Upgrade advice?

DampDog · 16 Oct 2013 at 10:16

Just testing the water for upgrade advice, I'm in two minds as to upgrade what I have or go "all-in" sell what I have and start with a clean sheet.

This is what I have now, not cutting edge but useable.

Gigabyte P55-USB3 (1156)
I5-760 (2.8)
8Gig XMS
HD 6850
1TB F3
250Gig Samsung SSD (Non Pro)
Corsair 850W

I'm an occasional gamer, but do have an eye on BF4. Would simply spending on a better graphics card do the trick or would starting with a blank sheet give me some longevity? I tend to get upgrade itch every few years as opposed to every time I see something shiny..

Just mulling it over for now, so any suggestions comments welcome.

Indie · 16 Oct 2013 at 10:22

Keep your PSU, SSD, HDD and i'd aim for a Haswell build or something similar.

So you'd need new Mobo, CPU, RAM, GPU.

You could always sell your old components on the members market (if your post count permits?) to fund some of the upgrade.

Also might be worth posting this in General Hardware section.

DampDog · 16 Oct 2013 at 10:29

Indie said:
Keep your PSU, SSD, HDD and i'd aim for a Haswell build or something similar.

So you'd need new Mobo, CPU, RAM, GPU.

You could always sell your old components on the members market (if your post count permits?) to fund some of the upgrade.

Also might be worth posting this in General Hardware section.

Cheers, I was not quite sure where to post it to be honest.

Yeah the reason I went non-pro on the SSD was because MB only supports 3gig. I will have a look at getting access to the MM just to have a look. I may have a buyer for my system "as-is" anyway which is sort of what prompted me to ask the question.

pastymuncher · 16 Oct 2013 at 11:07

Overclock the 760 to 4Ghz and get a new graphics card. The 760 is still a very capable cpu and i wish i kept mine instead of switching to Haswell.

DampDog · 16 Oct 2013 at 17:41

Indie said:
So you'd need new Mobo, CPU, RAM, GPU.

Which is it best to spend the lions share on? GPU or CPU?

The push seems to be for ever more GPU intensive games, so do you go high end GPU and mid range CPU. Or High end CPU and middling GPU (GPU market seem to change almost daily, so I'd imagine that would be the first to date)

pastymuncher said:
Overclock the 760 to 4Ghz and get a new graphics card. The 760 is still a very capable cpu and i wish i kept mine instead of switching to Haswell.

Never really considered overclocking which I suppose is a sin here really. I just have the view a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and I'd end up killing something. Plus would I not need to spend a bit on water cooling to get a stable 4GHz?

pastymuncher · 16 Oct 2013 at 18:50

A decent air cooler will do it as well. All you need to do is set bclk to 200, multiplier to 20x, vcore to whatever it needs (mine needed 1.285v for 4Ghz and 1.365v for 4.2Ghz) and adjust the memory speed so it doesn't try running faster than it's supposed to.