Rookie drowning in confusion of an upgrade!

Ant023

Ant023

Ant023

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Joined
15 Jul 2015
Posts
5
Good evening all, My name is Ant and once upon time I too was a avid PC gamer as a child, but with the forever needing of updating components I sadly could not afford to stay in the game (no pun intended), so I jumped on the obvious and got into the console life with the ease of knowing I'll never have to open it up and slap money into it! Now roughly ten years on I am a man (probably questionable by some) and urging to get back behind the keyboard and mouse.... With money this time.... although limited, what with the purchase of house upon my head now (the joys of growing up aye!!)
Anyway, back story over with. I brought myself a second hand 'Gaming Machine' a couple of years ago and I've enjoyed gaming on it thus far... problem is it's now starting to feel some what dated and probably craving an upgrade. Currently playing Total Rome 2, Arma 3 and have my eye on the Witcher 3, I download from Steam and all look 'goodish' now but I want better, retina burning better (money dependent of course)....

My Spec:
Motherboard: GA-78LMT-S2P
Graphics: NVIDA GTX 560 Ti
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
Ram: 8GB Corsair
PSU: CX600
HDD: WD 500 GB
OS: Windows 7

All inside a Sharkoon T9 case and displayed on a BenQ XL2420T

I've tried being smart and looking into upgrading myself but quite frankly it's all above my head these days, all I'm seeing is numbers and letters, and to be honest I seem to judge a component purely on its price!
Ideally I would like to only change 1 or 2 components at a time to keep me rolling on through until the next component change (and the funds add back up again). To give you an idea I'd probably happily spend 200ish on a graphics card.

Thanks all for reading and any help would be gratefully appreciated in this time of need. Please keep the lingo easy as said before I'm not great in the arts of computer wizardry... I'll stop waffling now?!

Cheers,

Ant
 
Heres a few to look at:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 WindForce OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (GV-N970WF3OC-4GD) £259.99
1 x XFX Radeon R9 380 "DD Dual Fan" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (R9-380P-4DF5) £179.99
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 960 Superclocked 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (02G-P4-2962-KR) **UPGRADE KIT** £161.99
Total : £611.57 (includes shipping : £8.00 Ex.VAT).



They will all run the Witcher 3 but I would seriously recommend the 970 if you can stretch you budget. Better to buy something great for £260 than something OK for £200 in my opinion.

What resolution is you monitor?

Also GFX will make the most difference but theres really no upgrade path for your CPU. I would recommend down the line replacing it with an i5, a good balanace between cost/performance.
 
Your best bet is to start with a graphics upgrade, that will make the biggest difference. Several games don't rely that heavily on CPU (though Arma does, unsure about TW and Witcher).

It might also be worth looking into getting a better CPU cooler (what do you have now?) and overclocking the CPU a bit.
 
Brilliant, many thanks guys for a speedy reply. I'm undoubtedly going to go for the 970, like you say, I'd rather go for a good card over just an OK card and now with someone with knowledge telling what will work I feel more confident spending that sort of money on something I now know will work. Am I right in thinking though with this new card I will still be able to upgrade the board and chip further down the line, maybe to an intel chip or is it purely a AMD based card like I have now?!
CPU is being cooled by a Freezer Pro 7 Rev. 2 it looks pretty beastly!!! As for overclocking, not a clue? It will have to be YouTube all the way I think, ha.
Also the resolution the games are played at are 1920x1080.
And indeed a SSD is well and truly in my sights for the next purchase.

Thanks again

Ant
 
970 is Nvidia just like you have now, not that it matters as an Nvidia or an AMD based card will work in any system, well as long as it isnt ancient and you try to plug a PCI-E card into a AGP slot or something crazy lol.
 
BeeP said:
970 is Nvidia just like you have now, not that it matters as an Nvidia or an AMD based card will work in any system, well as long as it isnt ancient and you try to plug a PCI-E card into a AGP slot or something crazy lol.
Click to expand...

My 2600K - MSI p67a-gd65, gtx970 upgrade.
Had to use forum made beta bios for 970 to work.
 
Right just about to take the plunge and purchase the 970..... However seen the G1 edition! Is there any point on sacrificing a few pints this weekend for the extra for this card?! More importantly if it is, will I still be able to run it!!!

Cheers again,

Ant
 
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 WindForce OC 4096MB GDDR5 as was suggested by Cat J, but saw the G1 edition, which is roughly about 20 pound more and wondered if it was worth the extra?!
 
Ant023 said:
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 WindForce OC 4096MB GDDR5 as was suggested by Cat J, but saw the G1 edition, which is roughly about 20 pound more and wondered if it was worth the extra?!
Click to expand...

Personally, I don't think its worth it, unless you really want to get the highest OC out of your card.

That 390 is a great card, but on your older psu, I wouldn't chance it personally, being that it pulls more power and generates more heat than the 970 for only a tiny bit more performance at 1080p.
 
My brother had that exact 970 in his system and the cooler on it is brilliant, I know that much. He had no problems at 1080 with it. Once everyone found out about the memory issues he took his back to the shop and changed it, but before he said it ran quiet and did what he needed.
 
I would also say, and I know I'll get hate, but AMD kinda suck at getting drivers out. At least that was my experience of them, in the end I moved everything to Nvidia who always have updates rolling out for new releases.

That with the power draw, I feel the 970 is the more refined if slightly less powerful card (memory issues accepted.) There was a thing about the last 500MB of VRAM being slow on the 970 but at 1080p its not worth considering.
 
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