Looking to upgrade, not sure where i should start.

Oribitus

Distinguished
Dec 2, 2013
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Approximate Purchase Date :2016

Budget Range: I have about $600 to use towards upgrades.

System Usage Gaming (Monster Hunter, PubG, Wolcen, Diablo, WoW,) Some photoshop
work and random intarweb exploring.

Monitor I'm currently running a Dual monitor set up.

Parts to Upgrade:
These are the parts I *think* should be upgraded if can keep budget
it has been long enough since my last build that i feel lost haha, so
any help would be amazing. Even if I can keep some of it.

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
(https://tinyurl.com/jmdaw7g)

Memory: 2x G.SKILL AEGIS 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop
Memory Model F3-1333C9S-8GIS
(https://tinyurl.com/hczvqxf)

Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 DirectX 12 04G-P4-3965-KR 4GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI
Express 3.0 SLI Support ACX 2.0+ Video Card
(https://tinyurl.com/ydb4qo27)

MoBo: GIGABYTE GA-B150M-DS3H (rev. 1.0) LGA 1151 Intel B150 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB
3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
(https://tinyurl.com/y72fktew)

Preferred Website: I use newegg mostly, but deals win out.

Location: I live in Wichita KS.


System feels a bit sluggish in some games; I'd like to run everything closer to 60+ FPS (on max of course). But it has been 2 years since the update to my system.
 
Solution
Unfortunately the guy above is right. Your video card is roughly equivalent to a GTX 1050ti. Even a GTX 1050ti is over 200 bucks due to the miners. Which that should be a 140 dollar card.

You don't necessarily need to do it, but you could start looking at a platform upgrade of say like an i5 8600k or an 8th generation i7.

Alternatively you could also see about a Skylake or kaby lake i7 to drop into your current board. I know they are saying some newer games, battlefield 1 as an example, play better with more cores, so things will probably go that way at some point. I am an AMD guy myself, which they have the better value now for multithreaded performance but are slightly behind on IPC, though they are closer than they were...
Unfortunately the guy above is right. Your video card is roughly equivalent to a GTX 1050ti. Even a GTX 1050ti is over 200 bucks due to the miners. Which that should be a 140 dollar card.

You don't necessarily need to do it, but you could start looking at a platform upgrade of say like an i5 8600k or an 8th generation i7.

Alternatively you could also see about a Skylake or kaby lake i7 to drop into your current board. I know they are saying some newer games, battlefield 1 as an example, play better with more cores, so things will probably go that way at some point. I am an AMD guy myself, which they have the better value now for multithreaded performance but are slightly behind on IPC, though they are closer than they were. But Intel will be a little better right now for pure gaming.

I suppose you could find a GTX 1060 6gb. Newegg has an MSI model for like 359. But those class of cards should be like 100 bucks less. You could look at a 1070, but those are like 600-700.

So budget side, I say pick up an i7 that fits your current setup and be happy. You could pick up a GTX 1060 also, but there are rumors of Nvidia bringing new cards out too.

If you feel like spending everything, either get something like a GTX 1070, or do a motherboard, CPU and new ram.

To be clear however, your 960 is probably your biggest bottleneck, but GPU prices are insane. However, you might benefit a little with an i7 even that fits your current hardware, so you may update, get a 7700k, overclock, and hold out with the 960 until prices drop. Or until you save some cash and see if new cards are released. But rumors are don't expect better GPU prices until 2019. To give you an idea, I paid 250 for an RX 480 8gb last year. I sold it this year during the mining craze for 365 plus 15 in shipping. I did manage to get a 1050ti though, so I'm at least still able to game little.

That's my thoughts though. You could go to ryzen, but for you that would almost be a side grade.
 
Solution

maxalge

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Ambassador


make and model of the power supply?


gpu is your greatest weakness the gtx 960 is now towards the bottom tier in terms of performance

get a gtx 1070 - IF your power supply can handle it -

afterwards drop in a i7 7700
 

Oribitus

Distinguished
Dec 2, 2013
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Yeah i figured the GPU would be my biggest issue; I may have to just suck it up until i see some major price drops as suggested. Thank you guys for the input!