Some Basic Troubles

Hello everyone. Ok basically I am pretty new at building computers. Most of my information is going off of what "tech friends" tell me. Basically here is my situation. I had a computer built about 2 years ago and I was looking to upgrade it. The main purpose of the computer is to be a gaming platform and my old setup just frankly could not keep up anymore. After talking with said tech friends their main suggestion was a new video card. I decided if i was going to upgrade I might as well try to get some higher end stuff and ended up with a Radeon 6950 graphics card. Despite upgrading the card and the power supply the computer can still barely handle games on average to good graphics. Basically I am looking for advice on what I need to upgrade as I know the video card itself is not the issue. Here is the setup I am running;

Motherboard: Asus M4A785-M Rev
Processor: 2.90 gigahertz AMD Athlon II X4 635 quad core
Video Card: Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express
Memory: 4 gigs of ddr2 ram
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit.
Power Supply: Corsair tx 750

i have 4 more gigs of ram on the way but as I am sure you all know upgrading beyond 8 is expensive for ddr2 and it is something I would rather avoid. The only other thing I can figure from reading is that my processor is not up to snuff to handle the card. The first time I built this system it was a prebuild and I picked things without admittedly doing adequate research. So basically any advice on what I should upgrade, and more importantly, what i should upgrade to would be most appreciated. (And of course the end goal is to basically be able to run most games on high to max settings)

Also for a final point the video card runs fairly hot. I've often seen people make mention of various cooling systems they are using but know absolutely nothing about them or which type would be best for the setup I have. Any insight there as well would be awesome.

 

Hi and welcome to Computer Help Forums.
A couple of questions.
Are all cores unlocked and why didn't you use DDR3 memory?

 

My motherboard does not support ddr3 memory. I found this out after picking up some ddr3 and finding out it is not compatible. As to the unclocking question, I am going to assume no since I have no idea what unclocking a core does let alone how to do it. As I said I am pretty much a noob when it comes to computers lol.

 

Going by the specs it says DDR2 or DDR3.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5241602&CatId=3586

 

Yeah that is definitely the board. Ok well I guess this is where I am getting confused on the memory then. I picked up some ddr3 ripjaw memory from newegg. When i tried slotting it into my memory slot on the motherboard however, the notch in the actual memory did not line up with the raised part in the motherboard memory slot. (obviously not the technical terms but bear with me lol.) I checked out the memory already in the computer and the "notch" on my original memory is about in the center of the stick while on the newer memory it is further towards one end. Looking around a bit on newegg I discovered that all of the memory I could find with the notch in the middle were ddr2, while i could find no ddr3 memory that was configured that way. A friend suggested looking at the pin count but the pin count was 240 for both styles of memory. I've tried looking around for the difference but either I'm not looking in the right places or am just not typing in the right terms. Clearly I am missing something. I would be very happy if indeed I could get a hold of some ddr3 memory that actually slots into my motherboard, but I have been unable to find any.

Apologies again for being so far behind the curve here, but i appreciate your help.

 

Looking at the pic of the board - all 4 RAM slots are the same.

Also found this in the specs:
4 x DIMM, Max. 16 GB, DDR2 1200(O.C.)/1066*/800/667 ECC,Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory

And this direct from the Asus site:

4 x DIMM, Max. 16 GB, DDR2 1200(O.C.)/1066*/800/667 ECC,Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory
Dual Channel memory architecture
*We recommend that you install the DDR2 1200 memory modules on the yellow slots for better performance.
*Due to AMD CPU limitation, DDR2 1200(O.C.)/1066 is supported by AM3/AM2+ CPU for one DIMM per channel only.

No mention of DDR3.

The first link must have been an error in the typing.

 

To be honest there doesn't seem to be much wrong with that hardware, it should handle games well enough, the RAM won't help too much but wouldn't hurt, the HDD could possibly be a bit on the slow side (most likely 5400rpm?) but shouldn't be so slow that it affects your games.

If you could download Speccy from this link and post us the full specs and temps when you have played/attempted to play a game that would help -
http://www.piriform.com/speccy/download/standard

The most likely thing would be a software problem, you might have something installed that is bogging down the system.

But we'll await the hardware specs and temps and proceed further from there.

 

As Woodyblade suggested, when playing high end games, don't for example have Firefox open at the same time, close down everything else not important to run the game.
If online where online participation is required you should of course still have all security software enabled.
However if it is possible to run games without an internet connection, and I mean the plug pulled out, you could try turning off some of the security software and see if that helps, some makes of anti-virus hog a lot of system resources. I repeat, only if the connection to the internet is fully broken.

Nev.