Best upgrade solution for gaming

magister

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Jan 4, 2010
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Hello,

Currently I have about 350$, looking to purchase an upgrade for myself for my birthday.

I currently have a GTX 560Ti, a AMD Phenom 955 Black Edition Quad Core CPU 3.22Ghz, and a 1TB WD Black SATA HDD & My motherboard is GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3 AMD 970/SB950 AM3+ FX ATX.

Now, I am wondering what I could purchase within my budget to get the most performance increase possible.

I was looking at the MSI GTX 660 OC, which is about 200/220.

I was also looking at the AMD FX-6350 Vishera 3.9GHz Socket AM3+ which is only about 140.

I also understand that my current system bottle neck is my HDD, that a solid state would help, but with the size of games climbing every few months it seems, I really didn't want to shell out for a small one (anything less than 200GB I think is a waste pretty much).

So, what would be the best place to put my money to increase performance on my machine.

Cheers


P.s. types of games would include, but not limited to:

Current MMO type games (Marvel, FF14 2.0, etc)
FPS Types of Games (CS:GO, Firefall, etc)
MOBA types of game (Smite)
Single Player Games (Deadpool, Van Helsing, Resident Evil 6, etc)

 
Solution
There are reasonable differences between HD 7970 and GTX 760.

HD 7970 directly competes with GTX 770 (Which is overclocked GTX 680) and is very slightly weaker than it (Differences between the two are not noticeable).

Here, $50 more are definitely worth it. I myself have Radeon HD 6850 and I have not a single problem in any game out there I tried to run. Everything is very smooth without any sort of glitches or driver issues. HD 7970 is definitely worth a shot and after taking into mind that the card got $150 cheaper (It was $450 before), its at the sweet spot!
HDD does not bottleneck anything. Its the CPU and GPU which do. :)

Oh, and I don't know which CPU you have got, but I need to know in order to tell if an upgrade is really worth it.

Like Phenom II 965 Black Edition won't need to be upgraded for now, but 945 would.

All in all, FX 8350 makes up for a sensible choice as of now. Your GPU is very fine.
 

magister

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Updated with the exact model, it's a Phenom II 955 x4
 

magister

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Ok good to know. I actually just saw a GTX 760 on sale @ ... tiger direct I think for about 250 @ http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=8333214&sku=E145-0760

Is the extra 50 bucks for the 7970 be worth it over the 760? I mean I prefer Nvidia personally is why I am asking. However if there is a considerable difference in performance between the two, maybe I'll try Radeon out again, just had really bad experiences in the past with fans on those cards, not to mention driver issues.



 
There are reasonable differences between HD 7970 and GTX 760.

HD 7970 directly competes with GTX 770 (Which is overclocked GTX 680) and is very slightly weaker than it (Differences between the two are not noticeable).

Here, $50 more are definitely worth it. I myself have Radeon HD 6850 and I have not a single problem in any game out there I tried to run. Everything is very smooth without any sort of glitches or driver issues. HD 7970 is definitely worth a shot and after taking into mind that the card got $150 cheaper (It was $450 before), its at the sweet spot!
 
Solution

magister

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Ok, thanks very much for the assist Lucky =)

I guess I'll start shopping around for a new 7970 see what kind of deals are out there.

Cheers.



 


Anytime mate.

If your question is solved, you should pick a solution too. It would help others too that way. :)