Upgrade Advice

Housey

Housey

Housey

Man of Honour
Joined
21 Feb 2006
Posts
29,706
My current games PC has the following spec and I think I need to upgrade it as some of the newer games don't run that well on my 27" Dell running at hi-res.

The important bits are as follows:

- Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 Intel X58
- Intel Core i7 930 2.80Ghz
- OCZ Platinum 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz
- 2 x ATI Radeon HD 5870 XXX 1024MB GDDR5 (Crossfire)

It is running Windows 8.1 and I was wondering if I moved the graphics card up to something like an R9 290 (single card) I would notice a significant improvement that meant I could run at full 2,560 x 1,440 will all graphics maxed out or would my processor, motherboard and lack of 8GB main memory be an issue.

Thoughts and advice welcomed?
 
My thoughts are to stick a chunky fat heatsink on the CPU (if you don't have one already) and clock it faster.

Then get a single GFX card such as the R290X (or 290 which is due this week) which both have much more Vram for the large resolutions.

Or the GTX780ti which is due on the 7th (NDA lifts then to so reviews will be up comparing it to the 290X).
 
I've got a Corsair H50 liquid thing on the CPU and I've never really been very good at the overclocking things really. It never works too well as I am utterly useless at researching this stuff and get bored very quickly, I'm sort of a fair weather geek :)

I am happy to wait, I tend to put about a 4 year life cycle on stuff so buy the very best I can when I buy so it lasts me longer, so I would wait for the next NVidia card to arrive if it is that close.
 
That is what I would do, wait for the GTX780ti to come out and see how it stacks up against the 290X (seen a hint over at KitGuru that it is faster, but will be over £500 most likely).

If you are still not satisfied then look into changing the CPU/Board.

Also do you have a SSD?

What PSU do you have?
 
I have 2 early generation Intel X25M SSD's, not very big but no bottleneck and I have 4 other drives in there of Raptor style for additional storage, so they tend not to be bottlenecks on my systems. PSU is an OCZ Game X Stream 850W, well that is the box I have found! Ive got loads of boxes as I keep them all so I can sell them when done :)
 
Cool.

Wait for the GFX cards then as your first upgrade, but you really should look into clocking that chip higher. Maybe ask 8Pack?
 
stulid said:
Cool.

Wait for the GFX cards then as your first upgrade, but you really should look into clocking that chip higher. Maybe ask 8Pack?
Click to expand...

I will await the reviews of this new card and then make a move. What's/who's 8Pack? (sorry if you're a 10000000000 post god 8Pack :))
 
stulid said:
Protein bars;)
Click to expand...

I bought a tub of protein shake as I believed it would make me hard and cut like Arnold. Sadly it tasted crap so I have it still having put it on the top shelf with loads of stuff from Ronco. Im sure it will freeze into bar shapes :)
 
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