Any tips on best way to upgrade this system?

Cerin_Amroth

Cerin_Amroth

Cerin_Amroth

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Hi all, been thinking lately about upgrading my home system a little, it is mostly used for WOW, SWTOR, LOTRO with some FPS shooter action, a little bit of XCOM(New One), movies and general internet usage.

System is a OCUK Titan Xenomorph AVP Edition PC, I3 2.9@4Ghz, 4Gb Geil Value DDR3, Radeon HD5770, 1TB Samsung Spinpoint, Gigabyte H55M-UDH2 micro-ATX board.

System generally runs ok, sluggish on startup, runs games ok but not superb, WOW for example runs fine until a heavyish amount on screen(Raiding for example) then stutters now and then. Runs Crysis 1 & 2 easy enough and stutters now and then in XCOM. Screen is a Dell 24" 1920x1080 IPS monitor so native res is quite high. Generally it feels like the graphics card is handling what i need it for, games all at native res with high graphics settings, never ultra, for example shadows in WOW kill it.

Not really wanting to build a new system or buy a new one, think this is still ok and perhaps some selective upgrades may just make the difference, anyone any ideas of what though, do you think for example the chip is fine with the OC, would more memory be enough, perhaps an SSD, think the memory is DDR3 1600Mhz but not sure what PCS rating, can you mix and match, been out of building for so long i just aint sure anymore!

Cheers
 
format windows for a start, see if that makes any difference

bit more memory yes

and a newer vga card

a sdd if all your after is quicker into your o/s as unless you buy a big one you won't get many apps / programs or games on it so they won't get the advantage either, but is nice to have have, but wouldn't be my first choice for you on a upgrade
 
Best action plan would be:

- 8GB Ram Upgrade
- i5 3570k possibly?
- SSD for a faster boot

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD120BW) £89.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £35.99
Total : £134.68 (includes shipping : £7.25).



Keep your current HDD for personal data, put your OS and applications on the SSD for a nice boost.


Although with the slow boot, it could be as simple as:

- disabling start-up processes
- Running software like CCleaner, to clear some space and remove some redundant registry entries.
- Defrag?

If you do choose to upgrade to an i5, the GFX would bottleneck your performance. At the moment you said GFX seems to manage, so at this point no need to flash the cash on GFX.

At the end of the day, its really what you can afford to spend. Hope this helps!
 
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I'd start by getting a SSD, you'll be amazed by the difference. Probably so much so you'll not need to upgrade anything else after.

There's no need to add more RAM. What you've got there is perfectly fine :)
 
Unless you spend ~£200 on an 1155mb and i5 ivy, the best upgrade would be a core i5-6xx or core i7-8xx processor second hand. Get another 4GB of ram also. Possibly also upgrade to 6950/70 gfx card at about £80-135 second hand.
 
I think on a budget, best bet would be a 2nd hand i5 760 and a 7850 2GB. If that's still cost too much, try overclockng your current i3 to 4.3-4.5GHz and upgrade your graphic from 5770 to 7850 2GB.
 
id say first of what sort of budget you got to play with?
personally id go better graphics and if u got a spare £££ get an ssd.

i remember my old skt 775 system :e8400 at stock with ssd and at the time high end graphics and that would handle everything i threw at it.

the amount of ram you have is fine for 99% of games, the cpu is fine too.
 
Re-install windows on a SSD (M5 pro 128GB, Crucial M4). You seem to have an issue with sluggishness, but not all-out performance.

Then GPU is a bit weak (HD7850, GTX 660 or higher), if you want better in-game graphics. Maybe a cheap 560ti / 6950 2GB, but they need a fair amount more power compared to the 5770 or the new GPUs.

4GB is OK. Can upgrade to cheap low-profile 1600MHz (XMS3, Vengeance LP, HyperX) 8GB if it's DDR3, then it's a straight swap.

Then processor (i5-3570K), and motherboard upgrade(Z77-D3H, P8Z77-V LX2) in case it's really not enough. Or an overclocked i5-750 if you can find a cheap one in the meanwhile waiting for the next gen (Haswell) or money.
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
SSD won't make his frame rate in games higher (apart from removing the potential "HDD lag")...it just make load time shorter...
Click to expand...

Cerin_Amroth said:
Generally it feels like the graphics card is handling what i need it for, games all at native res with high graphics settings, never ultra, for example shadows in WOW kill it.
Click to expand...

I'm talking from a overall performance point of view. A SSD would make everything so much snappier. His current HDD is the weakest component in his build. I'm an ex wow player and upgrading to a SSD made a huge difference for me. If I didn't regularly defrag I had terrible performance while raiding.

The upgrade from a HDD to SSD isn't to be underestimated :)
 
Bluntwrapped said:
I'm talking from a overall performance point of view. A SSD would make everything so much snappier. His current HDD is the weakest component in his build. I'm an ex wow player and upgrading to a SSD made a huge difference for me. If I didn't regularly defrag I had terrible performance while raiding.

The upgrade from a HDD to SSD isn't to be underestimated :)
Click to expand...
I think you are getting confused here. Nobody is saying SSD is not a good upgrade...in fact most of us are using one. However, the thing is SSD upgrade simply ISN'T the top of the priority list for getting decent frame rate in games that the OP is playing...5770 will really struggle for 1920 res no matter how you cut it.

I know HDD can be problematic if the particular drive have some issue preventing it from running smoothly (I have a WD 500GB 7,200rpm HDD which run like it has a cancer or something and struggle to breath), but most 7,200rpm drive that are without problem wouldn't have issue even in raid situation you mentioned. It's down to whether or not OP have problem with his particular drive.
 
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#1 - i5 3570k + Mobo
#2 - 7850 2GB graphics Card
#3 - 120GB SSD
#4 - 4GB extra of RAM
#5 - Western Digital 500GB HDD

That would be my list anyway :)

Done!
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
I think you are getting confused here. Nobody is saying SSD is not a good upgrade...in fact most of us are using one. However, the thing is SSD upgrade simply ISN'T the top of the priority list for getting decent frame rate in games that the OP is playing...5770 will really struggle for 1920 res no matter how you cut it.

I know HDD can be problematic if the particular drive have some issue preventing it from running smoothly (I have a WD 500GB 7,200rpm HDD which run like it has a cancer or something and struggle to breath), but most 7,200rpm drive that are without problem wouldn't have issue even in raid situation you mentioned. It's down to whether or not OP have problem with his particular drive.
Click to expand...

I don't think I'm getting confused. The OP stated that he believes his current graphics card is ok for his current needs. If he's generally happy with his FPS why recommend a new graphics card?

All I'm saying is i'd advise getting a SSD since the OP would be building on what he currently has as apposed to replacing components just for the sake of it. If you go down the line of replacing a cpu and motherboard you're just as well starting again from scratch.

If it's easier.. yes, the OP would be best with both a SSD and a new graphics card.
 
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