Upgrading my PC...

[defblade]

I used to be really hot on this stuff, spent £000s every year on playing the latest and greatest games... but that's faded somewhat over the last decade and now I'm asking for a little help as I'm having to turn the graphics right down in World of Tanks (turning on the motion blur kills my system dead for seconds!!) and we can't be having that!

OS and games run from SSDs.

Current motherboard is Asus P7P55D-E which it turns out is now a dead socket, 1156, so CPUs are ebay fodder and not readily available new.

Current CPU is an i5 760, which gets a reasonable score on the Passmark charts still: 3624.
I can get that to 5163 for £70 with a Xenon or 5485 with an i7 870 for £110/120.

RAM is currently 4Gb, with 2 slots free.

Graphics card is a GTX460, still ranks 72nd on Passmark with a score of 2666; the 760 series looks like the sweet spot at the moment(?) with about double the score and price in the 150-200 range. I'm sticking with Nvidia, thanks. Or worth getting a matching card for SLI? Although I'm not sure there's room in my case...



So, what's going to be the best upgrades to get things running as nice as they can be again... with breaking the bank and starting from MB up again!

[defblade]

I'm already man-maths-ing these upgrades! I can play WoT perfectly well as is; it ran Crysis/Far Cry just fine at fairly high levels... it's just knowing it could be better for not too much dosh


Edit: just spent an hour or so playing with passmark: while the results look like they can vary somewhat even with similar machines, by carefully selecting your benchmarks to compare against, you can see if changing one thing or another makes a big difference, or if it looks like something else in the system is the limiting factor. So I've found systems with the better CPU, more RAM and the different graphics cards... the one system that's closest to mine currently with just the GPU changed gets better GPU scores than 8Gb, i7 machines running the same card... so I think it's safe to say that upgrading the graphics shouldn't find it limited by anything else in the system.

Edited by defblade on Wednesday 23 July 17:50

[defblade]

Randomthoughts said:

What's an inert gas got to do with your Passmark score?

Sorry, Xeon.

[defblade]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Yep, 2x2GB. My overclocking days are long over now I can generally afford to just buy something that works (NB: this thread dedicated to replacing stuff that already works ) and can have enough trouble finding the time to play games, leave alone fiddle with the kit... So I'll probably add the same again.


PSU is a modular Antec beastie, same age as the other bits, with plenty of overhead - I like my computer to run quietly (especially when idle; I'll accept noise at full chat as the speakers/headphones will probably block it anyway!) and that means overspecing things like PSU and CPU heatsinks

[defblade]

Zad said:

Yes, don't throw good money after bad by spending £100 on a marginally faster processor which still has you locked in a dead end. Intel has recently done a processor refresh, which bumped the prices down by a notch or 2, introducing some new high end ones (which aren't much faster as it turns out). Bundles of K-suffix (multiplier unlocked) CPUs and motherboards start at £225 or so anyway.

I agree with the previous comments though, a new graphics card would probably make most difference.

I think that's pretty much where I'm at - new graphics card; probably an extra 2x2GB RAM as it's cheap and if that's not enough, both those things are portable into a new MB/CPU which looks like not too much more than an old 2nd hand dead end CPU anyway.

Thanks folks, you've cleared my thinking nicely

[defblade]

Efbe said:

man maths = plan to sell the old kit on ebay. will add a bit more to your budget, even if you never get round to selling on ebay

Amazingly, I hadn't thought of that. So about an extra £40 in the kitty, looking at completed listings

[defblade]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Covered that already - Passmark suggests similar GPU scores regardless of CPU and RAM (within the current and top available spec of CPU, and 4GB vs 8GB RAM) - so the GPU will be the best and probably only upgrade for now.

[defblade]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I didn't quote figures... I've checked and it's an Antec TP-650 with 4 12v rails, rated at 22A, 22A (264W each), 25A, 25A (300W each), so should be no trouble for a 760 or 770.

[defblade]

Well, one thing after another came up all through the second half of last year (including new motorbike and then new car, so not all bad ), but I've done a couple of extra days work this month, so finally got around to ordering a new card. Happily, Nvidia have just released their new series of cards and I've ordered an MSI 960 for £163.

Reviews say it's only marginally quicker than a 760 (which is what I had settled on before) and also that it'll likely be memory limited in 2 or 3 years time, but it should do me very nicely for the meantime - turns the fans off when it's cool; will cope with DX12 apparently (and run DX11 properly for now); everyone's saying they're great if you're "only" 1080p gamaing, and my monitor's not even that (1680x1050)... and the reviews say it'll be great upgrade for people with a 660 or even 560. As I'm swapping out a 460, I expect it to make me tea and take the dog for a walk

[defblade]

defblade said:

Efbe said:

man maths = plan to sell the old kit on ebay. will add a bit more to your budget, even if you never get round to selling on ebay

Amazingly, I hadn't thought of that. So about an extra £40 in the kitty, looking at completed listings

Prices have dropped a little bit - just sold for 335 on ebay tonight