Computer support

[TheDvEight]

So I recently bought this,

http://www.argos.co.uk/product/7394551

I'm finding the gameplay of some games very laggy and i'm not too sure why - I can barely run PUBG so can understand it from that point of view ( what do i need to upgrade?.....the ram to 16gb? help).

But playing Arma on Sunday we had a lot of people on and I found the game very laggy almost as if the computer couldn't handle that many players.

My technical knowhow of pc's isn't that great and ideally i'd like games to run more smoothly - I'd also like to stream live (not necessarily a priority)  PUBG as this currently maxe's out my cpu and runs the game very laggy - it just about manages to record and save gameplay via shadowplay.

I'm not particularly too fussed about graphics and always found myself putting the settings to med/low (even though I could run it higher) as I prefer it that way but at times it's really horrible gaming because of the issues above & don't really understand why.

What do I need to upgrade to ease my issues.

Thanks in advance for advice given.

[Chaosphere]

Hi DD.

It sounds like you're experiencing a CPU bottleneck. I'll write a long and short version of this out just in case.. I rather enjoyed writing the long one!

Short version... The cpu in your pc is fairly weak. Its a dual core i3, which is just not built for CPU-heavy gaming or streaming. Games like 4 physical cores, and a more powerful cpu, like one of the i5 or i7s ones. You can try turning down the quality both in game (particularly draw/view distance) and when streaming, but if it still struggles then there isn't really any way to improve things other than with a whole new CPU.

You can replace the cpu with another LGA 1151 one, but this could be expensive. I would not suggest you do this alone if you have not before, but you could bring the parts to the LAN for us to help.

I would not upgrade the other parts of the PC (RAM and so on) at this time, I don't think they are the cause of the problem you are describing here.

Upgrading the graphics card (the 1050ti isn't a very powerful card, in the same way that the i3s aren't very powerful CPUs) would improve the performance in games (some more than others), but will have little impact on streaming - as this is a mostly CPU-dependent task. A new graphics card will cost you as much (if not more) than a new CPU, which is why I would personally upgrade the CPU first - it will improve performance in ALL of the areas you are struggling with.

PLEASE check with us or someone else in the know before you make any purchase though, as not ALL LGA 1151 CPUs will work in your PC due to potential differences in the motherboard.. if the CPU is a 'Kaby Lake' part, it should work, but a 'Coffee Lake' (also LGA 1151) CPU will likely NOT work with the rest of your PC.

[SPOILER=The LONG version ]That PC has a dual core i3 CPU. It has 2 cores and 4 'threads'.

So what does that mean? Think of it like water pipes, where the water is the information the CPU must process. That CPU has 2 physical pipes, but it's able to raise a divider in the middle of each pipe to split it into 2 lanes. When both dividers are up, it gives us 4 lanes for the water to travel through. These lanes are narrow though, as each is only half the width of the pipe. However you look at it, you're always still moving only 2 pipes worth of water at a time. It simply isn't going to move as much water as say 4 or more physical pipes.

This matters as games these days like 4 physical cores, or rather 4 physical pipes. Having 2 pipes, even with this divider that gives us 4 lanes, is not quite as good, as at the end of the day the water is still 2 pipes worth.

That's the first problem, that you've too few physical cores for CPU demanding processes like Arma and Streaming.

The next comes with the 'power' of those cores. That 3.9GHz number refers to the 'speed', but it's a bit more complicated than that. Those gigahertz are not all created equal. Here is where the i3 bit hampers you. An i3 CPU running at a speed of 3.9 will not perform anywhere near the level as an i5 or an i7 running at 3.9GHz. The CPU simply does less work per GHz than a 'better' CPU. i3 CPUs  are not built with cutting edge performance in mind, and they are not the best at intensive tasks like building large worlds (Arma) or processing bulk information behind the scenes (streaming).

To go back to the water works analogy, think of the i3 bit as the pump that drives the water through the pipes. An i3 pump isn't as powerful as an i5 pump. Even if they run at the same speed, the i3 moves less water per minute than an i5 (or i7) pump.

This leaves you with too few pipes and too slow a pump. It will work fine for small volumes of water (simple applications and day to day PC use), and games that don't rely on the CPU too much should be OK. Some games though rely on the CPU more than the graphics (or comparatively more at least), and these will not run as well on the CPU. You're trying to move more water than the system can handle. Streaming is an incredibly CPU intensive task.. It's like you're trying to push a tsunami through a house water pipe... It just won't work well at all.

So what can you do? Well, first you can try turning down the water. This means turning down things like the draw/view distance in ARMA, or turning down the quality of what you are trying to stream (480p instead of 720p and 30 fps instead of 60, for example). This may still not be enough. If you find the system still struggles even with your lowest tolerable settings, I'm afraid you're out of luck.. The only thing would be to replace the CPU.

Now, this is not impossible, but may be intimidating if you don't know your way around a PC. Your PC should support any Kaby Lake LGA 1151 CPU (careful here, as not all LGA 1151 CPUs are of the Kaby Lake family, and your motherboard may not support a different (e.g. Coffee Lake) CPU type - please check with us before you buy anything). Swapping one in involves dismantling the CPU and cooler and reassembling with the new CPU in place. If you've not done this before I would strongly suggest you either ask a friend for some help, watch a good number of YouTube how to videos, or (even better) bring the parts to the LAN and let one of us talk you through it. It's relatively easy to break things if you don't know what you're doing.

The downside of this is, of course, that it requires a whole new CPU, which can be expensive. This will always be the first thing you should upgrade on that PC (for better performance in things like ARMA and streaming at least). I would leave the RAM and HDDs and so on alone for now. The graphics card is OK, and some games would no doubt benefit from an upgrade there, but I would put this far below the CPU in terms of priority, and I do not believe that the graphics card is responsible for the problems you are describing. This is particularly true of your streaming related woes, as streaming is mostly CPU-dependent, and an upgrade to the graphics card would have little impact.

A graphics upgrade may up your ARMA and PUBG fps just as well as a CPU upgrade, but will not improve your PC's performance when streaming. A better CPU will likely improve all areas, which is why I have focused on the CPU here - a CPU is likely to provide the best 'bang for your buck'. As I said before, a dual core i3 just isn't built with heavy information processing (i.e. streaming) in mind. [/SPOILER]

Hope that is of some help.

[TheDvEight]

Nice explanation chaos cheers.

What cpu should I get for a budget say 150£ I tended to use https://www.aria.co.uk/ but I’m open to use another site.

Could I go down the used cpu route?


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[Chaosphere]

Well now that is a tricky question.

Problem is, although a new CPU will help, a new budget CPU may not bring about enough of a return to justify the investment. It's a case of spend £150 and get an upgrade that will improve things a bit, or save up £250 or so, and get the upgrade that will fix the problem entirely.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with the budget option, as I would rather spend £250 on a more permanent solution than £150 on a temporary one that I may end up regretting (and then dropping the £250 anyway 6 months down the road). I really would be concerned that you would get the £150 CPU and find it offered only a slight improvement in performance... its hard to say without directly testing with the rest of your machine, how much such a small upgrade would change. CPUs are still pricey bits of kit!

It is important I add that although a more powerful CPU will help significantly with streaming, and may buy you frames in Arma and PUBG, you may STILL then be limited in some games by your graphics card. A CPU upgrade may help a fair bit with some of the stuttering and frame drops, but it may not eliminate them.

As for a second hand CPU, there is no particular reason why not.. most CPUs have fairly good lifespans these days, as far as I am aware.

[sulky_uk]

i would contact their cus support and say that the advertising is misleading and that you bought a computer based on that and it is no where near having  the power, speed, and performance-enhancing extras you need to dominate. or is  Perfect for online gaming, the gfx card is close but the  cpu couldnt run anything more taxing than farm town. i would take a screen shot of the page, as they may change it. Depending how long you have had it, you could try to return it as not as advertisied. Just a thought.

[smilodon]

I did think the Argos description was borderline in the way it described the product.

[no peanuts]

I'm just curious, I'm assuming you've added an SSD of your own to that rig as you were selling a couple?!  If not, that's the first thing I'd do.

[Chaosphere]

I'm just curious, I'm assuming you've added an SSD of your own to that rig as you were selling a couple?!  If not, that's the first thing I'd do.

Pnuts is right that if there isn't an SSD in there, put one of the ones you're trying to sell in! It makes the whole computer much slicker... Just a better 'place to be'.

That said, to keep on topic, an SSD will have minimal impact on gaming or streaming. It'll help load times, and may improve the loading of certain textures, but even in a game as badly optimised (:norty:) as PUBG it shouldn't cause any significant stutters... I have run PUBG (with streaming) and ARMA from my Hdd with no problems - and this is also with 8GB ram, same as DD, so it's nothing to do with the textures being stored there instead of on the disk in my case.

Even for high quality (1080/60) video recording where large amounts of data are being written to the storage, an SSD isn't essential.. Hard drives can keep up with the demand from what I have found.

[TheDvEight]

I’m not interested I’m putting my ssd in their as I just don’t want to do that I bought the item not that long ago but have since lost the receipt doh.

I’m assuming I have to put an Intel cpu on there rather than the ?cost effective amd ? Say my budget went to 250 how long would the pc last me until I needed to upgrade.


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[Chaosphere]

You won't be able to fit an AMD CPU in there, that is correct. It's also a case of you get what you pay for. A good AMD CPU will cost more or less the same these days... Six of one, half dozen of the other perhaps.

As for how long, it depends on a few things.

We don't really know the specifics of the motherboard, I don't think it's mentioned on the Argos site (unless I missed it). Really it's only a case of if you would be able to add some more RAM later, as you may want 16GB eventually (8 is fine for now). I'm assuming this wouldn't be a problem, as I can't imagine an LGA 1151 motherboard without 4 RAM slots (as the CPUs support DDR4) but PCs like this often have custom motherboards that don't always conform to common standards. You could have a look inside, show us a photo and maybe we could answer this bit for you. Would be good to clarify...

The next bit is the graphics card. Although you've said you're OK with low settings, at some point that card will bottleneck. It may be fine for a good number of years, or games may shoot forward in graphical complexity and leave you in the dust sooner.. It's impossible to say. It's really important for me to reiterate here that changing the CPU may not completely rid you of these problems. I don't think the graphics card is causing what you describe, but it may be contributing. It could be the CPU upgrade improves things but doesn't fully fix the problem. I just want to be sure we are managing your expectations here, as most games need both a good CPU and a good graphics card, particularly if the PC is performing an intensive task like streaming in the background.

With that said, a £250 CPU, in a system where you are able to increase the RAM and always have the option of upgrading the graphics card later (this won't be a problem technically speaking) should last you 5+ years, I would say. Others may give more pessimistic estimates.. But there is mine. I'm still using an i7 4770k (2013) and don't see myself upgrading in the next year or two.

[TheDvEight]

So for ram I have an 8gb sk Hynix pc4 2400t

As for the motherboard I’ve checked several sites and it lists it nowhere it has the Lenovo stamp on it.  But not much else


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[TheDvEight]

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Motherboard is Lenovo 36d9 (u3e1)

[Gunda]

DD that has to be the worlds smallest picture taken on an iphone.  Do not sell your SSD.... get it in there takes like 5mins to open the case and plug it into a spare sata port.  drive will show up in windows probably as a D drive and you can then install your games on it. You would not be replacing anything just adding, unless you went down the route of re-installing windows on the ssd.. but since you are nervous about pc stuff maybe not something to try.  nice easy install guide: https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/desktop-pc/how-install-ssd-in-your-pc-3374767/

[BrotherTobious]

Also if your thinking about changing the cpu your gonna have to crack it open anyways.

[Chaosphere]

Is that a single stick of RAM??? The pictures are fairly hard to see (:devil:) but from what I can tell there are (at least) 2 RAM slots and only 1 stick?

If this is indeed the case then the easy first step is buying a second stick of RAM. Much cheaper than a CPU and may solve the problem entirely by itself tbh... I'll simply be floored if this is the case though, as how can any company sell any sort of 'gaming' PC with single channel memory?!?! Surely this can't be a real thing... I'll eat my hat if this is a real thing... Oh and lots of people should probably have words with Lenovo over misrepresentation as sulky said :roflmao:

If there are 2 sticks and I'm just being blind (looking closely I think there may be? Let's be sure before moving further) then you can ignore the RAM and we can get back to the CPU chat...

Can you get us some better pics? Particularly of the RAM areas? These are the thin horizontal sticks that rise up either side of the CPU, clipped in with little white tabs top and bottom.

And DD if you're not sure about the SSD, just bring one to the LAN (which yes I'm going to drag you to kicking and screaming eventually if you don't sign up of your own free will) I'm sure we can sort it for you on Sunday after the festivities... It's not a big job at all to install and move your OS to it.