Upgrade advice for 5y.o. system

johnhaines

johnhaines

johnhaines

Associate
Joined
9 Jan 2010
Posts
25
Hi Everyone,

Back in 2015 I bought the following system here at overclockers:
"Titan Envy Duo DC":
Intel Core i7 4790K (Devil's Canyon) @ 4.6GHz Overclocked
Asus TUF Sabertooth Z97 Mark 2 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard
GeForce GTX 970 OC Silent "Infin8 Black Edition"
Kingston HyperX 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit
SuperFlower Leadex GOLD 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply

Last year I replaced the GTX 970 with an EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 XC Ultra Gaming.

With most games I am still seeing more than adequate performance given that I am only using a couple of 1920x1080 60Hz panels.

Some newer games are forcing me to compromise on settings, e.g. Horizon Zero Dawn. I also want to run the new Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 when it launches at the highest settings I can manage while still maintaining at least 25-30 fps.

Can anyone recommend any cost effective upgrades to one or two of the components that would gain me some measurable improvement in performance or is it time to admit defeat and buy / build a new system from scratch?

Thanks in advance for any advice,
John
 
Do you have a budget? The CPU is pretty solid still for single threaded performance.

Do you have an SSD or a hard disk drive?
 
Upgrading now CPU-wise to a Ryzen 3600 or 3700X (keeping 2070S GPU) would be about a 10-20% rough FPS increase dependent on the game. Depends if that extra oomph is worth it to you?

I've also just started on HZD on PC and it's quite taxing graphically. But also not that well optimised as a PS4 port either. There are several guides around the internet to squeeze some performance. (see here)
 
Tbh I don't think there is a single item that will significantly upgrade your system. You're looking at a new motherboard that can handle DDR4 ram at much higher clock speeds, within 6-8 months you'll be seeing even more significant upgrades coming out so depends how long your happy to hold out. Depending on your budget there are some upgrade options out there right now but with that CPU OC'd I'd probably hold out for more significant upgrades in the next year as I feel like you'd get more performance for better value compared to the money you'd spend now for a slight upgrade to what you have.
 
That chip is magnificent. I parted with one just a couple of weeks ago for this system, but I didn't really need to. I did it so that it's done and out of the way, but the i7 was still kicking it and my mate is gonna get a bargain when I sell him a Z97k board, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM and the 4790k with fat Phanteks cooler for a coupla hundred quid.

Depending on your budget, maybe a GPU upgrade is your best bet.
 
That 3½GB memory (last half GB behidn slow connection) card is definitely bottleneck.
But would be better to wait some months to get new graphics cards out.
After that quad core would be bottleneck in heavy games.

FS2020 is also going to be well multithreaded game.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

It is as I feared, I could spend a lot of money on small improvements for my current rig. Looks like it is time to start saving up for a new rig in the new year. What is the current best gaming performance setup that could be achieved for a £2000 budget? (NB - no need to include external peripherals in that budget, e.g. monitors, keyboard, mouse etc).
 
johnhaines said:
Thanks for all the replies.

It is as I feared, I could spend a lot of money on small improvements for my current rig. Looks like it is time to start saving up for a new rig in the new year. What is the current best gaming performance setup that could be achieved for a £2000 budget? (NB - no need to include external peripherals in that budget, e.g. monitors, keyboard, mouse etc).
Click to expand...

2k? I got my rig (in sig at bottom) recently for just under £1700 and can play everything no problem at all i'd say its like mid range my rig. Like everyone says on here wait for this wait for that if you did wait you could get more for your money ofcourse with new cpu's and gpus coming out.
 
No point spec'ing anything atm - if you're not looking to buy until new year, you'll be able to get your hands on AMD/Nvidia's next gen GPUs and AMD's Ryzen 4000 CPUs.

Be a whole new game then to look into.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom