Dawn of War 2 on my new PC

ArPharazon

I recently bought a new PC for gaming. Its a dual core system with 8 gigs of RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 5450 video card with 1 gig of video ram.

Based on these figures you would think on normal settings playing it would be a breeze as it easily meets the minimum requirements. But its not. I had to turn down every setting to low for it to run at a stable framerate. The best I can get is an average of 40fps.

Could I be missing something or is the game just too graphically intense?

Seifer

You don't mention what resolution you're playing at so it's possible you could turn that down to turn some other settings up.
What speed is your cpu?
Regardless, that graphics card is terrible, it's one step up from an integrated graphics chip.

Mataguri

ArPharazon wrote: »

Could I be missing something or is the game just too graphically intense?

Something does appear to be off there. I'm running it with my GTX260 (pretty similar to your card afaik) at 1920 x 1200 with AA on and I'm still getting 50+ FPS. Have you tried any other games?

Overheal

Ive run DoW2 on less with the moderate settings quite smoothly, so something is amiss.

Make sure youre running stable drivers; and it wouldnt hurt to reseat the GPU and Ram.

Is the machine bought or built? To rule out a heating issue that may be forcing the machine to clock itself down.

Seifer

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3734&p=10

Dawn of War II is much like our other RTS: Battleforge. At maximum quality it’s not playable on the 5450 or similar cards, so we have to turn the settings way down to get a playable framerate. Here we had to go to 1024 at the lowest settings to break 30fps on the 5450.

ArPharazon

Im running it at the lowest resolution of 1024 x 768

My processor is Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz 2.80 GHz
Installed memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
64 bit Operating system

Edit: Thanks Seifer
Does this mean the card is rubbish for all games? I was thinking about getting Crysis.

Seifer

ArPharazon wrote: »

Im running it at the lowest resolution of 1024 x 768

My processor is Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz 2.80 GHz
Installed memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
64 bit Operating system

Edit: Thanks Seifer
Does this mean the card is rubbish for all games? I was thinking about getting Crysis.

That CPU is a quadcore (you refered to a dual core in your OP)

Here's Crisis: Warhead benchmarks from the same article:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3734&p=6

Once we drop down to Performance quality, we hike to up playable framerates at a cost visual fidelity. The 5450 is ahead of the GeForce 210 like we expected, but interestingly it’s behind the lower-clocked 4550. We can get just-playable framerates at 1280 here, and more than playable down at 1024.

So it'll run it but you won't be able to play it any where near the way it was meant to be played.

The card is rubbish for most modern games yes. It sticks out like a sore thumb in that system; I dunno if you built it or bought it completed but you'll need to change the card if you want to game on it.

ArPharazon

Thanks for that Seifer

I dont know enough about the hardware to build a PC myself.
I bought it off Dell who advertised it as a Gaming PC

I got shafted.

Overheal

The card i refer to in my own experience is (either) a 4850 I believe. in a dual core 2ghz with 2mb ram.

If you look at this chart: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

The 5450 actually ranks pretty low, ranked 231

the 4850 is ranked 31 overall.

And the 8400M in my laptop ranks 507. Hurray!

Moral of the story: the Model number (and the V-RAM) is not always the leading indicator of performance.


I got shafted

A little bit. But if its less than 30-90 days (sometimes 3-6 months on retail boxes) most Card manufacturers will let you Trade Up, much like a car. Dell will get the card back to use in another machine, and you pay the difference for an upgrade.

ArPharazon

Yeah I just presumed that it being I gig of VRAM that it was good.

Overheal

Video Ram stores Vertices and Texels, etc and serves some importances in running the passes for AA and AF but doesnt do any of the actual number crunching or the light mapping etc. For that you need to look at the cards clock speeds, teraflops, number of pipelines etc.

Or you could just gauge from benchmarking sites like passmark, which is what i wind up doing mostly. Still worth hitting up wikipedia and getting a deeper understanding of computer operation and hardware though. All the RAM in the world cant make up for a lousy FSB...

ArPharazon

Im thinking of sending my PC back to Dell and requesting a better Graphics Card.

A similar PC to mine on their website has " 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTS 240 "

Would boardsie's recommend this card?
Would DOW2 / Crysis play and look well with it?

Jonny7

Have a look at this graph

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_5450/29.html

See where your graphics card is? practically bottom of the pile, I still have no idea how all these companies aren't sued for false advertising with their "gaming pcs".

The GTS 240 is MUCH faster than your current card, but still only an entry level gaming card.

The good thing is, while it may be a dell, you have an extremely fast processor..

Plenty of ram too..

I would recommend an ATI 5770, low power draw, good performance, DX11 capable card, will run all games well coupled with that processor.
Should be about 130 euros on Pixmania.ie

marco_polo

Be wary that the cost of the upgrade from dell you would probably cost you a fair more than doing it yourself. Just flicking through their UK site and to change from a 5450 to a 5770 on an XPS system they are looking for 130 Sterling. You could buy it yourself for 130 euros as pointed out by jonny7 and sell the other card for a few quid on top of that.

Overheal

If you can SELL the existing card, you're better off. Im the kinda guy that hangs on to old hardware for some reason :pac:

But as Marco Polo said it can be easier to do the upgrade yourself. Get a modestly powered card as mentioned above (the uber cards will probably call for a PSU upgrade) and just pop the new card where the old card is, all you need is a phillips head screwdriver and an understanding about static electricity.

ScumLord

ArPharazon wrote: »

Thanks for that Seifer

I dont know enough about the hardware to build a PC myself.
I bought it off Dell who advertised it as a Gaming PC

I got shafted.

Sounds like false advertising to me, you should give them a bell and see what they'll do for you, it's a bit weak that they gave you such a powerful setup and then throw in a lame card claiming it's a gaming card. There's so many good cards out there that it's almost like they purposely chose the worst one.

ArPharazon

Thanks for everyones help.

I've decided to buy a new graphics card online. Im willing to spend up to €300. What cards would you guys recommend? (Links please)

marco_polo

ArPharazon wrote: »

Thanks for everyones help.

I've decided to buy a new graphics card online. Im willing to spend up to €300. What cards would you guys recommend? (Links please)

Two important questions are what sort of PSU in in the machine and what is the max resolution of your monitor?

Depending on the answers most likely either a HD5770 or a HD5850 are your best options.

Overheal

For 300 squid? I wish I had 300 squid! 5850 is the current mac daddy of all single cards right now.

ArPharazon

My highest resolution is 1920 x 1080.

Im sorry but I dont know what PSU is or how to find it out.

Seifer

It's your power supply. Should be listed in Watts (W) in your pc spec some where.

Jonny7

ArPharazon wrote: »

Thanks for everyones help.

I've decided to buy a new graphics card online. Im willing to spend up to €300. What cards would you guys recommend? (Links please)

300 euros is a lot to spend, you could very easily get a card that the PC cannot power or that is too long to fit inside

Seriously, the best thing you can do is open up the side panel on your PC and take a clear pic and post it here and..

The PSU is the square box with all the wires coming out, its the bit you plug the power cord into at the back of the PC.. there should be a sticker on the side of it.. either take a clear photo of that sticker and post it here or write down the numbers.. we're looking for how many watts it is and how strong the 12v is.

So to sum it up, open PC, take 2 pics and post em here.. then we'll recommend you a graphics card.. hopefully a 5850 which will blow you away.

Otherwise u can just give us the dell model of the PC and we'll look it up

ArPharazon

The specs on the dell website are

Dell Studio XPS 8100

StudioXPS 8100 - Intel Core i7 Processor 860 (2.80GHz, 8MB)
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit- English
Display Not Included
1GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 5450 graphics card
8192MB (4x2GB) 1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Memory
1TB Serial ATA (7200RPM) Hard Drive
DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD) with Roxio Easy CD and DVD Burn software
1 year of coverage included with your PC
McAfee® Security Centre 15 Month Protection
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Seifer

In tech specs for that model:

Power: 350 Watts

Which isn't great tbh.
You won't be able to get a 5850 or a 5770 anyway link

I'm sure someone else can make a recommendation but it's probable you may need to upgrade the psu to get a decent card in.

uberpixie

Seifer wrote: »

In tech specs for that model:

Power: 350 Watts

Which isn't great tbh.
You won't be able to get a 5850 or a 5770 anyway link

I'm sure someone else can make a recommendation but it's probable you may need to upgrade the psu to get a decent card in.

A 5770 would fit the bill and the OP will prob get away with it on a Dell 350W PSU.(PSU requirements are always overstated)

Would advise the OP to post on the Building and upgrading forum.

Overheal

In terms of wattage maybe but im not even sure the Dell PSU has the right cable/rail or whatever you call it, to juice up power hungry PCIe cards.

marco_polo

From reading around it seems that when dell upgrade the 8100 to a 5770 the 350w psu remains in there. So it should be just about ok. It must be very very tight though

Overheal

Nothing a hackshaw and cable ties cant cure

marco_polo

Slight correction that is with an i5 version. With an i7 on board i wouldnt like to chance it personally.

ArPharazon

Okay i've decided on getting a 5850 and yes I know I must get a better power supply.

Here is the card ive decided on: http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/4486530/art/msi/radeon-hd-5850-oc-1-gb-gd.html

Is there any other factors I should look into?

Antar Bolaeisk

Careful, last time I was looking at upgrading a Dell I discovered that they were using non-standard componets, for example the motherboard was a BTX standard and the power supply was also an awkward shape. This was about 4 years ago though so things have probably changed a lot since then.

You'd be better waiting for someone to confirm a standard PSU will fit into that case.

Jonny7

Physically check the length of the card, what is it 10 inches in length dual slot?

Check if you have that much space inside, use a measuring tape if possible.. sometimes Dell PC's have a lot of clutter and plastic in there making it hard to fit a big graphics card like a 5850.

A corsair 550 watt power supply should be fine, about 65 euros or so on Komplett, but again doublecheck if that Dell takes normal PSU's.

marco_polo

Unlike the Dell Dimension the XPS range seem to all have standard ATX supplies now so that should be fine. Like Jonny7 the length would have been be my main concern as well, as the 5850 is in the region of 10.5" or thereabouts, but people on other forums appear to be able to fit it into the XPS 8100 case without any problems so it seems, if in doubt no harm to get out the measuring tape to be sure.

Wossack

in my experience, upgrading a dell pc is a lesson in disappointment and frustration

the proprietary nature of them is just a nightmare..