02-26-2014, 05:38 AM
I built my first computer a few months ago, and I'm in the process of investigating upgrades for it. It was originally built as a general purpose budget rig for about $350. Here are the specs:
AMD A8-5600K Trinity 3.6GHz Quad-Core APU (Not OC'd)
4GB DDR3 (Should be upgrading to 8GB soon)
64-Bit Windows 7
While the computer was built for general use, I wanted to use a fairly powerful APU so I could do some gaming on it. It's working great so far, but it can't run PCSX2 as well as I'd like. If possible, I'd like to get a stable 30FPS with 2x resolution or higher. I'm already planning to get another 4GB DDR3 RAM stick, but I was wondering if adding a GPU would help. I read that CPU is more important than GPU when dealing with emulation, but I'm not sure if that applies to APUs. It wouldn't be an incredibly expensive GPU, but matching the graphical power of the APU should be in my price range. Additionally, I was thinking of buying an SSD to generally increase work speed. Would either of these options make a huge difference, or should I save PS2 emulation for when I build an actual gaming rig.
AMD A8-5600K Trinity 3.6GHz Quad-Core APU (Not OC'd)
4GB DDR3 (Should be upgrading to 8GB soon)
64-Bit Windows 7
While the computer was built for general use, I wanted to use a fairly powerful APU so I could do some gaming on it. It's working great so far, but it can't run PCSX2 as well as I'd like. If possible, I'd like to get a stable 30FPS with 2x resolution or higher. I'm already planning to get another 4GB DDR3 RAM stick, but I was wondering if adding a GPU would help. I read that CPU is more important than GPU when dealing with emulation, but I'm not sure if that applies to APUs. It wouldn't be an incredibly expensive GPU, but matching the graphical power of the APU should be in my price range. Additionally, I was thinking of buying an SSD to generally increase work speed. Would either of these options make a huge difference, or should I save PS2 emulation for when I build an actual gaming rig.