What to upgrade?

Bullitt659

Bullitt659

Bullitt659

Associate
Joined
19 Mar 2015
Posts
16
Hi
This is my first post & I am looking for some advice, I built my PC about 2 years or so ago & I was thinking of upgrading but being a family man I have limited funds so far I have managed to squirrel away around £300.00.

I am currently running

Operating System:-
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40GHz
BeQuiet Top Flow CPU Cooler (A legacy of my old case)
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 826MHz (10-10-10-25)

Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. Z77-D3H

Graphics
ASUS VS247 (1920x1080@60Hz)
HIS 3072MB ATI AMD Radeon HD 7950

Storage
2794GB Seagate ST3000DM001-1CH166 ATA Device (SATA)
223GB OCZ-AGILITY3 ATA Device (SSD) 30 °C
596GB Western Digital WDC WD6400AAKS-22A7B0 ATA Device (SATA)
931GB Seagate Desktop USB Device

Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH10LS38 ATA Device

Audio
ASUS Xonar DG Audio Device

Power
OCZ OCZ600MXSP-UK ModXStream Pro 600W ATX Power Supply
Case
Silverstone Raven 03

I play a lot of games & do a bit of video editing so I wondering what my best upgrade I was initially thinking if a new graphics card ,as the old one is pretty noisy, probably the AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB but a friend recommended I find an Ivy Bridge i7 & more RAM!
So after bouncing the question away in my head for a while I thought I throw it out there & see if the OC community can help me decide.
 
the cpu, mobo and ram are fine for gaming.

if I was you I would get a new GPU, do you prefer AMD over Nvidia or are you not bothered which GPU make to go for?

I take it you have the OS on the SSD?

I have a I7 950 @ 4ghz and still use that for gaming and will upgrade my GPU once I see what AMD have to offer.

best bang for buck is going to be a new GPU.

what ress do you play at? and what monitor do you have?

you can always OC the cpu to get a bit more grunt out of it, that's what I did.

I7 would be if you did more video editing and encoding etc but for gaming a I5 would be fine
 
Last edited:
For gaming a 290x would be a good upgrade (or you could wait for the 3xx series to be released).

As for video editing an i7 and RAM is the only way to go on this budget :)
 
Depends what you need more really, if you're happy with the editing then I'd be looking at a graphics card for gaming such as the GTX 970, it should be cooler and quieter than radeon 290 :)
 
I'd recommend a 290X, should be what your looking for.

Then maybe in a few months a RAM upgrade to 16GB, though only if you find your using up almost all your 8GB.
 
Thanks for the advice guys I was leaning towards the G.C option & you have confirmed it, after doing a little test I think doubling me RAM is a must as well due to my video editing software which makes full use of all available RAM.
 
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