What to upgrade ?

chivs688

chivs688

chivs688

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27 Nov 2010
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Was just wondering if I could get any advice on what priorities I should have for upgrading my PC.

Specs:
Asus P8P67 Intel P67 Motherboard
Intel Core i5-2500K
Asus GeForce GTX 480 1536MB
OCZ Special OPS 4GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache

Mainly used for surfing the web etc, and gaming.

So what part is holding me back the most right now and that I should be looking to upgrade first? And what to?

I've got my eye on the Samsung 120GB 840 EVO SSD which seems like a good deal, and I'm hearing more and more about how nice of a difference it makes to general use.

But then I'm getting a bit conscious about only having 4GB of RAM, and thinking that might be holding my PC back a bit right now.

On the GPU side, the 480 is still holding strong on most new games, being able to run the most intensive ones on fairly high settings. So not too desperate to upgrade that just yet, but been having my eye on the GTX 670 since it's price to performance seems fantastic and ideal for what I would be after.

Also, finally, what would the deal be with my motherboard? Unfortunately it's the component I know least about and so I'm not sure when/if that needs to be upgraded in line with upgrading the other components.

Thanks.
 
GPU is a must, it's the only thing holding you back IMO. Grab a 670, fantastic card and it's dropped in price on here iirc.
 
There's no stuttering with 7950s.

Both cards are excellent. The 7950 has a higher memory spec and more games, the 670 has PhysX.
 
Thanks for replies so far.

teppic when you say that the 7950 has higher memory spec, are you referring to it having the 3GB memory as opposed to most of the 670's having just 2GB?
 
chivs688 said:
Thanks for replies so far.

teppic when you say that the 7950 has higher memory spec, are you referring to it having the 3GB memory as opposed to most of the 670's having just 2GB?
Click to expand...

Yes, as well as higher bandwidth, 384bit vs 256bit. Games may well start to make use of the memory at high settings (e.g. BF4).
 
Ah ok, will definitely spend more time looking into which GPU to get then.

So apart from that, would you say that having 4GB of RAM is okay to stick with even if upgrading to a better graphics card?
 
4GB RAM is still fine for gaming, you won't gain anything in games by adding to it, so I'd leave that for now. The GPU is definitely the thing you want to upgrade the most, it'll make a massive difference.
 
8GB of ram does make a difference, ive seen tests/posts about fps and smoothness improving in BF3 especially.
 
That's just anecdotal, not based on any benchmarking. Higher memory will mean less HDD access, which can result in things seeming smoother overall. The system using more memory doesn't mean it needs it, as it'll cache everything it can.
 
That's interesting looking at those RAM posts there.

So just for reference, if I were to grab 8GB RAM now as well, what would you recommend currently?

The OCZ Special OPS RAM that I've currently got isn't sold anymore as far as I can tell, so seems like getting an extra 4GB would be out of the question.
Also, I have the Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU cooler which is huge, and so the physical height of the RAM may have to be taken into consideration. (Not sure whether my current RAM sticks are short ones or not, but they barely just fit under the cooler).
 
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Its a number of positive reports that increasing ram in that one game has helped.

remember ive been here longer than you and seen and read it all.
 
chivs688 said:
That's interesting looking at those RAM posts there.

So just for future reference, if I were to grab 8GB RAM now as well, what would you recommend currently?

The OCZ Special OPS RAM that I've currently got isn't sold anymore as far as I can tell, so seems like getting an extra 4GB would be out of the question.
Also, I have the Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU cooler which is huge, and so the physical height of the RAM may have to be taken into consideration. (Not sure whether my current RAM sticks are short ones or not, but they barely just fit under the cooler).
Click to expand...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-092-PA&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1387

They are good and not so fast that your sandybridge will struggle to run them at full speed.

They are in the middle in terms of height, but if you are sure that you do need low profile ram then i know Teamgroup do some low profile ram of similar speed.
 
+1 on the 8gb recommendation,ive also found stuttering with just 4gb in certain games l.a noire esp

makesure you upgrade the os to 64bit to make use of all 8gb too,32bit are limited to 3.5gb useage

id also recommend an ssd for your os,would speed everything up,128gb-250gb and use your f3 hdd for storage
 
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