Trial PC gaming System Upgrade.

Joshua0317

Honorable
Nov 22, 2013
6
0
10,510
I have been console gaming for years; mainly shooters. The next gen are apparently more similar to PC than ever before. So I was thinking of ditching the console world for PC gaming. However, I don't want to jump in with a system build without knowing if I like PC gaming. So I was wondering what necessary upgrades to my 4yr old system I'd have to make to have decent visuale playing on 60" plasma with BF4?

Current:
CPU - intel i7 975
Memory - 12GB
Video Card - GeForce 260
1TB and 500 GB hdd.

Its an HP Pavillion Elite e9280t if that helps any.

Should my trial go well I plan on jumping into building a system
 
Solution
The GTX 760 is no better than the 7870 GHz, they are pretty on par with one another. The extra VRAM is much more important if you are using more than two monitors. Here are some cards to compare.

Good: Radeon 7870 GHz http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-r78702gd5toc
Better: Radeon R9 280X http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9280xtdfd
Even Better: Radeon R9 290 http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9290aenfc
Top: Radeon R9 290X http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9290xenfc
Best: GTX 780 Ti http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-03gp42883kr

Blaise170

Honorable
You will need a new graphics card and most definitely a new PSU. Your CPU and RAM actually isn't bad considering. Something like this would work if you don't mind spending the money.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($25.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $155.98
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-11-22 12:53 EST-0500)
 

Joshua0317

Honorable
Nov 22, 2013
6
0
10,510
That isn't all that bad of a price considering next gen is $400-500. Now my follow up is if I go for a new system build is that graphics card likely to carry me far in the future? Or would I want to sell it off on ebay and pick up a more top line card for 'future proofing'? Or should I not bother building a new system and just upgrade what I have until its obsolete?

And money isn't a huge concern as my current setup cost me near $3k when I bought it. I'm willing to pay top tier for top tier performance (so long as it would be necessary: no interest in top tier case LEDs)
 

Eximo

Titan
Ambassador
+1, that CPU is just fine.

Though a R9-280X at about $300 (HD7970)would be a more suitable companion card, and it can always be carried over into your next build if you choose to upgrade or sold at nearly full price since it is a recently released product.
 

Blaise170

Honorable
The GTX 760 is no better than the 7870 GHz, they are pretty on par with one another. The extra VRAM is much more important if you are using more than two monitors. Here are some cards to compare.

Good: Radeon 7870 GHz http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-r78702gd5toc
Better: Radeon R9 280X http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9280xtdfd
Even Better: Radeon R9 290 http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9290aenfc
Top: Radeon R9 290X http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9290xenfc
Best: GTX 780 Ti http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-03gp42883kr
 
Solution

Joshua0317

Honorable
Nov 22, 2013
6
0
10,510
So the vram isn't as important as gpu. This might be a dumb question, but how do you even go about comparing cards? Like processors you look at cores and clock speed. Is core clock and onboard vram the main relevant features? Because those are what is commonly shown but cards with similar stats seem to cost quite different so I suspect there is more to it?
 

Joshua0317

Honorable
Nov 22, 2013
6
0
10,510
So the vram isn't as important as gpu. This might be a dumb question, but how do you even go about comparing cards? Like processors you look at cores and clock speed. Is core clock and onboard vram the main relevant features? Because those are what is commonly shown but cards with similar stats seem to cost quite different so I suspect there is more to it?
 

Blaise170

Honorable


I'll try to keep this short without going into too much detail. Clock speeds are actually somewhat important when comparing cards, but is not the most important thing for sure. You have to take into account the amount of bandwidth on the memory pipeline, architecture, cores, etc.

For example, the Nvidia GTX Titan has 2688 CUDA cores and a 384 bit pipeline. The Nvidia GTX 760 only has 1152 CUDA cores and a 256 bit pipleline. This makes the Titan significantly stronger. This is a bit oversimplified but should give you an idea.

As for recent releases, we usually look at Nvidia's 600 and 700 series cards, and AMD's 78xx, 79xx, and 2xx (which was just released a few weeks ago) series cards. In general (this is a bit oversimplified as well):

7850/270X ~ 660
7870/280X ~ 670/760
7950 ~ 760/770
7970/290 ~ 770/780
7990/290X ~ 780/780 Ti