Need Help - Gaming PC: Should I upgrade or wait?


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Hi Neowinians,

 

Full circle has been reached again, so it's time to gather the amazing advice of Neowin experts!

 

3 years ago I bought the following gaming pc, very good at the time:

 

CPU: i5 3570K (Overclocked to 4.2ghz)

Cooler: Noctua NH-D14

Motherboard: MSI Z77A-G45 Z77

GPU: 2GB MSI Radeon HD 7850

RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance (1600)

HD: SSD

 

It is now getting to the point where new games are not able to run on highest settings. One example of this would be the new ARK: Survival Evolved (albeit, i know it has optimisation issues, it still does not run as well on mine as other peoples rigs).

With that said, I've been eyeing up the following spec of PC with a budget of around

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Dunno why you need to upgrade. I have almost that config and I'm fine with it.

 

SSD of what capacity? You might want to upgrade to a 256Gb..

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Mindovermaster,

 

I was thinking the same thing, can you elaborate, do you play the newest games i.e. ARK?

My collection of games has many other new games, which do seem to run very well e.g. Alien Isolation

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Your system seems fine to me as well, all you'd need to upgrade is probably the graphics card and that would make you able to play most new games at highest graphics (unless you want 4k). Even then you have a decent videocard.

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Yah, your graphic card look like the only thing that is lacking. The rest of your hardware is fine. Get that 970, and you'll see a large boost.

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Might be good to add your PSU too. If you have anything over 600W, you should be fine for a GFX update.

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I stream as well as play, will the multi-threading in the new cpu's offer a significant boost?

 

No.  You will hardly see any "gain" (with regards to price/performance) by jumping from the 3570 to the 4790.  You can read a bit-tech review of the 4790 here.

 

You would be best (in my opinion) to just go with a 970, 980 or the 980ti (or do the 970 SLI).  

 

Seeing that you were thinking about doing two 970s in SLI ... I would recommend just buying a 980ti.  Sure, the 970 SLI is about 5-10% faster in some games but that is heavily dependent on how well the game utilizes the SLI.  The added VRAM will also be beneficial over time with some newer games already using more than 4GB.  The price of 2 970s is also roughly the same as the 980ti (maybe a few bucks more or less) depending where you shop.

 

Anyway, your bottleneck right now is the video card.

 

The more I think about it...the longer I'll be keeping my 3770 for a few more years and update my 670 to a 980ti.  :)

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If you play at 1080p then the GTX 970 is plenty enough. If you were to play at higher resolutions you would need more VRAM and the 3.5GB of that card wouldn't be enough. Instead of going with two GTX 970 I would recommend getting a GTX 980 or even a GTX 980 Ti.

 

I have an ultra wide 34'' monitor and am playing with a GTX 970. This card having the issue with the 3.5GB I hit the VRAM limit often where the game will then use the slower 500MB VRAM, and this causes stuttering in games. However this is due to the higher textures used at this resolution. Playing at 1080p you will not hit this limit. I don't know how this works with 2x GTX 970 in SLI, whether the individual VRAM is still counted or if everything is then split between the two.

 

When I play GTA V, depending on what settings I enable, I can see how much VRAM is used. Once I go above 3.5GB I notice stuttering in the game. When I bought the GTX 970 I didn't have this monitor, but now that I have it I notice this issue. I will be replacing the GTX 970 with a GTX 980 Ti soon.

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I really need a upgrade to, my i7 920 is showing it's old age, and getting anything newer gfx wise than the HD7870 I have now would be a waste.  Intel needs to hurry up with it's skylake chips, X100 mobo and maybe cheaper DDR4. 

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Always wait, there is perpetually something better always coming out soon.

But if you do that, you would never buy anything because "there is always something better coming out". :laugh:

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