Do i really need to upgrade?

[TW]Sponge · 18 Oct 2011 at 18:20

Hi guys, just wondering if I really need to upgrade anything, or will this last me for a fair while? I mostly play games and will be playing the new bf3, mw3 etc...

Also note I have a rubbish 1440x900 monitor.

AMD Phenom II 955be @3.8

Gigabyte 785gt mobo

Corsair xms3 4gb

GTX570

Am I bottlenecking anything? What would you upgrade? I may have around £500.

Cheers.

DazQ87 · 18 Oct 2011 at 18:34

Get yourself a bigger monitor then

or perhaps an SSD

[TW]Sponge · 18 Oct 2011 at 19:11

DazQ87 said:
Get yourself a bigger monitor then or perhaps an SSD

I was thinking maybe get the cpu/mobo/ram first to get better performance?

Would my Phenom be holding my 570 back?

[TW]Sponge · 18 Oct 2011 at 21:49

Any ideas? Might have to make the decision by tomorrow.

Tokin · 18 Oct 2011 at 22:06

If you feel the need to upgrade then upgrade,quite simple really.

mickyflinn · 18 Oct 2011 at 22:15

CPU comparision of 955 v 2500k

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/147?vs=56

SpoonedurI · 18 Oct 2011 at 22:19

I'd say you're fine. If you're really itching to upgrade then get a SSD

mattx2 · 18 Oct 2011 at 22:23

it depends on the game at a guess you would get maybe 10% more on most games getting an i5 unless the game is cpu heavy like civ or starcraft where it would be more like 50% but if your just playing fps games then you more than likely be hitting the gpu limit before the cpu limit.

Some interesting benchmarks here with a 580 to try and show my point
http://www.techspot.com/review/418-amd-a8-3850-apu/page10.html

personally I would upgrade the screen first get a nice 23" or 24" ips or 120hz tn if your serious about your fps gaming

King Damager · 18 Oct 2011 at 22:26

Bigger Monitor and a 128GB Crucial M4 and you'll be having no issues - ok, the Bigger monitor might create CPU bottlenecking, but very unlikely, GPU is more than up to scratch.

Guess you could argue 8GB of RAM, as that's what was recommended for the DX11 tecture packs for Crysis 2

ld

gee3000 · 18 Oct 2011 at 22:26

SpoonedurI said:
I'd say you're fine. If you're really itching to upgrade then get a SSD

+1

SSD vastly improves general performance, makes the hundreds of smaller actions you do a lot quicker, probably moreso than upgrading the guts, which would benefit the longer but less frequent tasks like rendering, archiving, extracting etc.

[TW]Sponge · 19 Oct 2011 at 16:50

Ok thanks guys, I'll get a nice monitor and an SSD then and save up for the guts later on.

Cheers.

rikky · 19 Oct 2011 at 17:10

Is an SSD going to improve BF3 performance - I was under the impression the game will simply load a lot quicker ...

[TW]Sponge · 19 Oct 2011 at 17:38

rikky said:
Is an SSD going to improve BF3 performance - I was under the impression the game will simply load a lot quicker ...

That's what I was just thinking??

beejjacobs · 19 Oct 2011 at 21:47

Yeah it'll decrease boot time and windows will feel generally more snappy. But it wont necessarily affect games. Definitely worth it though IMO

Moeks · 20 Oct 2011 at 07:03

Well BF3 is a largely gpu bound game I believe ...and there aren't all that many single cards that are faster than a GTX 570 anyway ...a bit faster sure, but also signficantly more expnesive, the GTX 570 is a great card. The CPU is fine really, it's still a modern quad core at a good clock speed. You would only really notice much here if you were playing heavily cpu dependant games.

So yea, indeed a monitor and an SSD would actually make the most differance to your computing experience, 8GB of RAM wouldn't go amiss either, it's cheap enough anyway.

Clav · 20 Oct 2011 at 08:17

I agree with the above, definitely get a better monitor. The 570 is complete overkill for gaming at such a low resolution. SSd will be a nice upgrade but should be secondary to the monitor.

rikky · 20 Oct 2011 at 18:53

Get a decent monitor or even better if you mainly game get a cheap Samsung LED TV and use that for your gaming sessions ...