Looking to upgrade for around 450-500

Murdo132

Murdo132

Murdo132

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Joined
29 Aug 2008
Posts
30
Evening all.

Been thinking of upgrading my system for a bit now, but not sure which way to go.

Current system spec:
CM HAF932
Asus P6TSE
INTEL i7 940 Bloomfield
3 x 4GB of Teamgroup Elite 1600MHz
Corsair H50 CPU Cooler
Agility 3 60GB SSD
MSI GeForce GTX 680 Power Edition 2048MB
Sandisk 128GB SSD
1TB Samsung HDD
Corsair 650 PSU

My Issue is i'm stuck trying to decide if i need more graphics or new board, CPU, RAM.

Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks in advance.
Murdo
 
Hi there,

May I ask what troubles you are having with the performance?

The CPU should still handle most games rather well (though increasing the overclock from 3GHz would be a good idea) and the GTX 680 is a nice graphics card. What resolution are you running at?
 
Thanks for the reply. yeah. Playing BF4 and DAY Z, primarily at the moment.

Running at 1920x1080.

Not entirely sure on how to overclock my system, bit of noob when it comes to that.

Just feel maybe the p6tse is getting a bit old, However the CPU will handle most stuff i throw at it. BUT.. All the boards now are for the newer chipsets!.
 
i agree, overclock the cpu first
it's a reasonably decent rig you have and i wouldn't jump to upgrade
(unless you have the upgrade itch, then just upgrade anyway ;p)

the only other suggestion is to get a better ssd
 
i agree with the above
read up and test how to reset ur bios so you dont have any panic moments :)
its worth the effort
if you got a new cpu the advice would be to overclock it anyway so...

see how you feel after that
 
Thanks for the replies. So overclock it first and see how i go.

Where should i be looking if i'm gonna try overclocking. website etc.
 
The P6T SE was a rather popular X58 board and had a decent reputation for overclocking IIRC. If you have a google around for "P6T SE overclocking guide" you should get a lot of hits. Also, the guides for the P6T and P6T Deluxe should be pretty similar.

One thing I will say is that in most games, your CPU will be more than a match for your graphics card (especially when overclocked). However, one of the exceptions is DayZ. This is a game made using the VBS engine which is a professional military simulator, not a streamlined consumer gaming engine. As a result the game tends to be VERY CPU heavy and performance scales largely with clockspeed and Instructions per clock (IPC) - which means faster clocked and newer CPUs will fare better.

Therefore, if you are playing a lot of DayZ/ARMA games or other games which are very heavy on the CPU then upgrading the motherboard and CPU to something like an i5 4670K or 4770K will yield significant performance gains. However, I would still try the overclock on your i7 940 first and see how you find the new performance level before buying new parts.
 
good advice. Thanks. Will give it a go and see how i get on. Yeah think Day Z is prob gonna be one of my fav games going forward, so better get it sorted sooner rather than later.. Whay Motherboard would you suggest to go with the i5 ..
 
Murdo132 said:
good advice. Thanks. Will give it a go and see how i get on. Yeah think Day Z is prob gonna be one of my fav games going forward, so better get it sorted sooner rather than later.. Whay Motherboard would you suggest to go with the i5 ..
Click to expand...

I would suggest either going for a Gigabyte Z87X-D3H or MSI Z87 G45 Gaming. Both are nice boards that can overclock well, run both main PCIE ports at x8 speed and are well priced. The ASUS Z87-A is also a good board in the same price range but I believe it doesn't overclock quite as well.

That said, the new Intel Haswell refresh CPUs and 9 series motherboards are expected in the next couple of months (likely June). So if you can hold off until then you will get slightly faster/newer tech for about the same money.
 
Yeah. Bigger ssd seems like a good choice. Will have a look at the boards also. Gonna try overclocking later on today after i've read up on it a bit.

Thanks Again
 
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