Has my comp become outdated?

I built my comp around 1-2 years ago , and at that time it was considered a really good comp , but now Im noticing I cant run some games on the highest without lag , and even on high settings I notice its not 100% lag free.

My specs are -

Gfx - 260gtx 216 core
Ram - 3gigs 4200 ( I believe , or its the one ram higher )
Pros - q6600 quad core
Os - windows 7 x64

Is it the fact that my comp is outdated for some of the games now? or the problem is possibly something else? I just reformatted my comp to ( for windows 7 ) so it cant be a virus problem , If it is that my comp is outdated , what should I upgrade first?


PS: Games that I experience lag ( running on 1680x widescreen resolution )

- Mafia 2
- Metro 2022
- Just Cause 2
- TF2 ( yes , sometimes it lags )


- Thanks

Is it outdated? Yes. It's still a very nice build though, it's far from archaic.

You got another 2 years in it, mabey overclock some things down the road

Your comp is nowhere near outdated. You've got a great system there.

I think it's important to keep in mind that the most games are continuously pushing the envelope in terms of technology; therefore, running the most modern games on even the most modern system will always only give acceptable performance, not excellent performance. Usually, it isn't until at least one generation of hardware later that performance in those games becomes more fluid.

If you want the absolute best performance out of the most modern games, the closest you're going to get is to buy a top-end graphics solution - a costly and unjustifiable endeavor in my opinion. The graphics card you have now is a great card. I suspect that any issues you are having with performance are either (a) fairly normal and only seem worse than they really are (no offense), or (b) related to something else entirely, such as shoddy drivers (latest =/= greatest), forced AA/AF being left on, other programs running in the background, or insufficient power or cooling.

I'd also like to note that dialing back the graphics settings to tweak the best possible performance out of a game is actually one of the major advantages of PC gaming. ;)

As others have said, that's a good system and doesn't really need upgrading. I suppose you could try overclocking that cpu tthough, most people with that model have had success with good overclocks. Worth a try I suppose.

That PC still got much life in it!

The CPU is fine, and with a small OC it will blast thru most games, people saying it's outdated just don't know of what theyre speaking.

That GPU is just Fine, not many games out to tell it's outdated, it should run all games out with ease and even play most games with maximum ingame settings given a 1200p resolution, it lacks DX11 but there are still just a handfull of games supporting DX11 and all of thoose still plays fine with a DX9c/DX10.x card.

3GB PC2 4200 is a bit slow to be honest, but the gains from faster ram is very small if gaming is your main purpose with that PC, other tasks than gaming will benefit from faster and more ram.

Overclock, overclock and overclock! You can get that cpu to 3.6-3.8 on air if its the better stepping, overclock the gpu or buy another one cause their cheap and sli them if you can, if not thats all you can do.

Go into the bios, put the multiplier to it's highest, and start increasing FSB slowly, like 10 Mhz per OC till it's unstable. As for the Voltage, i leave it at auto, you could tamper with it yourself, but i never tried it.

I agree with the suggestion to overclock. I have almost the same exact setup, except i have 4gb of memory running @ 1066 and i had the standard gtx 260. I just upgraded to the gtx 460 this past week. Honestly, that q6600 is only a bottleneck if you're not running it @ about 3ghz. I consider it a mild overclock. Most boards should be able to handle that, and depending on your stepping you should be able to hit that without needing to touch your voltages. I hit 3.2 with this one but noticed no real difference in games so i stay @ 3ghz. Until you're ready to upgrade to a new board and an i5-i7, overclock that processor and stick with it. No real reason to otherwise. And you should not be getting ANY lag in TF2. The other 3, well metro is comparable to what Crysis was and Mafia 2, you should be ok. Try this site to get a better understanding..

Can you Run it?

Also, consider running some maintenance.. Defragmenting your drives is the #1 suggestion i'd recommend. Could be your drive's performing slower and that's why you're getting lag. Hope it's a 7200rpm, btw. If you need to check your performance try www.pcpitstop.com they have a great analyzer that'll test your system.

p.s. for the overclock, you just need to change your FSB (front side bus) to 1333 to achieve 3ghz. that's it. As long as you have adequate cooling, you should be fine. Though i'd still monitor your cores w/ a program like Core Temp. So long as you stay below 65oC @ load you'll be fine. idle should be in the 40s.

Also, consider running some maintenance.. Defragmenting your drives is the #1 suggestion i'd recommend. Could be your drive's performing slower and that's why you're getting lag. Hope it's a 7200rpm, btw. If you need to check your performance try www.pcpitstop.com they have a great analyzer that'll test your system.

p.s. for the overclock, you just need to change your FSB (front side bus) to 1333 to achieve 3ghz. that's it. As long as you have adequate cooling, you should be fine. Though i'd still monitor your cores w/ a program like Core Temp. So long as you stay below 65oC @ load you'll be fine. idle should be in the 40s.

SinzOfTheFallen