Is it time for a new gaming PC?


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Hello!

I've been wondering lately, should I get a new gaming PC since the new games are so demanding in PC requirements?

Such as Dragon Age, Watch Dogs, Assasin's Creed and especially The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

 

I have this rig for gaming at the momment:

CPU: Intel Core i7 920 @2.67  Ghz (stock clocked)

M/B: MSI X58A-GD65

RAM: 3x2GB OCZ Core i7 8-8-8-24 @1600 Mhz (Memory Profile 1, stock clocked)

GPU: 1x ASUS nVidia Gefore  GTX 760 2GB DirectCU II OC

O/S: Windows 8.1 x64 (fully updated)

HDD: 1x500GB Western Digital Blue Sata 2, 2x1TB Western Digital Black Sata 3, 1x1TB Western  Digital Black

 

I'm not interested in getting an SSD, I don't care so much about faster loading times .

I just wanna know if I need an upgrade.

Thanks a lot

 

Edit: I'm playing at 1920x1200 Resolution, I won't ever switch to 4K because I do not need a larger monitor than 24 inches.

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Those are not bad specs at all.  The desktop I gave to my nephew had that same CPU and same video card, except with 12GB RAM & an SSD.

You need to change your mind about SSD - however

If you have disposable money - (meaning money that doesnt need to go elsewhere) then I say yes - upgrade.

You will only see a difference in gaming probably but that difference could be big.

As far as all of the non-gaming things people do - if you want to see your desktop run as fast as it can - do a clean install of the OS


And if someone suggests overclocking to improve performance, dont ever listen to anything they ever say again.  In fact, slap them.

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Only you can know depending on what games you want to run and with which settings, and also depending on what hardware you would upgrade to. A 4770K and a GTX980 would be 2x faster. There are 2 new processors series coming out this year (Broadwell in a couple of months and Skylake in Q3) while the GTX980 instead shouldn't be replaced soon.

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That's a swell system. The fps you would get in games will be very slight.

 

Why not get an SSD? It's not a thing of speed, it's a piece of mind. We most all made the switch.

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Only you can know depending on what games you want to run and with which settings, and also depending on what hardware you would upgrade to.

 

This.

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I say don't upgrade yet. Wait for Broadwell/Next gen Maxwell to arrive if youre keen on spending money. That config is enough for today's 1080p and the majority of AA titles.

Buy a SSD man.

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I say don't upgrade yet. Wait for Broadwell/Next gen Maxwell to arrive if youre keen on spending money. That config is enough for today's 1080p and the majority of AA titles.

Buy a SSD man.

 

Correct, anyone who says they don't care about SSD has never used an SSD.

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The 760 "might" be a component to look at if you're a hardcore FPS gamer. Even a 770 and discounted rates will give a significant boost there "if" you need it with the games you play.

 

I'm with Mindovermaster though, you should seriously consider an SSD.

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Hello!

I've been wondering lately, should I get a new gaming PC since the new games are so demanding in PC requirements?

That entirely depends on how unsatisfied you are with the level of performance of your PC in the games you actually play, or whether your level of dissatisfaction is worth the price of an upgrade to you. I have a similar PC and I'm still quite satisfied with it even though I have to drop some settings to mid-high-ish in some recent titles.

 

The Witcher 3 is not even out, so there's no way you can be dissatisfied with its performance. Try it out and you'll see. By that time, if you do decide to upgrade, prices of current hardware will have fallen and new hardware will be out so you'll get better value for your money.

 

Personally, I would wait at least 2 generations of video cards before upgrading, and you're only 1 generation behind. But that's just my opinion.

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Correct, anyone who says they don't care about SSD has never used an SSD.

I have installed several SSDs (high-end ones) and I don't care about having one at all, still too expensive for the size (with development stuff installed I'm already having trouble with 512GB for my system drive)  and if you don't reboot the machine often Windows already preloads most used files in RAM so the applications will still start up pretty quickly. The only place where I would always put one is laptops since most of them come with the most garbageish harddrives (my brand new Samsung laptop takes 1 minute and 40 seconds to boot a clean Windows install, unbelievable).

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I have installed several SSDs (high-end ones) and I don't care about having one at all, still too expensive for the size (with development stuff installed I'm already having trouble with 512GB for my system drive)  and if you don't reboot the machine often Windows already preloads most used files in RAM so the applications will still start up pretty quickly. The only place where I would always put one is laptops since most of them come with the most garbageish harddrives (my brand new Samsung laptop takes 1 minute and 40 seconds to boot a clean Windows install, unbelievable).

I got two 250GB Samsung EVO 840's for $120 each. I think that's quite reasonable. They are now in a RAID 0, which gives me ~500GB of SSD space for $240...at nearly double the speed of a single SSD.

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I have installed several SSDs (high-end ones) and I don't care about having one at all, still too expensive for the size (with development stuff installed I'm already having trouble with 512GB for my system drive)  and if you don't reboot the machine often Windows already preloads most used files in RAM so the applications will still start up pretty quickly. The only place where I would always put one is laptops since most of them come with the most garbageish harddrives (my brand new Samsung laptop takes 1 minute and 40 seconds to boot a clean Windows install, unbelievable).

Dang, how big is the stuff you use ?

What do you consider high-end ?

The stuff you use cant be all that demanding as you only have 6GB RAM now... so if its just space - then divide it like most people do between SSD as boot & traditional for storage.

Yes laptop traditional hard drive are junk - & 1:40 is unnacceptable - infact - wrong nowadays.  What in the world are you using ?  Vista ? LOL

I know you said you dont want an SSD - but you need to reconsider it - there is no reason to cling on to older tech with a 512GB SSD being $200 now.

Look at it this way - if the difference between $200 for a 500GB SSD, and $60 for a 500GB regular HDD makes you choose an HDD, maybe now isnt the time for you to upgrade.

 

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your system still looks really good. Im still gaming on a 5870 and run most games on high or ultra if its not too demanding. an SSD isn't essential for gaming, but will help if you want pure speed per $, and they are pretty cheap, but thats completely up to you

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Dang, how big is the stuff you use ?

What do you consider high-end ?

The stuff you use cant be all that demanding as you only have 6GB RAM now... so if its just space - then divide it like most people do between SSD as boot & traditional for storage.

Yes laptop traditional hard drive are junk - & 1:40 is unnacceptable - infact - wrong nowadays.  What in the world are you using ?  Vista ? LOL

I know you said you dont want an SSD - but you need to reconsider it - there is no reason to cling on to older tech with a 512GB SSD being $200 now.

Look at it this way - if the difference between $200 for a 500GB SSD, and $60 for a 500GB regular HDD makes you choose an HDD, maybe now isnt the time for you to upgrade.

The person you quoted isn't the OP :-D

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I got two 250GB Samsung EVO 840's for $120 each. I think that's quite reasonable. They are now in a RAID 0, which gives me ~500GB of SSD space for $240...at nearly double the speed of a single SSD.

 

in RAID, it doesn't double the speed. As with RAID0, you only get twice the space.

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in RAID, it doesn't double the speed. As with RAID0, you only get twice the space.

Tom's Hardware says your wrong: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485-3.html

PC World Article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2365767/feed-your-greed-for-speed-by-installing-ssds-in-raid-0.html

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I got two 250GB Samsung EVO 840's for $120 each. I think that's quite reasonable. They are now in a RAID 0, which gives me ~500GB of SSD space for $240...at nearly double the speed of a single SSD.

 

Dang, how big is the stuff you use ?

What do you consider high-end ?

The stuff you use cant be all that demanding as you only have 6GB RAM now... so if its just space - then divide it like most people do between SSD as boot & traditional for storage.

Yes laptop traditional hard drive are junk - & 1:40 is unnacceptable - infact - wrong nowadays.  What in the world are you using ?  Vista ? LOL

I know you said you dont want an SSD - but you need to reconsider it - there is no reason to cling on to older tech with a 512GB SSD being $200 now.

Look at it this way - if the difference between $200 for a 500GB SSD, and $60 for a 500GB regular HDD makes you choose an HDD, maybe now isnt the time for you to upgrade.

 

The 850 Pro that I would need since the EVO isn't suited for heavy usage is more than 400$ here and I'm already running out of space often with my current 512Gb drive, I don't think I'm going to upgrade until the 1TB price drops since by having my machine always on most of the programs and files are already kept cached in RAM, the only difference is in boot times but everything else usually starts with minimal HDD loads. I'd rather spend the 400$ on 32GB of RAM to get rid of the damn swap file from hell that truly becomes a bottleneck when the machine is always on (Windows apparently gives priority to the file cache over the memory used by applications).

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I have installed several SSDs (high-end ones) and I don't care about having one at all, still too expensive for the size (with development stuff installed I'm already having trouble with 512GB for my system drive)  and if you don't reboot the machine often Windows already preloads most used files in RAM so the applications will still start up pretty quickly. The only place where I would always put one is laptops since most of them come with the most garbageish harddrives (my brand new Samsung laptop takes 1 minute and 40 seconds to boot a clean Windows install, unbelievable).

 

Uh, why do you have to have 'development stuff' installed on the SSD?

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in RAID, it doesn't double the speed. As with RAID0, you only get twice the space.

 

Yeah, Raid 0 will come close to doubling the speed. For me it "does" double read. Increases write by 60-80%.

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Hello!

I've been wondering lately, should I get a new gaming PC since the new games are so demanding in PC requirements?

Such as Dragon Age, Watch Dogs, Assasin's Creed and especially The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

 

I have this rig for gaming at the momment:

CPU: Intel Core i7 920 @2.67  Ghz (stock clocked)

M/B: MSI X58A-GD65

RAM: 3x2GB OCZ Core i7 8-8-8-24 @1600 Mhz (Memory Profile 1, stock clocked)

GPU: 1x ASUS nVidia Gefore  GTX 760 2GB DirectCU II OC

O/S: Windows 8.1 x64 (fully updated)

HDD: 1x500GB Western Digital Blue Sata 2, 2x1TB Western Digital Black Sata 3, 1x1TB Western  Digital Black

 

I'm not interested in getting an SSD, I don't care so much about faster loading times .

I just wanna know if I need an upgrade.

Thanks a lot

 

Edit: I'm playing at 1920x1200 Resolution, I won't ever switch to 4K because I do not need a larger monitor than 24 inches.

I agree with T3X4S. But I would upgrade to a new i7. Not sure about desktop nomenclatures but I'm running an i7 4700MQ, mobile with 2.4 and hyperspeed 3.5 roughly. what memory DDR3 or DDR4? DDR4 is still tops I believe.

 

I would expect DDR5 sooner rather than later. (I'm just guessing here though) CPU's seem to come out every 3-6 months now.

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Uh, why do you have to have 'development stuff' installed on the SSD?

I didn't, I installed the SSDs on other machines. I have 5 drives, all mechanical, but I want all installed programs on the same drive as Windows. With VS, Netbeans, various SDKs and plenty of other software I'm left with about 100gb free for the user profile and those end up pretty quickly (for my use, of course, even creating a blu-ray video disc from camera files eats all the space in an instant, of course I could move the profile, programs, folders, temporary files distributing them about the drives but I'm perfectly fine with my current drive so far so I don't think it's worth the time).

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I agree with T3X4S. But I would upgrade to a new i7. Not sure about desktop nomenclatures but I'm running an i7 4700MQ, mobile with 2.4 and hyperspeed 3.5 roughly. what memory DDR3 or DDR4? DDR4 is still tops I believe.

 

I would expect DDR5 sooner rather than later. (I'm just guessing here though) CPU's seem to come out every 3-6 months now.

DDR4 is just barely coming to market. DDR5 isn't even on the horizon, I'm not even sure if it's possible. One of the reasons they used 1, 2, 3, & 4 had to do with the number of times the CPU could poll the memory during a clock cycle. With DDR4 you hit the final unpolled part of the cycle. Someone please correct me if that's wrong though.

 

If he were to upgrade his CPU he'd have to upgrade the motherboard as well. 

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DDR4 is just barely coming to market. DDR5 isn't even on the horizon, I'm not even sure if it's possible. One of the reasons they used 1, 2, 3, & 4 had to do with the number of times the CPU could poll the memory during a clock cycle. With DDR4 you hit the final unpolled part of the cycle. Someone please correct me if that's wrong though.

 

If he were to upgrade his CPU he'd have to upgrade the motherboard as well. 

I appreciate that info. so in essence we hit a limitation then? then something completely different wil have to be designed. I guess

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I'm going to have to echo the sentiments in this thread and say get an SSD. The bottleneck in computers is typically the hard drive. SSD's have low access times (<1ms), faster sequential reads/writes, not to mention, no moving parts, less heat, etc. They have come down in price significantly - back in '09, I got a 60 GB for $250. You can now get a 256 GB SSD for $110, which is not even on sale. Apart from that, you don't really need an upgrade.

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