New vs. old PC setup... what should I expect?

Hey everyone, I just picked up a machine with these specs:
1. Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 socket 775 LGA 3.00 GHz
2. Gigabyte EP35-DS3L
3. Kingmax PC2-6400 (400 MHz) x2
4. ATI Radeon HD 3800 series 512 MB, 256-bit (CPU-Z says this, though the box on the card itself claims it's an HD 3870)
5. Chieftec 450W

So, here's my dilemma: what kind of gaming performance can I actually expect out of this thing? I'm fully aware it’s about seven years old—give or take—so I'm certainly not expecting it to touch any of the modern AAA titles. However, looking at the Call of Duty franchise, I played up through the second installment, so I was wondering if it could handle anything released after that. Also, is there any point in upgrading this rig, or am I just throwing good money after bad? If it is worth it, what specific parts should I look for? Let me know if you need any more details.

So, we're looking at 4GB of RAM? I guess you could probably run Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 reasonably well.

For an upgrade, maybe grab an NVIDIA Kepler. You could try overclocking the CPU to something like 3.6GHz and pair it with an R7 250X, a GTX 750, or an R7 260X for the GPU.

http://www.amazon.com/details/product-link-1
http://www.bestbuy.com/details/product-link-2

I’m thinking about saving up some cash for a new build—something with a socket 1150 setup...

Both could potentially stay on board when they transition to the new platform 😉

You might want to give it a shot—with a build like that, you could easily handle Modern Warfare 2, and you should even be able to run Modern Warfare 3 quite smoothly.

It’ll handle Modern Warfare 3 without any issues. I'm still running an Athlon paired with a GeForce 9600 GT, and I managed to get MW3 running pretty smoothly. That setup definitely still has some life left in it. You can overclock the processor quite well, which opens up the door for a GPU upgrade—that would give you a massive boost in gaming performance, just like crimsonstag84 mentioned. Don't expect miracles, though; you aren't going to be running Crysis 3 easily, but there's still plenty of stuff you can play. Plus, you can always carry that graphics card over to your next build. 😉

crimsonstag84 said:So we're looking at 4GB of RAM? Honestly, you could probably run Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 reasonably well on that.

If you're thinking about an upgrade, you might want to grab an NVIDIA Kepler, maybe push the processor with a little overclocking—say, up to 3.6GHz—and pair it with something like an R7 250X, a GTX 750, or an R7 260X for the GPU.

http://www.newegg.com/p/details/example-product-link-1gbd5-he/
http://www.newegg.com/p/details/example-product-link-6-775-fm1/

Yeah, I should have specified it's 2x2GB. I actually like the sound of that plan, mostly because my budget isn't exactly overflowing right now, so massive investments are out of the question. However, I think I could manage to treat myself to a decent new graphics card 🙂. Now, I just need to figure out how to handle the overclocking without breaking anything, haha. I'll spend some time digging through the tutorials on this forum; hopefully, it’s not as daunting as it looks. 🙂

Timothy Kim60 said:well, you could always give it a shot—a build like that should easily handle Modern Warfare or even Modern Warfare 2, and honestly, you'd probably get decent performance out of Modern Warfare 3 too.

Look, I don't own them yet. I’d certainly give them a go, but I have a policy against buying games just for the sake of it if I can't actually run them properly. That’s really the only reason I was asking.

A buddy of mine dealt with a similar bottleneck—he was running a lower-end CPU—and he used either a 3850 or a 3870 back in the day. I’m pretty sure he was playing MW3 on that setup. Later, he upgraded to an HD7750 DDR5, which is slightly more powerful than a modern Radeon R7 250 DDR5 but sits just below a 250X. Even with that, the game runs flawlessly in multiplayer mode.