I have been very happy with my current setup until Natural Selection 2 came along. I have a Core 2 Duo E7300, a Palit HD 4870 1gb ddr5 and 2x4gb corsair vengenace ram (1600 running at lower speeds), motherboard Gigabyte EP45C-D3S. I've had 2gb ddr2 and HIS HD 3850 OC in the past, recently upgraded to this 4870 which has 2 axial type fans and is pretty power hungry and noisy and hot (idles 60c, max 75c) at 750/950 or 790/1050, same temps, slight artifacts when using the overclocked bios switch, there's under 5% performance difference so I keep it on normal. My Core 2 Duo can overclock fairly well, I run it at 3.2Ghz for natural selection, since i've noticed a little improvement over stock clock (feels <10%).
The thing is the game isn't that well optimized yet, I hope it will get better with time but I can't get my hopes up, I have a 2007-8 rig and it's showing it's age on new games (though most console port crap runs bad on anything). My T7700 2.4ghz laptop with nvidia quadro fx 570m ddr3 (an 8600gt with ddr3 and more shaders & pipelines)does a better job at low settings than my destkop, even when overclocked.
I want to run Natural Selection 2 and Chivalry a bit better than I currently do (10-20 more fps). I get 30 averege in NS2, 40-50 max, & as low as 15 in big fights or loading spikes, sometimes <20 in complex scenes, menu also lags.
I get the same results on any settings, r_stats shows me 0ms delay from GPU so it's clearly a CPU bottleneck. I tried 640x480/800x600 all low, even my native 1680x1050 all low, multiproc. on, around 35 fps, same as on high settings with the dreaded ambient occlusion on which doesn't make much lag. After testing some setings(max gives 35 fps as well), only Antialising and AO make it spike from 0ms to 7/15ms, but it's clear that my card can run it on high with no problem, on my native resolution.
There would be a definite benefit from upgrading to a quad core, but I can't spare much money now, as I figured buying a higher end cpu later would pay off later, and I don't need any graphical demanding games or programs to run.
My question is, what should I do, grab a second hand quad Yorkfield or even a q6600 to fit this rig or spend more on a newer quad core? Currently I am looking at the low end, around 200$, which would be enough in the states, prices here are 25% more. Not interested in i3 or other dual cores, they're not worth the investment, and if i can overclock to 4ghz, I might pass that, though heat will be a problem with my hd 4870, which i fear will only be solved with buying a new whole alltogether. (or reducing the 2d clocks and better airflow, anyone know if it's possible? idle temps are high but normal for this card, but the power consumption is not worth idling)
Thanks in advance.