pc upgrade question

jehova67 · 31 Dec 2018 at 02:39

my pc has a gtx 1050ti gpu, intel i5 8400 pcu, 2xdimm 2 2400 ram and asus prime z37p motherboard is there any thing i could upgrade to make it better for gaming, would more memory help as there are two empty slots, with a budget up to £500 ?

Bishie · 31 Dec 2018 at 02:48

Forget the RAM, upgrade the GPU instead!

jehova67 · 31 Dec 2018 at 04:23

thanks what would be the best gpu to suit my build?

AHarvey · 31 Dec 2018 at 04:50

how much ram do you actually have?

Also, what issues are you having with gaming that you feel it needs an upgrade?

CPU-Z shows I'm running an older gen i7 3770 Ivy Bridge @ 3.4GHz, 16gb DDR3 @ 667.3 MHz (which doesn't seem right as it's Vulcan RED 2400MHz on my OCUK invoice) and an AMD Radeon R9 200 series card (270x or 280) and I'm running most games with very little problems.

jehova67 · 31 Dec 2018 at 05:49

i have 8gb of ram and some games are lagging.

redtilldead · 31 Dec 2018 at 06:51

AHarvey said:
h16gb DDR3 @ 667.3 MHz (which doesn't seem right as it's Vulcan RED 2400MHz on my OCUK invoice)

You may need to go into our BIOS and change the DRAM Profile to XMP - this should unlock and get you the 2400 MHz. I had to do with mine for 1600 MHz sticks. Worth a check!

Also, as far as I know, its 2400 MHz of all the RAM Sticks combined, not individually but I could be wrong (unless you're running single channel?). For example my Dual Channels 1600 MHz sticks are running 800 MHz each.

Angilion · 31 Dec 2018 at 08:14

jehova67 said:
i have 8gb of ram and some games are lagging.

The question is why, though. Both your memory and your graphics card are potential bottlenecks. More memory might well help for gaming, but a graphics card upgrade would probably have a much larger effect. Of course, you could do both. 2x4GB of DDR4-2400 is pretty cheap - £60 here.

£500 is a hefty budget, but there might be other issues. A 1050Ti has a very low power requirement - 75W. It's not uncommon for mid-high cards (which you could be looking at with your budget) to draw triple that. So you'd need to know if your PSU is up to that. Size is another potential issue - more powerful cards strongly tend to be physically bigger, sometimes much bigger. You'd need to know if it would fit in your case with everything else.

redtilldead said:
You may need to go into our BIOS and change the DRAM Profile to XMP - this should unlock and get you the 2400 MHz. I had to do with mine for 1600 MHz sticks. Worth a check!

It might also be a matter of where they're looking in CPU-Z. The SPD tab will show the highest JEDEC standard that the memory is compliant with...which tops out at 667MHz for DDR3. The memory tab will show the actual speed. Strictly speaking, anything above 667MHz is an overclock for DDR3 as it's not JEDEC compliant and that's why any memory rated higher it will be automatically set to 667MHz...and that's why I think your suggestion is more likely to be the correct explanation.

Also, as far as I know, its 2400 MHz of all the RAM Sticks combined, not individually but I could be wrong (unless you're running single channel?). For example my Dual Channels 1600 MHz sticks are running 800 MHz each.

It shouldn't be that. The potential for confusion stems from the fact that there are two ways of expressing the speed of DDR memory. The first is the cycles per second it's running at, the second is the number of transfers per second. DDR transfers twice per cycle, so a DDR stick running at 800MHz will (in a best case scenario) perform 1600M transfers per second and is therefore often referred to as having a speed of 1600MHz. Both are right, just in different ways.

Haze · 31 Dec 2018 at 08:39

You could not have posted this in the upgrade advice section of the forum....

Angilion · 31 Dec 2018 at 08:44

Haze said:
You could not have posted this in the upgrade advice section of the forum....

It would have been better there, but I can understand a new member thinking that a subforum labelled "PC Games" on a forum for a shop selling (mainly) PC hardware would be the right place for asking for advice about hardware for PC gaming.

LeMson · 31 Dec 2018 at 10:50

OP Do you have an SSD or is everything on a hard drive?

jehova67 · 31 Dec 2018 at 10:56

thanks for all the advice all you guys you have been great and given a noob at this the help he ask for, i will upgrade the gpu.
im very sorry i ruined your life Haze as i posted in the wrong place, the sky will turn dark now and the world will end!......how pathetic i wont be back thanks.

Tek81 · 31 Dec 2018 at 13:03

jehova67 said:
my pc has a gtx 1050ti gpu, intel i5 8400 pcu, 2xdimm 2 2400 ram and asus prime z37p motherboard is there any thing i could upgrade to make it better for gaming, would more memory help as there are two empty slots, with a budget up to £500 ?

Sell the 1050ti, add the money to the £500 and buy a 1080ti. That's what I'd do.

Angilion · 31 Dec 2018 at 18:57

jehova67 said:
thanks for all the advice all you guys you have been great and given a noob at this the help he ask for, i will upgrade the gpu.

Asking in the graphics card forum would probably be a good next step. You're likely to get more replies and more focused replies if you use the most applicable forum. Right tool for the job and all that.

EDIT: On reflection, I think the general upgrade advice forum would be a better tool for the job since it's not just about the graphics card even if you only upgrade the graphics card. In addition to the factors I mentioned before, there's the monitor. That can become the bottleneck, e.g. if you're using a 1920x1080 60Hz monitor without adaptive sync you won't get the full benefit of upgrades that would allow you to game at higher resolutions with an acceptable framerate.

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/forums/new-to-pc-gaming-upgrade-advice.172/

im very sorry i ruined your life Haze as i posted in the wrong place, the sky will turn dark now and the world will end!......how pathetic i wont be back thanks.

If you want to be that pathetic, well, it's your choice.