Best system upgrade path?

da2tha3

da2tha3

da2tha3

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Joined
3 Feb 2013
Posts
20
Hi all,

I'm considering upgrading my rig so I can play newer games on higher settings and was hoping you'd be able to advise on the best upgrade path. I'd imagine my 660ti is the bottleneck, but my case is relatively small and I'm not willing to change it as it fits in my entertainment centre perfectly.

Any advice would be most appreciated!

Here's my current rig for reference:

Silverstone grandia GD05B HTPC case
ASRock Z77 Pro4-M Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) Motherboard
Intel Core i7-3770
Zotac GTX 660ti AMP! Extreme Edition 2GB
Corsair CXM 600W Modular 80 PLUS PSU
Crucial M500 240GB SSD
Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB
Pioneer BDC-207DBK 8x BluRay ROM
Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz RAM
 
That looks like a solid system. What games are you struggling with? What res/setting are you using?

As you say the GPU is the weak point, without changing that you won't see an improvement.
 
^^Agreed

You've answered your own question really. You know the likely culprit is the GPU yet you don't want to change it. Without doing so you'll not see any worthwhile improvements. You don't want to change it due to the existing one fitting in that case - well your actual question should be "Is there a GPU upgrade that will fit in my case?"

The answer to that question is yes.

Depending on your budget the below will fit easily and be a big upgrade.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 "Mini-ITX" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (GV-N970IXOC-4GD) £259.99
Total : £269.59 (includes shipping : £8.00 Ex.VAT).

 
To be fair I'm not really struggling with too many games, it can even eke out some high settings on GTA V, but I do see it struggle if I bump up texture/shadow detail. Watchdogs (which I know is a resource hog and barely runs smoothly on anything) also struggled with everything up high at 1080p.

I also see issues with resource-hungry games (Crysis 2, GTA V) crashing out when the GPU is run at stock. I need to use MSI Afterburner to keep it from running too quickly (I think Zotac maybe screwed up the increased clock speed). If possible I'd like to push everything up higher and stop those crashes from happening.
 
That GTX 970 does indeed look sweet (and small, incredible that they manage to get so much performance into such a small package!)
 
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