Upgrade only GFX, its it a good idea or wait to upgrade full system?

True_Scotsman

True_Scotsman

True_Scotsman

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I have been looking into upgrading my PC, but due to other financial issues I have to wait possible into next year, I can however buy a new GFX card.

Question is, would I benefit much doing this? I know I will have a bottleneck due to the CPU and RAM.

Looking at getting an R9 280 3GB (or something simmilar)

Sytem now is :-

E8400
4GB RAM
HD4870 512MB

Thanks in advance.
 
What games and screen resolution?

You probably want a cheap quad core CPU at this point, £40 should get you a low Q9xxx or Q8xxx (or even less for a Q6600). How much is left in the kitty after that?
 
joeyjojo said:
What games and screen resolution?

You probably want a cheap quad core CPU at this point, £40 should get you a low Q9xxx or Q8xxx (or even less for a Q6600). How much is left in the kitty after that?
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If I was the OP id have a look at some used 270x cards, and the cheap ivy or sandy motherboards/cpus
 
I would look at picking up something like a 670 from the members market and a cheap i5 + mobo combo, should see better overall gains like that.
 
Thanks for the options so far, but dont really want to buy second hand CPU/MB etc if in 6-8 months I will be buying a full new system (MB/RAM/CPU/GFX) second hand GFX might be an option though.

Games I play are Borderlands 2/F1/GRID/Skyrim etc
 
Not much more to say then really - the answer to the thread title is that you'll olbviously get gains from upgrading just the GPU, and can carry it forward to your new system.
 
True_Scotsman said:
Thanks for the options so far, but dont really want to buy second hand CPU/MB etc if in 6-8 months I will be buying a full new system (MB/RAM/CPU/GFX) second hand GFX might be an option though.

Games I play are Borderlands 2/F1/GRID/Skyrim etc
Click to expand...

Sky rim is cpu dependent so whatever gpu you get will be bottlenecked by your current cpu
 
Resa69 said:
Sky rim is cpu dependent so whatever gpu you get will be bottlenecked by your current cpu
Click to expand...

Not strictly true, he'll almost certainly be able to turn the graphics quality up with a faster card and still get the same performance (more AA, blur, reflections, etc.). I've been playing skyrim on a 775 quad core and have experienced exactly this.
 
Is that E8400 overclocked? If not it should hit at least 4Ghz with a decent cooler. That and a new graphics card will give you a decent boost.
 
Freezer 7 Pro was a decent little cooler back in the day, and the P5Q Pro was also a good board if I recall (Although I don't know what the L was)

4-4.2gHz was fairly easily achievable, and many got well above that although you might not quite the same results now as your equipment is a little bit worn.

Overclocking on that chip and board was pretty common, so there's loads of info out there: A quick google for E8400 P5Q freezer 7 pro brings up several overclocking threads, one of which suggests the following

FSB: 445
VCORE: 1.3
NB V: 1.28

(Untested by me, but the numbers look sensible)

Try not to push the vCore, some of these chips were fine at 1.45v but you probably want to try to keep it lower, especially as you're just going for a quick boost for a few months - most people got 4gHz on 1.3v, so you probably shouldn't need to push it much. Keep an eye on your temps for a few days after you finish overclocking.
 
If you are waiting until next year, then Intel are due to release Skylake (Q2 2015).

This processor uses a new pin layout LGA1151, and a new chipset, so new motherboards will be required.

Also talk about PCI Express 4 (which could mean New PCI Express 4 Graphics Cards), DDR4 Memory, and Thunderbolt 3.0


So would be very wary of interim upgrades at the moment, if you are planning on a full upgrade next year.
 
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