PC upgrade

[kiran08]

Hi,

I am planning to upgrade my current build for 1080p gaming.
Below is the existing configuration of my PC --

CPU : i7-920 2.6GHz
MB : DX59SO
RAM : 6GB
HDD : WD 512GB
GPU : AMD 5450
Monitor : Already upgraded to Dell 2412 (1920 x 1080)

Please suggest if I need to upgrade the complete PC configuration (inc CPU and MB) or replacing some of components would work great.

I mostly play NSF, Far Cry, Prince of Persia, Assassin Creed etc.

My budget is $500.

Thanks for your time

 

[Cerb]

Do you have a 500GB HDD? 512GB is an odd size for one...

Given what you have and your budget, a Geforce GTX 760, Radeon HD 7950, HD 7970, or GTX 770, would all make good upgrades, right now. A little more RAM might help, but you might just want to hold off on that, until you're up to a new CPU.

IMO, a GTX 760 or Radeon HD 7950 would be best, so you could put whatever is left towards an upgrade of the rest of the system, in the next year or so. Your CPU is pretty good, but has also been far eclipsed (worth upgrading from, if you have the money). Your video card, on the other hand, can be beaten by almost any integrated video out there, today, and is what is making your system unusable for gaming.

 

[kiran08]

Do you have a 500GB HDD? 512GB is an odd size for one...

It may be 500GB, got confused since the total allocated space is not same as disk size.

IMO, a GTX 760 or Radeon HD 7950 would be best

Which one is suggested out of these from considering gaming performance. I can see there is a slight difference in price and both fit in my pocket. I am novice and do know much about their specifications.

One the other hand, would there be any significant improvement if I replace my HDD with SSD?

Thanks !!

 

[DSF]

They're both gaming cards so either will work fine. The best thing to do is to look up benchmarks for the games you intend to play and see which one performs best on average.

For example, google "assassin's creed 7950 benchmark" and see if anything comes up. You didn't include numbers on the games, so it may be a moot point. Either card will smash the original Assassin's Creed or Far Cry. If you mean the latest editions, it would probably pay to at least check out some benchmarks.

Edit: Didn't see your SSD question at first. An SSD almost always helps a system feel faster, but not in-game. What it will do is speed up access to any file that's stored on the SSD compared to the HDD. So for example, Windows generally loads faster, files open almost instantly instead of that few second delay you get from a conventional drive, etc. With games, as much of the data as possible is generally loaded into RAM before you start playing, so the only time you see a real benefit from an SSD is at the very beginning. For some games, like BF3, there's a clear difference for me in the time it takes to load a level. For other games the SSD is essentially meaningless.

So I say all that to say that if gaming performance is what you're after the graphics card is the most important upgrade. If you have money leftover for an SSD that's just icing on the cake.

 

[haynesr07]

The ssd would be a good purchase but is that a SATA 3 board? If not then ssd upgrade would be useless. I don't know much about first gens but should be OK. I would get a 760 2gb. I have the 4 and I love mine.

If going ssd; wait for the new Samsung evo 840

 

[Cerb]

The ssd would be a good purchase but is that a SATA 3 board? If not then ssd upgrade would be useless.

Ignore this.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110-7.html

As you can see, the real-world differences are small, and the differences between different SSDs dominates. An Intel 3Gbps port will be just fine for the latest and greatest 6Gbps SSDs.

 

[RayTheKing]

At stock speeds, the 7950 is beaten by even the GTX 760 in gaming performance. However, if you decide to play at +1440p or wish to OC your GPU, the 7950 is a better choice, as it has more VRAM and amazing overclocking potentials.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148840
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231313
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127741
Around 505 bucks + taxes and fees! It may be a tiny bit over your budget, but the GTX 770 is a high end card, and should be able to handle today's and tomorrow's games at max settings. The extra memory and hard drive space should also keep you future-proof.

*If your PC case has space for two 3.5'' drives, use both HDDs (1.5 TB of total space). Also, check if your motherboard has a DIMM slot available. The slots should be where the RAM sticks are inserted (RAM looks like a thick, long credit card)

 

[adnank77]

Most important upgrade is Graphics Card .. Change it then you can evaluate if you need anything else ..

 

[RayTheKing]

The CPU isn't very powerful when compared to i5s and i7s from the newer generations, but it should be enough. However, I think it may bottleneck the GPU...

 

[DSF]

The CPU isn't very powerful when compared to i5s and i7s from the newer generations, but it should be enough. However, I think it may bottleneck the GPU...

It's slower, but it's honestly not bad. It's nowhere near as much of a problem as his GPU.

 

[Torn Mind]

The 5450 is absolute weak sauce and has been since it was released. Upgrade that GPU

 

[Cerb]

To try to help give some numbers:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4263/amds-radeon-hd-6450-uvd3-meets-htpc/9

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/767?vs=854

So, as you can see, the new GTX 760, for $250-280, is fairly well matched compared to the older GTX 580, but a bit better in some areas. It'll do the job very well, and faster will typically need some heavy anti-aliasing, to be worth it, at 1080P.

But, as you can also see, the 6450 is slow, to the point they didn't even bother with higher resolutions or settings in the review, and we've had 2 years for games to get even more demanding.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Most important upgrade is Graphics Card .. Change it then you can evaluate if you need anything else ..

The 5450 is absolute weak sauce and has been since it was released. Upgrade that GPU

Agreed. A HD5450 is just not going to cut it for gaming any more. To put that in perspective, even a HD7850 has something like 18x the performance...

Edit; If you upgrade the GPU, you might want to check if your PSU can handle it.

 

[Cerb]

Agreed. A HD5450 is just not going to cut it for gaming any more.

It couldn't cut it when it was brand new (which I'm sure is part of why I couldn't even find a review comparing it to higher-end gaming cards, though lucked up that AT's 6450 had the GTX 580 in the mix). IGP-less Intel boxes like the OP's were pretty much what it was made for.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It couldn't cut it when it was brand new (which I'm sure is part of why I couldn't even find a review comparing it to higher-end gaming cards, though lucked up that AT's 6450 had the GTX 580 in the mix). IGP-less Intel boxes like the OP's were pretty much what it was made for.

Well, it could (and can I suppose...) handle very light stuff. One of my family members ran The Sims 3 quite well at low resolutions with one, but other then that you're quite right. I -think- I saw a test somewhere where it was even slower then a HD2500. That pretty much says it all...

 

[RayTheKing]

OP needs a new GPU above everything else. If he has extra funds, he should buy an extra HDD and RAM to future-proof the rig. The CPU and mobo seem to be fine.

 

[Torn Mind]

OP needs a new GPU above everything else. If he has extra funds, he should buy an extra HDD and RAM to future-proof the rig. The CPU and mobo seem to be fine.

He'd have to get 12 GBs (3 x 4 GBs) to keep the RAM running in triple-channel mode.

A spare HDD would be useful to make a clone of the current OS drive, at least.

 

[Seba]

A new graphics card would have the biggest impact for games.

You do not have to buy a $300 graphics card. Any graphics card from Radeon HD 7790 level or GeForce GTX 650 Ti level and up would be a big improvement over your Radeon HD 5450.

For a very powerfull graphics card you may have to also replace your power supply (depending on what you have now).

A SSD would be nice, but not mandatory for games.

 

[mfenn]

He'd have to get 12 GBs (3 x 4 GBs) to keep the RAM running in triple-channel mode.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Adding a random 4GB DIMM is going to throw the OP's memory configuration into single-channel mode for the upper 4GB. 6GB is totally fine for what the OP wants to do right now.

 

[kiran08]

Thanks eveyone for replying to my queries. I have gone through your posts and I believe following upgrades would be good -

1. GPU : GTX 760 or 770
I can go for 770 GPU, but not sure if my 920 CPU is a bottleneck as mentioned by another poster in the thread. With 770 added I think I should be able to continue with upgraded build for another 2-3 years. I am fine to put some extra some $$ in that case.

2. PSU
I guess a 500 - 600w power supply should be fine. Found on newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139028
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151093

Please suggest if there are better alternatives.

3. SSD
For the overall performance of system I am considering to add Samsung 840 Pro 120GB.
I have a doubt on how to transfer the OS from my existing HDD to SSD. Do I need to re-install the Windows along with other programs? I am running Windows 7 Home Premium edition from HDD.

Thanks again for your time.

 

[biostud]

1. New GPU
2. New CPU fan + Overclocking (if mboards supports it, and depends on if the CPU is D0)
3. SSD
No need for more memory.
4. Since your mboard only supports SataII, I wouldn't go for a 840pro, the extra cost is not worth it. Rather I would go for a cheaper 240-256gb SSD if you can fit it in your budget.

 

[Cerb]

I would agree the cost is not worth it for the Pro, but that has nothing to do with 6GBps or not. For a regular gaming/web machine, a plain Samsung 840, or Sandisk Ultra Plus, or Plextor M5S will all offer plenty of performance and longevity for the money. The Pro is really only needed if you do server-type work, content creation, or other things that could really put a hurtin' on the drive.

If you just look at reviews with current-gen SSDs compared to each other, you might lose perspective. In the worst cases, the TLC 840 is nearly as fast as the fastest single SSDs from 2-3 years ago, and even faster in typical usage. There are users that may appreciate the differences, and they are real, but with light writing and mostly reading, it's not going to amount to much, if anything. I mean, if you've been disk-limited using Photoshop or Premier, or something else like that, the 840 Pro should be on your short list (along with the M500, Neutrons, and Extreme II). Game loading, web, email, office stuff, occasional light photo/video editing, etc., and it's just not going to make much difference, if any.

For a some perspective, the M4 used to be one of the fastest in non-synthetics:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/356?vs=678
Still respectable, and it still may better if you'll be using non-Windows and/or RAID with iffy or no TRIM, but time marches on, and so does performance.

IMO, spend a little more for one of the good-but-cheap ~250GB drives (see the top of the post), or save money with one of them at ~120GB.

 

[kiran08]

Thanks Cerb, Biostud for reply.

I see your point on SSD and now looking for alternative options.

Still I have question regarding --
1. Should I be going to Gtx 770 or 760. I am not sure if I am expert enough to overclock my CPU.

2. I have a doubt on how to transfer the OS from my existing HDD to SSD. Do I need to re-install the Windows along with other programs? I am running Windows 7 Home Premium edition from HDD.

3. Also please suggest some good PSU.

 

[Cerb]

1. On the CPU side, you'd want an aftermarket cooler to get it too much faster, right off (a Cooler Master Hyper212+ Evo would be a solid option). It can be a little involved, but chances are you could get another 25-50% of performance out of it, depending on how good of a chip it is. You do have the right motherboard for it.

GPU side: it's question of how much eye candy you want and how much you want to spend on it. The 770 will allow you really crank up the AA and any game options, but at 1080P, there's nothing out there now, or in the near future, that won't be smoothly playable on a 760. You could probably go lower and still be happy, honestly, but the price/performance is really good with the 760. With about $500, a ~250GB SSD (more room!) and GTX 760 would still be under budget.

2. You can transfer your OS. It can be a little involved, though. I never can remember what tools you're supposed to do it with though, because I've yet to be in a situation where I've needed or wanted to, v. reinstalling. If you re-install Windows, you'll just want to not have the HDD hooked up, until after you've finished the install, and Windows handles the rest (namely, alignment).

3. What is your PSU now?

 

[Essence_of_War]

GPU side: it's question of how much eye candy you want and how much you want to spend on it. The 770 will allow you really crank up the AA and any game options, but at 1080P, there's nothing out there now, or in the near future, that won't be smoothly playable on a 760. You could probably go lower and still be happy, honestly, but the price/performance is really good with the 760. With about $500, a ~250GB SSD (more room!) and GTX 760 would still be under budget.

2nd'ing. I'd go with the SSD + the 760. You'll be happy you did. SSD makes everything about computers better.

2. I have a doubt on how to transfer the OS from my existing HDD to SSD. Do I need to re-install the Windows along with other programs? I am running Windows 7 Home Premium edition from HDD.

Usually, the easiest (but most time-consuming) way is to do a clean windows 7 install on the SSD. There are tools that allow you to migrate w/o re-installing. Terabyte's Image for Linux live cd can be used to image your HDD and restore to an SSD, and in their FAQ they say that they handle the alignment. stuff.