Upgrade path advice for a gaming pc

Associate
Joined
17 Nov 2003
Posts
270
I need to do a clean install on my PC due to some odd pausing issues in games and since I have to do that I was looking into what upgrades I could do to bring the performance up a little.

Here is the current spec:

Antec 650w Signature PSU
Intel Core i7 860 2.80G s1156
Noctua NH-U12-DX
1GB XFX HD5850 XXX 755MHz
Gigabyte P55-UD3 Mobo
150G WD WD1500HLFS VELOCIRAPTOR
Corsair 4GB 2x2GB CMD4GX3M2B 1600 C8

Hard drive is getting full and I know this is a big bottleneck for general response and load times so I will almost certainly get an SSD - needs to be bigger than 150GB. I guess the GPU is a bottleneck in the system for game fps, would this CPU/mobo/ram be ok with a mid/high end card - don't want to pay for something that will be severely held back by other components?

Budget is flexible to a degree, I usually buy mid - high end components but not the highest as the price premium is difficult to justify, but I am open to suggestions if the performance increase would be dramatic.

Forgot to say, I game at 1920 x 1080.
 
Last edited:

RJC

RJC

Don
Joined
29 May 2005
Posts
29,003
Location
Kent
Come up with some options below, used a 128gb SSD. but once you remove the windows form your hard drive I would have thought you will have enough space.


Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
MSI HD 6970 OC 2048MB Twin Frozr III GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Deus Ex PC Game £199.99
(£166.66) £199.99
(£166.66)
Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT128M4SSD2) £119.99
(£99.99) £119.99
(£99.99)
Sub Total : £266.65
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £55.23
Total : £331.38
 
Associate
OP
Joined
17 Nov 2003
Posts
270
Thanks for the advice.

Couple of questions:

The Crucial M4 didn't get an amazing review from Anandtech for instance, according to Anand the sandforce controller is a higher performance part - I've read bad things about reliability but perhaps the Intel 520 resolves these?

The 6970 is an interesting option, looks like it gives about 20fps more in bf3 than the 5850. Not sure if a 7950 is worth the extra cost?
 
Soldato
Joined
10 Aug 2010
Posts
5,508
Location
Somerset
Thanks for the advice.

Couple of questions:

The Crucial M4 didn't get an amazing review from Anandtech for instance, according to Anand the sandforce controller is a higher performance part - I've read bad things about reliability but perhaps the Intel 520 resolves these?

The 6970 is an interesting option, looks like it gives about 20fps more in bf3 than the 5850. Not sure if a 7950 is worth the extra cost?

Plenty of SSDs tested here:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18368624

The M4 does very well and is known to be reliable :)

Whether then 7950 is worth it, is up to you. This comparison should help:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/509?vs=550
 
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