Upgrade worth it? ~500.

[aliveisalive]

Trying to keep upgrading around 500 bucks. Just want to game on medium settings for a few years.

I have an am3 mobo, phenom x2 550.

Is phenom x4 995 a decent upgrade for 110?

add 8gb ram to my 4gb for 50.

Crucial 64gb ssd for 110.

gtx560ti for 250... upgrade from 8800gts.


Worth it for 550?

Or would a phenom x2 550 with 4gb ram not bottleneck a 560ti too much and i can just go with that and the ssd to speed up my gaming.


Thanks!

This is all from amazon... if you have anything good from newegg for cheaper im down!

 

[Outlander_04]

yes the 955 X4 is worth the upgrade

no the RAM is not . It wont affect fps much or even at all

yes to the graphics card

SSD if you want

 

[de5_Roy]

make sure your psu has enough power for your upgrades and leave some headroom if you decide to overclock.

 

[joe_newbuilder]

I think the SSD is pretty much a must if you do almost anything outside of gaming. It makes a huge boost in most activities. If you leave your windows swap file on it it will speed up your general memory as well.

I agree the Ram is not likely necessary 4gb is good.

I can't offer much advice on the video card. Just make sure your motherboard will be able to deliver enough north bridge performance to saturate the card. from the price it sounds like the card may be high enough performance for that to be an actual issue.

All of the benchmarks I've seen seem to indicate that the quad core 955 will perform well enough to not bottleneck most games,the x6 isn't much of a step up.

Why not get the graphics card first and see if the processor you have is bottle-necking it? Do you need to get all of the parts at the same time?

 

[MasterMace]

Don't get the RAM. Grab the CPU, grab the SSD.


As for the graphics card, i'd grab the GTX 570 instead. $320, or $290 with rebate on Newegg.

If you were to try to save some money, I would look at the SSD. There are other 60gb drives for less, like the OCZ Vertex Plus, think that's $70/ $58 with rebate. The performance difference is very small between the bottom end SSD and topend, where as the performance difference between the 560ti and 570 is big.

Most people don't even use 4GB of RAM. The only reason you'd need more is if you did a lot of video editting.

 

[MasterMace]

Why not get the graphics card first and see if the processor you have is bottle-necking it? Do you need to get all of the parts at the same time?

His processor is most certainly bottlenecking him.

 

[aliveisalive]

Im not sure how I would be able to tell if the proc was bottlenecking it.

This is my mobo, to see if its good enough for the card.

Also, I found ram for 29,99 for 4gb with 200+ 5 star reviews with same timings as my old one. Figure I might as well get that since I run alot of programs at the same time.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131398

My proc doesnt really seem to slow me down much, However I do often see the ram usage nearing full capacity.

Is this a good bang for buck ssd?

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-64-2-5-Inch-Solid-State-CT064M4SSD2/dp/B004W2JKWG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318652572&sr=8-1

30 for ram, 230 for 560ti and 110 for ssd would bring total to 370... I sure wouldnt mind that to help me game for a while and speed up things overall with the ssd

 

[aliveisalive]

Alright, taking everyone into consideration




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Comes to 530. My question is, I played computer games with my 8800gts up until a few months ago (had bfbc2 and codbo working great, albeit at totally low settings). That card is 5 years old. Is the processor and video card able to do the same thing here?

Thanks,
Brian

 

[FinneousPJ]

I played through Black Ops with a 555 BE (albeit at 4.2 GHz ) paired with a GTX 460 no problem. Your proposed upgrade is going to be twice as powerful!