Upgrade my Machine for £350

infernox

infernox

infernox

Soldato
Joined
25 Feb 2010
Posts
3,219
Location
England
Wanting to upgrade my Machine, want to do it while I have the money.

I can go higher if needs be.

Current system is.

955 Phenom X4
Titan Fenrir Evo (Pretty sure the bearings on the fan are going in this, makes an awful racket)
GA-MA785GMT-UDH (???)
4GB OCZ Gold 1600
Zotac 560ti 448 Edition 1280MB
Sandisk 120GB SSD
OCZ Modxstream 600w
Fractal Design R3 Silver Arrow
Viewsonic 21.5" 1080p Monitor


I'm guessing Sandy or Ivy is what I want to do, My machine is for playing da gaimz but open to suggestions.

The sale of the old kit would push the budget up too.

Regards

Michael.
 
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The 4GB of RAM and 560ti 1gb is really holding you back @1080p.

Not very good with AMD myself but I think you could get away with, for now upping the RAM to 4GB and fire in a 7870 or 7950.

For full upgrade you could easily get a second hand 2500k, a D3H mobo and a 7850.

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7850 IceQ X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H785QN2G2M) with Tomb Raider & Bioshock PC Games £155.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £83.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £49.99
Total : £301.37 (includes shipping : £9.50).



You can grab a 2500k second hand for £115 afaik, or you could get a non k i5 but that means you have very limited overclocking ability., If you sell the old gear you could get a 2500k second hand and a 7870 which is more than capable of gaming.

Or you could get an i3 for now, wait for haswell to hopefuly lower the prices at the end of the year and put in a 3570k.
 
infernox said:
Did I make a bad choice with this card then?

I only bought it like 6-8 months ago for £215.
Click to expand...

Ouch, the 560ti is not a "bad" card but it certainly aint great either, the main problem with yours is the 1gb vram. You are going to feel limited on 1080p in newer titles.

£215 for 1gb version, yeah bad move, 2gb version was that price when it was released.

6-8 month ago...was the 660ti not released at that time for roughly the same price? as well as the 7850?
 
Its the 448 Edition that's why, It was a down leveled 570. Its higher powered compared to a normal 560ti just so you know. The 448 wasn't available in 2GB Models.
 
Gibbo3771 said:
6-8 month ago...was the 660ti not released at that time for roughly the same price? as well as the 7850?
Click to expand...

Ill have to look when I bought it, but I think I made a spec me on here.

EDIT: it looks like it was either the 6950 or the 560ti 448 Edition, as I played Wow and D3 at the time Nvidia was favourable, so thats what I bought.
 
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infernox said:
Its the 448 Edition that's why, It was a down leveled 570. Its higher powered compared to a normal 560ti just so you know. The 448 wasn't available in 2GB Models.
Click to expand...

Is the 448 referring to the memory bus size?

Also thats a bit sucky that only 1gb models existed, considering 2gb cards started to hit the market heavy around that time. My mate bought the 560ti around 2 year ago, the 1gb version...he is starting to feel the pain in some games lol.

You WILL see a significant increase with a 7850, 7870 or 7950. I personally think 4GB ram is too little.

So upgrading just the card + RAM, you can get an i5 and new mobo later.
 
Do you not think my 955 Phenom will slow the card down though?

You can understand my pain, the card is the newest part of my pc, and i'm reluctant to replace it so soon after I upgraded.
 
infernox said:
Do you not think my 955 Phenom will slow the card down though?

You can understand my pain, the card is the newest part of my pc, and i'm reluctant to replace it so soon after I upgraded.
Click to expand...

Not the person to ask about AMD bottlenecks :p.

But the 7950 gets a slight bottleneck with an i3 3220, even more with a Pentium G860.

7850 works fine with either, very little to no bottleneck.

So if it's on par with any of them, then there is the answer to that lol.

If you are not having problems with FPS in games atm but want CPU uprade, for £350 you can get a good rig:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £83.99
1 x XFX Pro 550W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD38G1600LLK) £43.99
Total : £374.95 (includes shipping : £10.00).



Future proof, solid for 3-4 years easily and you can add a card of the year. little tiny bit over budget but if you are happy with that PSU, fair enough but recently I have been an XFX/Seasonic fanboi, refuse to use anything else :p.
 
I could still get probably 200 for my graphics card and processor mobo bundle so if we say £600 Could I get a decent,

Processor
Motherboard
Ram
and
Graphics Card

Then we can just screw the bottlenecks and just go for it.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III Boost Edition 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **NEW REVISION** £233.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £83.99
1 x XFX Pro 550W Core Edition '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £54.98
1 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD38G1600LLK) £43.99
Total : £610.44 (includes shipping : £11.25).



Nothing here will bottleneck.

This is also pretty much all the best of the best gear, the point where performance gained starts to severely decrease per £££ spent, unless you are gaming at some stupidly high res like 1440p or 2160p.
 
Not sure on the cooling, i have seen this particular cooler keep a i7 3790k at a good temp under full load with a decent Oc on it. Added a black motherboard, still Gigabyte tho :p, always had good luck with there boards + good support as well.

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III Boost Edition 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **NEW REVISION** £233.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £112.99
1 x Phanteks PH-TC12DX CPU Cooler - Black (Socket 775 / 1150 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £44.98
1 x Patriot Viper Xtreme 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PXD38G1600LLK) £43.99
Total : £629.44 (includes shipping : £11.25).

 
 
 
Your GPU isn't bad at all!!

I have a 1GB 460 (OC'd) and can still get by on that till the next gen GPUs. Your 560Ti 448 has 1.25GB of VRAM and is a much better GPU. At your resolution I don't think the 7950 is a massive leap forward (See here). Granted AMD have new drivers that have upped the performance but it's your mobo bundle holding you back. Have you tried OC'ing your GPU?

Haswell is out in a couple of months but if you can't wait as you might blow the cash.....

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £257.99
1 x MSI Z77 MPower Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 ATX Motherboard with FREE F1 RC Car & MSI HDD Enclosure £149.99
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £59.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (CML8GX3M2B1600C11) £43.99
Total : £511.96 (includes shipping : FREE).



Some games like Crysis 3 seem to like extra cores (even virtual ones) hence the i7K, the i5K still isn't a bad shout. This mobo is Xfire/SLi capable, has wifi and bluetooth included with some nice freebies thrown in. Decent cooler for overclocking the CPU too. 8GB of RAM colour coded to the mobo, CAS9 would be nice but the difference between C9 and C11 in the real world makes little odds.

Hope this helps, look forward to seeing what you settle on in the end :)
 
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