Advice regarding PC upgrade

Xtal · Apr 17, 2014

Hi all,

I'm looking to get better gaming performance from my PC. I'm not sure whether it's worth upgrading some components or buying a new box. My current setup;

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB
RAM: 4096 MB (2 x 2048 DDR2-SDRAM )
MOBO: FUJITSU SIEMENS MS-7504VP-PV
HDD: Western Digital WD5000AVDS-73U7B1 ATA Device (500GB)
SSD: Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series ATA Device (128GB) (running my OS's)
OS: Ubuntu 13.10 for general use, Vista Home Premium 64 bit for gaming.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Regards.

woltej1 · Apr 17, 2014

I would get a new one. You can't upgrade your GPU very far with that CPU and there is no upgrade room with your CPU. If you give a budget we can suggest some choices.

HiTechObsessed · Apr 17, 2014

Depending on what games you play, a GPU upgrade would definitely help. Something like the GTX 750 or 750 Ti would be perfect, and would get you medium/high in most games at 1080p.

What woltej1 is saying about the CPU, is you'll see framerate drops when experiencing high CPU usage in games, but this will only really affect you when doing games like MMOs, RTS, or multiplayer games like BF4. For single player games, your CPU is fine.

Xtal · Apr 17, 2014

Thanks for the really quick replies guys, appreciated. With reply to what the budget is, I'm not completely sure. By that I mean either I'll be upgrading some component, as in spending something in the region of up to £200. Or if an upgrade wouldn't help me out, then I'd probably spend somewhere in the region of £600 on a new system (would that even be enough to build something that would noticably be better than my current rig?).

My initial thought was to swap the GPU for something better, but how bottlenecked would it be considering my motherboard only has PCI-e 1.0 slots? Also, my SSD is, I believe, quite a good one, but how much is it's capability restricted by my motherboard only being SATA 1?

I then thought a motherboard upgrade along with a GPU upgrade would suffice, however my CPU is too old to be supported by newer boards (it's socket 775).

In terms of what I play, I actually play a range of games; single player (Skyrim), multiplayer (DOTA 2) and MMO (SWTOR and hopefully soon ESO). My current setup plays everything to an ok standard, and in the main, considering it's about five years old I'm really happy with how much high quality gaming time I've had from it.

HiTechObsessed · Apr 17, 2014

Something like this will max out everything you have now, and will be a great gamer for a long while. The i5 is much, much faster than the CPU you have now, and yes, the SSD is being choked by SATA 1 lol

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor (£128.22 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock H87 Pro4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£54.56 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£52.30 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar 750GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£29.70 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card (£239.72 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: BitFenix Merc Alpha (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£32.90 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: XFX 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£67.52 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £604.92
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-17 20:34 BST+0100)

But like I said above, if you don't feel like spending that kind of money, a GTX 750 or 750 Ti would be a great noticeable performance increase for around 80-120 quid.

sora · Apr 17, 2014

Xtal :

It would be a lot better to build a brand new computer; those parts are heavily outdated.

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