Suggest upgrades

agnes

agnes

agnes

Soldato
Joined
1 Dec 2006
Posts
16,889
Location
Amsterdam, NL
As usual, I'm itching to upgrade even though I don't need to.

My Specs:

i5 3750k @ 4.2Ghz w/ Zalman cooler
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 M
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance RAM
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 WindForce 3x OC Rev2.0 3GB
XFX 850 XXX PSU

All in a nice neat Lian Li PC-A04B.

Storage wise, I have a 128GB Crucial M4 SSD for OS and a couple of games, and then a 1TB mechanical for most games and storage. Both drives are about 3-4 years old and need replacing.

I want more graphical oomph, I game at 1080p but will soon be moving to 1440p hopefully and beyond.

What would you upgrade if you had say £450?
 
Considering I'm 1155, is it worth going to 2011? Sell my board and CPU and jump up to an i7 and newer board?
 
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Not worth it at all.

You also have an ok overclock on your chip, just hang on for a bit longer for what comes next from intel.

You just game mainly?
 
Sorry, I meant 2011. Is it not worth it? I would probably splash out a little more and get a 5930k i7.
 
I would invest in SSD capacity and a new 970/980 whilst we are in the middle of a CPU generation .. then see what comes of Broadwell or indeed Skylake later this year.
 
I mainly game/browse. It's sat in the living room next to my amp, it's part of my home cinema system if that makes sense, hard to demonstrate it's position in words so here is a pic, I can't go full tower, it's just too big and OTT. So it's a tiny little gaming beast:

yFilZwY.jpg

Bottom left, on the left of the plasma is a tiny little desk with a 24" monitor. The output of the PC goes to the amp, which then goes to a hdmi splitter to both the monitor and 50" plasma. Both 1080p. So I'm locked in at 1080p.

I've just got a real bad upgrade itch at the moment, I want more power! Dragon Age: Inquisiton was the biggest punch in my PC's face, having to dial back a couple of options from ultra to high to get a 60fps smooth playback.

With GTA V and Witcher 3 on the horizon, I'd like to increase it's power.
 
Well with GTAV being 65GB in size thats your 128GB SSD halve filled just by that one game.

Why not actually wait to see how it performs on your setup with the new GFX card (or go sli with your existing one) then decide.

P.S images no more than 1280x wide, or use spoiler tags like I have done for you.
 
stulid said:
Well with GTAV being 65GB in size thats your 128GB SSD halve filled just by that one game.

Why not actually wait to see how it performs on your setup with the new GFX card (or go sli with your existing one) then decide.
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This is a very wise idea actually. One thing I'm sick of is running out of space on my OS SSD... Maybe you're right, buying a 1TB dedicated SSD for games might be a good idea. Smallish cost compared to component upgrade and could make games load/run that little faster.

As for SLI, is it worth it? Or maybe selling mine and getting a ti might give me a bigger boost for my buck?
 
Selling your 780 and sourcing a ti is not worth it, may as well go for the GTX980 instead.

But I do think SLI'ing your current gfx card is a sound option as long as GTAV scales well with SLI and does not favor a better single GFX card.

With such a popular title that people have been waiting ages on to be released I am 100% some review site will review various CPUs/GFX card setups on it and present their findings.
 
Hmmmm, let's now weigh out costs for GPU upgrade then:

The difference between going sli and 980 is £50, with sli being cheaper. SLI costing £250 and 980 costing £500, but minus £200 for my card.

Which would give the best boost? My current GPU has bad coil whine (I could RMA, but cba as it's so common it would be an endless battle) so 2 would be a real ear ache.

Finally, are games smart enough to use both cards vram? Totalling in 6GB? And will my PSU be powerful enough at 850?
 
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SLI still means you get 3GB of Vram, it is not doubled.

Your PSU is fine.

I have seen 2nd hand 780s going for less than £200 on the members market.

At 1440P GTX780 SLI is faster when its working correctly, if a game does not support SLI then the GTX980 will rape it.
 
stulid said:
SLI still means you get 3GB of Vram, it is not doubled.

Your PSU is fine.

I have seen 2nd hand 780s going for less than £200 on the members market.
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I'd need the same version, pretty hard to find second hand, thus using popular auction sites I can find a manufacturer refurbished one with a years warranty for £250. And if not doubles, I might go to 980 then... HMMMMMMMM.
 
You can mix and match different GTX780s from different manufactures, you do know this?

Or is it for aesthetic reasons?
 
stulid said:
You can mix and match different GTX780s from different manufactures, you do know this?

Or is it for aesthetic reasons?
Click to expand...

Yes, but I was under the impression it has to be the same or very similar spec? Plus, I've never quite liked the idea of mixing different cards. Last time I SLI'd was 2 7800 GTX's with Danger Den blocks on them, a long time ago! They were incredibly powerful.

Oh, and I had 2x 560ti's but the heat generation from the both of them caused the fan noise to be a pain.
 
I'm trying to compare graphs, it seems when a game supports sli, it's clearly more powerful than a single sli, but like you said, when it doesn't, the 980 offers a fairly beefy upgrade!
 
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