What to upgrade?

falken · Nov 9, 2014

Hey guys,

As the title says, I have been getting quite a bit of work which helped me save a fair bit of money to spoil myself

As games I'm really interested in are coming out: DA: Inquisition. FC4, The witcher 3, I realise I am probably in need of some upgrade for my pc. Here's what I got so far:

CPU: Intel i7 2600K 3.4GHZ

Mobo: Gigabyte GA Z68XP UD3 iSSD

Graph: Geforce GTX 580

RAM: G-Skill 4 x Ripjaws (4Gx2)DDR3

Sound Card: Asus Xonar Essence STX

PSU: Antec Truepower 750

Case: Antec DarkFleet 85

Monitors: Samsung SyncMaster SA950
Samsung SyncMaster 933AW

I'd like to know what are your thoughts on the matter. Personally I first wanted to upgrade the mobo and the graphic card.

Cheers in advance,

Falken

Theocnoob · Nov 9, 2014

No need to upgrade the mobo whatsoever. You won't gain anything from doing that. The GPU definitely needs an upgrade. You could also really use an SSD for your OS and your more demanding programs (read, things with slow load times).

I suggest a GTX 970 or 980 and a 250GB SSD such as an MX100 or 840 EVO.
Do you have an aftermarket CPU cooler? You could overclock your CPU, though it won't gain you anything visible in gaming.

rayraysfunhouse · Nov 9, 2014

Theocnoob said:
No need to upgrade the mobo whatsoever. You won't gain anything from doing that. The GPU definitely needs an upgrade. You could also really use an SSD for your OS and your more demanding programs (read, things with slow load times).

I suggest a GTX 970 or 980 and a 250GB SSD such as an MX100 or 840 EVO.
Do you have an aftermarket CPU cooler? You could overclock your CPU, though it won't gain you anything visible in gaming.

^This. Deffinitely GPU upgrade for the most part you still have a solid build. Maybe add another stick of ram to get 8gb

falken · Nov 9, 2014

Oh ok I didn't think the mobo would still be alright i usually will upgrade something or another every three years or so. I don't have an after market cpu cooler. I was gonna try my hand at watercooling earlier this year but I kinda ran into some financial troubles so I had to let it go. But now that I am much more stable I'd like to give it another shot.
As for the card I was looking at the 970, I heard it performs better than the 980

or a radeon R9 (I had an XFX before which I kinda really liked) but I am open to suggestions

falken · Nov 9, 2014

Btw I know it's a tad confusing the way I wrote it down but I have 16g of RAM: 4 Ripjaws

Sorry I am writing all of this before going to work so I'm rushing a little

rayraysfunhouse · Nov 9, 2014

falken said:
Btw I know it's a tad confusing the way I wrote it down but I have 16g of RAM: 4 Ripjaws Sorry I am writing all of this before going to work so I'm rushing a little

OOOOh I see that now. lol my bad

Theocnoob · Nov 9, 2014

falken said:
Oh ok I didn't think the mobo would still be alright i usually will upgrade something or another every three years or so. I don't have an after market cpu cooler. I was gonna try my hand at watercooling earlier this year but I kinda ran into some financial troubles so I had to let it go. But now that I am much more stable I'd like to give it another shot.
As for the card I was looking at the 970, I heard it performs better than the 980 or a radeon R9 (I had an XFX before which I kinda really liked) but I am open to suggestions

How can a lower end card outperform a higher end card? You can overclock a 970 to 980 level, but the card is not better than a 980.
An R9 290 is roughly equivalent in performance to a 970 and can be had now for $100 less (it was originally a nearly $500 card) than the 970. The catch is that it draws a lot more power, produces a lot more heat, and will not be DX12 compatible, so get the 970.

rayraysfunhouse · Nov 9, 2014

definitely go with one of the newer 970s at least.

Silver_Pharaoh · Nov 9, 2014

Pretty much just the GPU.

I'm pondering what to buy in terms of a CPU upgrade myself, but I think going new 4th gen + mobo is simply overkill.
Unless you do lots of video rendering and such, you really only need a stronger GPU to make a good rig.

280x or a 970 like mentioned before.

290 flashed to 290x if you really want to pack a punch for a long time

Theocnoob · Nov 9, 2014

Silver_Pharaoh said:
Pretty much just the GPU.

I'm pondering what to buy in terms of a CPU upgrade myself, but I think going new 4th gen + mobo is simply overkill.
Unless you do lots of video rendering and such, you really only need a stronger GPU to make a good rig.

280x or a 970 like mentioned before.

290 flashed to 290x if you really want to pack a punch for a long time

Don't confuse him. 280X is a bad buy in the USA due to the tiny diff in price vs the 290. And 290 is significantly better.

manu2b · Nov 9, 2014

And no 290 flash to 290x anymore.

falken · Nov 10, 2014

Thanks so much for all your replies. Well it will probably be between 290 and 970 or 980.
In my city nothing is cheap and as far as getting stuff shipped from the US I just don't trust the local post office to handle this correctly.
Any of you know if palit or msi are any good? Their cards over here are significantly cheaper.
@Theocnoob: you reckon I should get an aftermarket cpu cooler? So far only bad pc game ports have been hard on my pc.
also I'm gonna check a sata drive see how much I can get for them.

Theocnoob · Nov 10, 2014

falken said:
Thanks so much for all your replies. Well it will probably be between 290 and 970 or 980.
In my city nothing is cheap and as far as getting stuff shipped from the US I just don't trust the local post office to handle this correctly.
Any of you know if palit or msi are any good? Their cards over here are significantly cheaper.
@theocnoob: you reckon I should get an aftermarket cpu cooler? So far only bad pc game ports have been hard on my pc.
also I'm gonna check a sata drive see how much I can get for them.

What's a SATA drive? Most drives are SATA. Optical? Hdd? SSD?

Also what is a pc game port on a pc? Things aren't ported form one system to the same system.
|
#confused by your post.

Palit and MSI make decent GPUs. If you get a reference card then it doesn't matter WHO it's from. Avoid the 980 due to poor cost/performance ratio. Look at a 290 or a 970. If the 290 isn't WAY cheaper than the 970 get the 970. Didn't realize you were in the land of OZ.

falken · Nov 10, 2014

Haha sorry bout the rushed post I was typing during my break. I meant console port: evil within is a very good example of what im talking about

and ssd driveIis the other confusing bit.
And not only am I in the land of OZ but I had the very stupid idea to go live in the mining state where all is even more expensive than the rest of the country.
Anyhow I'll take on your advice for the gpu.
for the ssd I can just install winfows and all other programs on there and use my hdds for the games? And it will be quicker on startup and to open applications?

Theocnoob · Nov 10, 2014

falken said:
Haha sorry bout the rushed post I was typing during my break. I meant console port: evil within is a very good example of what im talking about and ssd driveIis the other confusing bit.
And not only am I in the land of OZ but I had the very stupid idea to go live in the mining state where all is even more expensive than the rest of the country.
Anyhow I'll take on your advice for the gpu.
for the ssd I can just install winfows and all other programs on there and use my hdds for the games? And it will be quicker on startup and to open applications?

SSDs read and write much faster than HDDs. This is generally true across the board, so anything on the SSD will be read faster, and anything you write to the SSD (assuming its from a fast enough source that the SSD can benefit from its high write speeds) will be faster versus other types of drives.

Anything actually on the SSD will be faster. Windows will load faster, programs will load faster, etc. Having an SSD has no benefit for programs installed on a hard drive though. And games on your hard drive will load at hard drive speeds.

The solution to this conundrum is to get a 1TB SSD, but unfortunately thats too expensive for most people right now. Eventually a 1TB SSD will cost like $100 but that day has not come. Most people buy a 120-256GB SSD and just put Windows and their most demanding programs on it and use a cheap HDD for everything else.

Silver_Pharaoh · Nov 10, 2014

Theocnoob said:
Don't confuse him. 280X is a bad buy in the USA due to the tiny diff in price vs the 290. And 290 is significantly better.

Oh. I didn't know that.. (the price diff, not the 290>280x

)

manu2b said:
And no 290 flash to 290x anymore.

Hmm? One can't do that anymore?

Theocnoob · Nov 10, 2014

Silver_Pharaoh said:
Oh. I didn't know that.. (the price diff, not the 290>280x )

The X doesn't stand for Xcellent or anything.

Ya the 280X is the ancient 7970 Ghz renamed 280X while the 290/290X use the newer Hawaii cores.

Here you can see the 280X (7970 Ghz) utterly smashed by the 290.

falken · Nov 12, 2014

Thanks so much, everyone, for your help.

I'm probably gonna get a 970 and a SSD drive

And then i'll get myself started with watercooling. I'm not sure what to do with my old gtx 580 tho.

Theocnoob · Nov 12, 2014

falken said:
Thanks so much, everyone, for your help.

I'm probably gonna get a 970 and a SSD drive And then i'll get myself started with watercooling. I'm not sure what to do with my old gtx 580 tho.

Sell it or use it for PhysX. It's worth about $100 used.

caddi daddi · Nov 12, 2014

good choice dude, and the bigger the ssd the better.

What to upgrade?

Registered

Member

Member

Registered

Registered

Member

Member

Member

Likes the big ones n00b Member

Member

Member

Registered

Member

Registered

Member

Likes the big ones n00b Member

Member

Registered

Member

Godzilla to ant hills

Similar threads