What to upgrade?

Skillmister

Skillmister

Skillmister

Soldato
Joined
3 Oct 2009
Posts
19,893
Location
Wales
I'm looking at upgrading my rig but i don't really know whether it's worth it on a limited budget or best to just wait until i can buy a whole new PC.

Currently i have:

AMD Phenom II X2 545 Unlocked to quad core @3GHz
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB - Stock
M4A785TD-V EVO AMD 785G
G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB(2x2) DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel + 2GB of crucial RAM

Samsung F1 320GB with my OS etc on
Samsung F1 1TB for storage


Main uses are 3d modelling, rendering and real time game engine stuff. I know i'm limited by RAM a lot of the time when i have 3ds max, photoshop, UDK and a couple of other programs open at once and i could really do with a DX11 card.

So is there any worthwhile upgrade i can really do for ~£200 or am i better off waiting? (Another possible option is selling what i currently have and adding that to the ~£200 but i doubt that is any better?)

Enlighten me :)
 
it depends how much more budget-wise waiting can bring you. £500 should give you a decent upgrade. £200, and it's a bit more spotty, although your core system (CPU / motherboard / RAM) could really use some help.

I'd start with that.


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 £82.99
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £33.59
Total : £307.97 (includes shipping : £9.50).



or a HD7850 + 128GB Samsung 830 for around the same budget, or SSD later. However I still feel the CPU and memory is holding you back more than the GPU.

Note that your current motherboard will bottleneck your SSD somewhat, but it's still a nice boost if you find you're struggling with productivity.

Bascially, I'd wait, at least to get the Ivy above, with either a 7850, or a 6850 + SSD.
 
Well i don't think i would have much more for quite a while.

That looks pretty good, i'm guessing i should see quite a noticeable performance boost? Only thing is DX11 would be really handy to try out some of the newer game engine stuff along with a couple of other things mine doesn't seem to do. Are there any uber cheap DX11 cards i could get that are equal to or slightly better than mine just for the meantime until i could get a 7xxx?

I assume that mobo etc would be fine in my Antec 300?
 
Maybe try some second hand SB stuff with SSD and 5850/460?

I reckon that'd come to roughly £300 for new CPU, mobo, RAM and gfx, that'd just leave SSD
 
Perhaps although i think i'd rather go with new stuff for the bulk of it considering it's technically going to be a present rather than me buying it :p Plus shiny shiny!

I think the ivy setup and a cheapo gfx card might sort me for now and pick up an SSD off the mm some time soon :D

e: hows the i5 stock cooler if i'm not OCing? my phenom has always had the stock one and been fine
 
Last edited:
tamzzy said:
why get an i5 if you're not ocing o.0
Click to expand...

Because i have no idea what i'm doing, what other options there are and didn't realise a prerequisite to getting an i5 involved overclocking it? If you havn't noticed i know absolutely nothing about the latest hardware. I probably would at some point but i hadn't really thought about it.

How about 'what's the stock cooler like if i don't plan on overclocking right this instant?' :)
 
Last edited:
Skillmister said:
didn't realise a prerequisite to getting an i5 involved overclocking it?
Click to expand...

its a shame to waste the potential of an i5 if you dont overclock ;p


Skillmister said:
How about 'what's the stock cooler like if i don't plan on overclocking right this instant?' :)
Click to expand...
it'll suffice

if you dont want to overclock you can save yourself 70 quid and just get an i3 2120 instead, that way you dont need to buy another heatsink. granted its dual core rather than quad core but if you're doing modelling and rendering, a hefty gpu would be better?
 
Last edited:
In that case i will then at some point ;) Any cooler recommendations?

The majority of what i'm doing at the moment is ram and CPU heavy, my gfx card actually suffices really except for lacking DX11 even if it does get a bit hot/loud but i can deal with that.
 
what programs do you use, some rendering apps and graphic apps can offload their processing to the gpu
gpu rendered graphics finish a lot faster iirc (someone will correct me if im wrong ;p)
and scratch what i said about the i3, a quad core is gonna be much better for what you do oc or not oc
 
3ds max and several other 3rd party apps. Pretty sure the ones i use barely support gpu rendering and even then it's optimised for nvidia. CPU definitely seems to be key still afaik.
 
i dont know any of those progs and so i probably shouldnt offer any upgrade advice tbh.
i'll defer to more knowledgeable forumers
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom