) or the CPU. I'm guessing maybe the CPU, as the newer games use more cores or something?

Anyway I'm thinking of buying a new graphics card ready for Rome total war 2. I'm useless with building pc's - can I get a new graphics card for around £100 that is better than my old card? Also will it be easy for me to replace the old one? I tried to yank out the old one but couldn't figure it out so gave up...

Finally, perhaps the other thing I could upgrade is more RAM?

Thanks for any advice

 

[tom_gr7]

the noise will be because your hardware has to now work very hard to play the latest games. In short, as the system is a few years old the tech is quite a bit behind the latest tech (performance wise)

I'd suggest you look at saving up for some upgrades or a new build. The problem i can see is, if you got a new gpu and kept your cpu. It would probably cause a bottleneck in that the cpu cant keep up with the new gpu.

Total war's are very gpu and cpu demanding, so i dont think it would be wise to upgrade one or the other. Try and go for both, but this may prove expensive.

I'd suggest new mobo/cpu/ram and gpu.

 

[mattdanielc]

Thanks for the response. I think I'll try to persuade my wife to let me buy a new one then! Thanks