What do I Upgrade?

[haycraft9311]

I have been trying to build a decent gaming rig for the past 2 years to no avail. I was low on money 2 years ago, so I made alot of performance sacrifices, and thats why I am in this position. Anyways...

As my build sits now:

AMD Athlon II x4 620 clocked at 2.6Ghz
MSI NF750-G55 Motherboard
2x4GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance (Honestly not sure what specs on RAM matter...)
HIS IceQX Radeon HD 6950 2GB GDDR5 (OC'ed at a Core clock of 880, and a mem clock of 1300)
My harddrive is a joke. 80GB, IDE and dont know anything else about it to be honest.

My questions boil down to a few things.
A. I go through some major lag, when it happens (about 2 a minute now) it is a SERIOUS lag, stops everything for a good 2-3 seconds, then runs smooth again. this on every game I try, from max settings to minimum, I still get the same lag. What could cause this? (Side note: I keep all my program files including games on an external 1TB HD)

B. Thinking about upgrading to a Intel i7-2600k, would this be a value wise move?

C. Is the RAM in my rig bottlenecking me any?

Thanks for any responses ahead of time

 

[de5_Roy]

i think your cpu which is 2.6 ghz is holding you back, may be the motherboard too.
upgrade your hdd to a new sata one- they're quite cheap now.
your ram (8 gb) isn't a bottleneck.
upgrading to i7 2600k or an i5-2500k will cost you a new motherboard, may be cooler too.
while most games today don't take advantage of more than 4 cores, i7 2600k might seem like overkill. i think i've seen somewhere that bf3 and the new deus ex both can use 4 cores and ht. besides you'll save money if you go for an i5 2500k.
here's september's best cpu for gaming article. check it out.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-sandy-bridge-cpu,3030.html

 

[swifty_morgan]

Your processor has no L3 cache on it. A stumbling block. You have a small HD. If it's full or near full that can cause you problems with off loading...... where the L3 cache comes in.

considering your circumstances a 955/965/945 would help to an extent. So would upgrading the HD..... 7500rpm maybe 500gb.

You can try uninstalling some apps you don't need or use/games,etc. check your virtual ram and increase it as much as you can/will help with off loading. defrag your drive.

save money for a new build/mobo/proc/and ram if needed unless you can carry what you have over to a new build.

 

[sosofm]

swifty_morgan is right. You can upgrade your CPU and maybe your HDD with Samsung spingpoint F3 500gb. Because i have a few years ago the same problem,and i solved it changing my HDD.
Or you can upgrade your pc to socket 1155 with an 2500k and a new motherboard.

 

[haycraft9311]

Thanks for all the answers! I think I am going to just do a full makeover. After checking ALOT of benchmarks, I decided I am going to buy the i7 2600k, MSI P67A-GD53 B3 Motherboard, Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 HD - 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB cache, SATA-6G, 3.5"

Hopefully this rendition of my build will turn out alot better! Thanks so much for all the answers again guys .

 

[laxduck26]

Why an i7 2600K if you're just gaming on it? If you're just going to game I would think an i5 2500K would do you quite well and save you a substantial chunk of change, like enough to add a 60 GB SSD as a boot drive.

 

[haycraft9311]

Why an i7 2600K if you're just gaming on it? If you're just going to game I would think an i5 2500K would do you quite well and save you a substantial chunk of change, like enough to add a 60 GB SSD as a boot drive.

I want to reach a 5Ghz overclock, just as a goal. Don't know why I want to, I do though. Also it will help with making it a little future proof . Are using SSD as a boot drive a large perfomance increase?

 

[laxduck26]

I want to reach a 5Ghz overclock, just as a goal. Don't know why I want to, I do though. Also it will help with making it a little future proof . Are using SSD as a boot drive a large perfomance increase?

Toms wrote an article a short while back analyzing the significance of adding an SSD, pretty good read and it makes a good case for adding an SSD.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-hdd-performance,3023.html

There's a video at the end of the video showing them launching multiple programs simultaneously using an SSD vs a HDD that really drives it home.

If you've got a particular reason you're wanting an i7 2600K over the i5 2500K then it's entirely your call, I was just curious as to whether you were expecting gaming improvements or if there was something more.

 

[haycraft9311]

Toms wrote an article a short while back analyzing the significance of adding an SSD, pretty good read and it makes a good case for adding an SSD.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-upgrade-hdd-performance,3023.html

There's a video at the end of the video showing them launching multiple programs simultaneously using an SSD vs a HDD that really drives it home.

If you've got a particular reason you're wanting an i7 2600K over the i5 2500K then it's entirely your call, I was just curious as to whether you were expecting gaming improvements or if there was something more.

A good read for sure, does make me consider buying a SSD. I just want this rig to be able to play games at 1080P while being at decently high settings. Thank you for the link.