Upgrading my Gaming PC

[JBGFX]

For most games, like FPS games, Skyrim, Mass Effect and such, 45+. Less than that and I start to be distracted by the lack of smoothness... I can tolerate occasional 35-40fps dips though. For slow paced games like Civilization V, 30 fps is still OK.

ok thanks for that pretty much the same with me tbh

 

[mfenn]

I'd just go with maximum CPU power now, and forget about upgrading it to Ivy Bridge. The CPU will last pretty long anyway, until Intel Haswell in 2013 at the very least. And at that point it makes more sense to upgrade to Haswell because it should be quite a bit faster than Ivy (new architecture).

CPU i5-2500K £167
Mobo Asrock Z68M/USB3 £80
RAM 2x4GB DDR3 £32
PSU E.g. CX500 V2 £45, you can also try to search for XFX Core 550W-650W, Antec Neo Eco, Earthwatts, High Current Gamer lines,
GPU XFX 6870 £140 or wait for 7850 to be released

Total £464. If that's too much then downgrade to i5-2400 (-£15) and Gigabyte H61 (-£35).

Just want to poke my head in here and say that this build looks good to me! :thumbsup:

 

[JBGFX]

Just want to poke my head in here and say that this build looks good to me! :thumbsup:

=D what about if i down grade to what he said was the 'if i cant afford' option, and get a GTX 560ti? you think that will be just as good?

 

[lehtv]

If you downgrade the CPU, it'd still be better to buy the 6870, it's so much cheaper than 560 Ti yet performs equally in BF3. Save your money for an upgrade to NVIDIA Kepler or something if you don't care about the possibility to OC the CPU.

 

[JBGFX]

If you downgrade the CPU, it'd still be better to buy the 6870, it's so much cheaper than 560 Ti yet performs equally in BF3. Save your money for an upgrade to NVIDIA Kepler or something if you don't care about the possibility to OC the CPU.

okay ill take your word for it, thanks for all the help,
is there any way to dedicate some of my ram for video memory? would this make the game run faster aswell?

 

[lehtv]

As far as I know, the graphics card will use system RAM automatically if all the VRAM is being used up. On high settings @ 1680x1050 that won't really happen / have impact. VRAM is quite a bit faster than RAM so if comparing identical 1GB and 2GB graphics cards on demanding enough settings/games, you will see the 2GB card perform better, e.g. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/331?vs=293

 

[JBGFX]

As far as I know, the graphics card will use system RAM automatically if all the VRAM is being used up. On high settings @ 1680x1050 that won't really happen / have impact. VRAM is quite a bit faster than RAM so if comparing identical 1GB and 2GB graphics cards on demanding enough settings/games, you will see the 2GB card perform better, e.g. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/331?vs=293

aa okay i have 6GB of ram installed at the moment, so that should be enough
i think that my parents want to wait untill after christmas too see if there is any clearances on, so i will take a look then, maybe the components will go down in price some more

 

[mfenn]

okay ill take your word for it, thanks for all the help,
is there any way to dedicate some of my ram for video memory? would this make the game run faster aswell?

Under Windows 7, VRAM is virtualized just like normal system memory, so this will happen automatically as lehtv says. That being said, you really don't want to have to go out to system RAM because it is much slower than VRAM (5x or so) and will cause your performance to tank.

 

[JBGFX]

bump, added something in the main topic

 

[lehtv]

EDIT
Just got my christmas money i got £400 so far, maybe some more soon, i was wandering if i could get some opinions on these:
http://www.dabs.com/products/asus-am...SY6.html?src=2

An i5 will run in circles around FX-6100

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-GeForce...4836168&sr=8-1

XFX 6870 is £28 cheaper from Scan and performs the same in BF3...

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/xfx-pr...41834-pdt.html

XFX 650W is a great PSU, and would allow you to run a much more power hungry GPU setup. That'd mean a very high end single GPU or midrange crossfire/SLI. How likely is it you'll ever do that? And what stops you from upgrading the PSU along with the GPU in the unlikely scenario you'll need the extra power? I'd save the £25 and get CX500 V2

 

[JBGFX]

An i5 will run in circles around FX-6100

XFX 6870 is £28 cheaper from Scan and performs the same in BF3...

XFX 650W is a great PSU, and would allow you to run a much more power hungry GPU setup. That'd mean a very high end single GPU or midrange crossfire/SLI. How likely is it you'll ever do that? And what stops you from upgrading the PSU along with the GPU in the unlikely scenario you'll need the extra power? I'd save the £25 and get CX500 V2

i think i might upgrade at some point to sli or crossfire.

also, i would have thought that a 6 core @ 3.1GHZ beats a 4 core @ 3.3GHZ?
i may have my GHZ's wrong, but you know what i meen.

 

[lehtv]

i think i might upgrade at some point to sli or crossfire.

Might = unlikely = not worth it. But go for it if it gives you peace of mind.

also, i would have thought that a 6 core @ 3.1GHZ beats a 4 core @ 3.3GHZ?
i may have my GHZ's wrong, but you know what i meen.

Yeah, that's a pretty common misconception. Several things:

1) A 'core' can mean a lot of things, depending on the CPU in question. In this case (putting it simply), FX-6100 has three Bulldozer modules which are basically two cores that share resources, while an i5 has a more traditional design of four cores with independent resources for each core.

2) Games at the moment only use four or less CPU threads.

3) Pure clockspeed doesn't matter a lot. CPU architecture on the other hand is very important. A 3GHz Pentium 4 core from 8 years ago is much, much slower than 3GHz Sandy Bridge core from 1 year ago.

Compare AMD FX-8100 "octocore" to an i5-2400 quad core: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/434?vs=363. The i5 has a lot better per core performance even when it is clocked 500MHz lower. The FX-8100 beats it only in heavily multithreaded tasks. This means that the core architecture of FX-8100 (as well as FX-6100) is a lot less efficient per clock frequency, than the core architecture of the i5.

 

[JBGFX]

Ahh, I get it now!!! It's how it goes about doing things that makes a fast core, not what clock speed it has, entirely... I think,
removed
PS: sorrydfor any mistakes, I'm on my iPod here, and MERRY CHRISTMAS and thanks for the help again

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Ahh, I get it now!!! It's how it goes about doing things that makes a fast core, not what clock speed it has, entirely... I think,
Also, I'm thinking of selling all of my old conponents, I'm thinking £140 for the lot. Psu, mobo, GPU, CPU.
400W Psu. Nvidia GeForve GT230 1.5Gb. Intel C2Quad q8300
Not sure what my motherboard is, but it's socket 775 and PCI-E.
Do you think my price estimate is good? I'm selling to either my brother of my friend.
PS: sorry for any mistakes, I'm on my iPod here, and MERRY CHRISTMAS and thanks for the help again

were not allowed to price check, sorry

 

[lehtv]

Yeah as T_Yamamoto said price-checks are against rules. Easy to make that mistake though =)

MERRY CHRISTMAS and thanks for the help again

You too. Happy to help!

 

[John P]

Since you already have 6GB of RAM and a decent older gen processor you can really "play" BF3 on Med-High to High settings by just upgrading your video card to the Radeon 6870.

For now just upgrade your video card and maybe your power supply if it can't handle the load. Then see if you can tolerate the way the games run.

Only upgrade the rest of you can't run at the settings you want. That will give you more time to figure the rest out.

 

[JBGFX]

Since you already have 6GB of RAM and a decent older gen processor you can really "play" BF3 on Med-High to High settings by just upgrading your video card to the Radeon 6870.

For now just upgrade your video card and maybe your power supply if it can't handle the load. Then see if you can tolerate the way the games run.

Only upgrade the rest of you can't run at the settings you want. That will give you more time to figure the rest out.

ah, ok, ill see how i go, just that my processor is socket 775, so i would have to get a socket 775 mobo that has a PCI-E 2.0 slot on it (mine dosent have one atm), so i might aswell get a socket 1155 mobo with PCI-E 2.0, because either way i need a new mobo for a new card.

and sorry D: i didnt realise it was against the rules

 

[lehtv]

An i5 is something like 70-80% faster than Q8300. Won't increase your framerate in games by that amount, but you'll still notice a big difference in games and won't regret it.

A PCIe 2.0 graphics card will work in a PCIe 1.1 slot. I think PCIe 1.1 is pretty much equivalent to 2.0 running at x8. You'll get something like 95-99% of the performance.

You'll need a new PSU even if you upgrade only the GPU.

 

[JBGFX]

An i5 is something like 70-80% faster than Q8300. Won't increase your framerate in games by that amount, but you'll still notice a big difference in games and won't regret it.

A PCIe 2.0 graphics card will work in a PCIe 1.1 slot. I think PCIe 1.1 is pretty much equivalent to 2.0 running at x8. You'll get something like 95-99% of the performance.

You'll need a new PSU even if you upgrade only the GPU.

ahh okay, so if i get a new card, ittl work in my PCI-E slot i have now (not 2.0)?
i read somewhere that ill only get half of the performance, becuase of only half the width thing (8x not 16x)
cpu-z says my mobo has: PCI-E 16x

and yeh, im lookin at some 650W psu, will it constantly use 650W? or only use maybe 100, and increace when i load a game?

 

[lehtv]

ahh okay, so if i get a new card, ittl work in my PCI-E slot i have now (not 2.0)?

Yes.

i read somewhere that ill only get half of the performance, becuase of only half the width thing (8x not 16x)

It doesn't work like that. 16 lanes has twice the available bandwidth of 8 lanes. So in order for you to get half the performance from only having 8 lanes as opposed to 16, your graphics card would have to be so fast as to saturate the bandwidth of 16 lanes. A 6870 barely saturates 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes.

cpu-z says my mobo has: PCI-E 16x

If your mobo is only PCIe 1.1 as you say, then that's PCIe 1.1 16x, not PCIe 2.0 16x. Each PCIe 2.0 lane is capable of 500 mb/s, while each 1.1 lane is capable of 250 mb/s. So 16 PCIe 1.1 lanes have the same bandwidth as 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes.

and yeh, im lookin at some 650W psu, will it constantly use 650W?

First, which 650W unit are you looking at?

A power supply draws DC power from the wall socket and converts it to AC power for the computer components. A typical 85% efficient power supply will draw 100W for every 85W delivered to the PC. So it only draws as much DC power as it needs to in order to power the PC. The total wattage rating is just the maximum amount of power it is nominally capable of delivering.

or only use maybe 100, and increace when i load a game?

Yes, components will use more power when they are working hard

 

[JBGFX]

First, which 650W unit are you looking at?

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/zs-series-ocz-zs650w-uk-650w-atx-power-supply-unit-11342059-pdt.html i was looking at this one.
so i could get my PCI-E 2.0 graphics card now, and only upgrade the PSU, then save up some more money and get a really nice mobo and cpu another time? maybe after i have sold my old GPU?

will i encounter any errors? changing my mobo after installing the graphics card drivers and everything
PS: sorry for being such a noob

 

[lehtv]

Well, everyone's a noob once...

OCZ ZS is OK but the XFX 650W you linked earlier is excellent. Easily a better choice if you really want a 650W unit.

Once you buy a new mobo and CPU, you should reinstall Windows. It can work without reinstalling but those are such central components that I would reinstall the OS when replacing them.

 

[JBGFX]

Well, everyone's a noob once...

OCZ ZS is OK but the XFX 650W you linked earlier is excellent. Easily a better choice if you really want a 650W unit.

Once you buy a new mobo and CPU, you should reinstall Windows. It can work without reinstalling but those are such central components that I would reinstall the OS when replacing them.

when i go to my system properties, is that my liscence key therE? will there be somewhere for me to re enter that in once ive got my new mobo?

 

[lehtv]

Your system properties shows the Product ID of your operating system, different from your license key. However don't you have the Windows installation CD? Or did it come preinstalled with your PC and if so, how do you intend to reinstall it? Also which version of Windows do you have, is it 64-bit?

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/productkeysactivation/ht/windows-7-key.htm <-- can retrieve the license key from the registry

Windows will ask for the license key during installation

 

[JBGFX]

Your system properties shows the Product ID of your operating system, different from your license key. However don't you have the Windows installation CD? Or did it come preinstalled with your PC and if so, how do you intend to reinstall it? Also which version of Windows do you have, is it 64-bit?

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/productkeysactivation/ht/windows-7-key.htm <-- can retrieve the license key from the registry

Windows will ask for the license key during installation

i was hoping that it would still be on my HDD, as im not getting a new HDD. would i need to reactuvate it with a new product liscence key thing?