Gaming PC Issue (bottle necking etc.)?

Was playing Dragon Age: Origins and I'm lagging in battle and my processor usage is 100% when the game is running. Is there a cheap way to boost performance (Overclock etc.) prior to getting and updated rig? Below are the specs for this cpu.



Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.20GHz (2 CPUs)

NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250

Hard Drive: 250 GB (50 GB space available)

OS: Win XP 32 bit

Intel庐 Desktop Board

D955XBKGaming PC Issue (bottle necking etc.)?
You can build a new system pretty cheaply these days. This build would outrun what you have now.... plus if you wanted you could probably cannibalize some of the components from the system you have now.



$400 gaming pc: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gami鈥?/a>Gaming PC Issue (bottle necking etc.)?
Nope... not really.

The Pentium-D was Intel's first attempt at a dual-core processor and wasn't great. It had performance about identical to the older Pentium-4 except in applications which were coded to use the extra core. Overclocking didn't do much for Pentium-D chips, they just overheated quickly without getting much faster. During the Pentium-D era, AMD's Athlon 64 X2 chips were kicking Intel's butt.

If your motherboard accepted a Core 2 Duo processor, that would be a major improvement. But alas, it does not.

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboard鈥?/a>

In the Passmark CPU tests, your 3.2Ghz Pentium D scores 886, ranking 561st-best overall. Meanwhile the 2.13Ghz Core 2 Duo E6400 (one of the original Core 2 Duos from back in 2006) scores 1272, which is 422nd best. That's a jump of 139 places in the rankings with a first generation chip! Meanwhile, a 3.0Ghz Core 2 Duo E8400 scores 2244, which is 218th best overall.

Modern CPUs are so much faster than Pentium-D it's like night %26amp; day. Keep in mind that even Core 2 Duo is obsolete now, if you were building a new system you'd want to go with Core i3 or AMD Athlon II X3 as the best-performing low-cost choices.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.phpGaming PC Issue (bottle necking etc.)?
What motherboard is it? The CPU is the thing bottle necking the PC