Old Rig Upgrade advice sought.

artaxerxes

artaxerxes

artaxerxes

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Moseley
My mate is running

ASUS SABERTOOTH P67 (CPUs supported)
i5-2400 @ 3.1GHz
With 2x4GB
AMD Radeon HD 6800 series
SSDs

The gfx is getting very long in the tooth.. and no good for the iiyama 24" 144Hz screen he has decided to upgrade to.

Obviously a further 2x4GB of RAM is indicated .. but what chip and gfx should he be looking at to run XCOM2, Battlefront well... and Diablo 3 and Dirty Bomb (DX9) at 144fps at 1080. And to have legs for a year or two...
 
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If you're looking at 144fps at 1080p, highest settings... I'd say you'd need dual 980's in SLI to get that sort of performance. Obviously dropping the settings down would help with some regard but you're still looking at high end cards (certainly if you want them to last a couple of years)
 
Eeek, I don't think he wants to go that mad on Dual 980s for £700-800! Diablo 3 is 4(?) years old and Dirty Bomb is DX9 and probably already do 144fps on the 6800!

So let me reframe... what is the best bang for buck upgrade for the current set up, with some longevity for the graphics card. Is an i7 worth it? Is the 980 state of the art right now... is it worth waiting for something in the pipeline?
 
Ah, D3 and dirty bomb should be fine, I was more thinking along the lines of Battlefront at 144fps((presuming you meant the new Star Wars one).. Possibly shouldn't have assumed mind you!)
That'll be the major one, due to it's newness and general graphics quality. A single 980 paired with a decent processor should be more than enough to chew through everything else and will still get around ~85-95 average on highest settings and you could easily get to 144fps if he's willing to compromise on the quality.
 
Thanks for all responses.

Budget depends on his bonus, lets say 600ish... 980 for 300 quid, 24" monitor for 200 and 50 for another 8GB of RAM... leave the chip well alone? Would it bottleneck the 980? Would he be better served just getting a cheapo 1080 24" screen that isnt 144Hz?
 
You will need to overclock the CPU and then that might still bottleneck a high end card a little.

I would get the 4 bins out of the 2400 and see how far you can push the bus before before buying anything, as a CPU upgrade with a higher frequency might be money better spent.
 
artaxerxes said:
Thanks for all responses.

Budget depends on his bonus, lets say 600ish... 980 for 300 quid, 24" monitor for 200 and 50 for another 8GB of RAM... leave the chip well alone? Would it bottleneck the 980? Would he be better served just getting a cheapo 1080 24" screen that isnt 144Hz?
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Whilst it's quite likely his i5 2400 will bottleneck a 980 at 1080p slightly, getting a modern GPU is still the best option within his budget because it will gain him far more performance than a new CPU. Also, he can probably get by with just the 8GB of RAM he has for a while yet. No games require 16GB of RAM.
 
theMilitant said:
Whilst it's quite likely his i5 2400 will bottleneck a 980 at 1080p slightly, getting a modern GPU is still the best option within his budget because it will gain him far more performance than a new CPU. Also, he can probably get by with just the 8GB of RAM he has for a while yet. No games require 16GB of RAM.
Click to expand...

I don't know so much. An i5-2400 @ 3.1GHz isn't going to cut the mustard so you will never see 144 FPS at 1920x1080. Not much point being graphics top heavy in this scenario.
 
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