Which upgrade would give biggest performance increase?

spiki

spiki

spiki

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18 Oct 2005
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I bought my system in 2008 & even today it remains good, solid rig. However, it is beginning to struggle a bit with more recent games. I tried the BF3 beta and the gfx card is doing a very good impression of a hairdryer on medium heat & is struggling when adding any high settings on the Metro level let alone Caspian. I can play it but it looks ugly.

Anyway, I have a limited budget, prob around £250-275 and an unused copy of Win7.

What could/should I change from this:

Q5995 Quad [email protected]
Asus P5Q-E MB
Artic Cooler fan
GTX 260 @ stock
4gb Corsair ram
2 Samsung F1 HDD
750W Corsair PSU
Samsung 226BW 1650x1080
Vista 64HP
Antec 1200 case

I was thinking new gfx card such as 560Ti and maybe a Crucial 60g SSD.

Would that make sense in my rig? Cheers.
 
spiki said:
I was thinking new gfx card such as 560Ti and maybe a Crucial 60g SSD.

Would that make sense in my rig? Cheers.
Click to expand...


Yes it would:)

Your current spec is still very good.

You can use these charts to gauge how the GTX260 (216core version) compares to various cards in a variety of games.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/vga-charts-spring-2011/2


So heres a start

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £163.99
(£136.66) £163.99
(£136.66)
Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive £77.99
(£64.99) £77.99
(£64.99)
Sub Total : £201.65
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 : £42.23
Total : £253.38

The only downside is the lack of SATAIII ports on your board so you will find the SSD is maxing out the bandwidth, but on the plus side when you do decide to up grade the CPU/RAM/MOBO you will then get another boost from it as you can then give it a SATAIII port.
 
Last edited:
Defo a new gfx card will give you better performace for games. As said, the rest of your system is still very good. An SSD would help for sure but not as noticeable as a new gfx card. The only other thing is play games at the next resolution down from the max 1680x1080 resolution and lower your A/A a bit in some games where it may struggle.
 
Thanks very much for the replies everyone.

I think the gfx card is def a must; never realised the requirements of an SSD so maybe put that on hold for the minute.

What about a new HDD with a fresh install of Win7 or should I install it on one of my exisiting drives? One of the Samsungs I use for basically everything - OS, music, photos, work stuff etc; the other is just for backing up those, so could move them onto DVD or external if need be.
 
The F1 drives are still fast, things havent moved on that much in relation to HDD performance.

Still use one for the OS/games etc and the other for the back-up storage.

So without a SSD,

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £163.99
(£136.66) £163.99
(£136.66)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Sub Total : £203.32
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 : £42.56
Total : £255.38
 
Cheers Stulid

Although a friend has given me a copy of Win7 so can save a few quid there.

What about a bit more RAM? Any benefit in adding that?
 
I know what you mean :) Couldn't care less as long as it works & does the job

Just had a few rounds there of BF3...getting between 30-45 fps on custom settings, so not great but predictable
 
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