When to Purchase & Assemble new PC (Gaming)

[the_god]

My question is, when should i cash in for a new PC when considering 2012's new top games, for me they are Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2.

My current dilemma is that i just bought Star Wars: The Old Republic and my current PC isn't really up to the challenge (plus wxp sp2 is not really working). What i need to know is if i buy a new PC now to enjoy Star Wars, will i regret it later if Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 comes out in 1/3/6/9/12 months from now?

Right now i have a GeForce GTX 275 896mb GPU and an E6550 Intel Duo Core 2.33 ghz Processor with 2gb of ram. If i upgrade to a i5-2400 Processor and a GeForce 560Ti now, will i see a huge performance boost? Or should i wait it out for when the games are actually released and capitalize on purchasing PC components in the future?

Thanks for the help, i eagerly await your responses!

 

[o1die]

Intel has delayed ivy bridge at least once. For sandy bridge, don't expect prices to change much. Newegg is closing out the 2500K but the discount is less than $20. You need to upgrade when you feel comfortable spending the money. You can buy a newer video card anytime and see some improvement; those prices are pretty good right now.

 

[Petrofsky]

I always say upgrade now, because a bus could jump the curb tomorrow and there you are in Hell and you never played your favorite game at a usable framerate.

The big next-gen change in games has already left you behind. The games have gone more CPU-intensive, and the graphics cards are using a new API. You need at least a fast quad-core and a graphics card capable of DX11. You will wonder why you waited. I'd go at least i5 2500 (2500k if you overclock, which I don't for stability) for $20 more. The 560Ti is very good, but get as much card as you can afford---more is better. The present-gen cards have capabilities that the games don't even use yet, so I'd say you'll be somewhat future-proof with the upgrade you propose.

 

[the_god]

Wow very good responses, i found that i woke up this morning itching to buy a new computer anyway so i guess i'll get on it. Thanks for the CPU and GPU advise as well.

My post is technically answered, i will start a new thread for my next question if it doesn't get answered. I'm wondering if SLI on 560Ti cards and up will be worth the investment and performance gain since i have never experimented with it. Anyway thanks a lot. Also with my old specs, will i see a huge performance gain with some of the newer pc components we've been tossing around so far?

 

[Petrofsky]

HUGE

 

[the_god]

Haha awesome, now i really can't wait. If you're still around Petrofsky i got another question lol.

When i think about improving frames per second on pc games, am i basically thinking about improving my CPU and GPU, with 4-8gigs of ram being standard? It's probably an obvious question but i'm building my own PC for the very first time. Anyway, cheers.

 

[Petrofsky]

Haha awesome, now i really can't wait. If you're still around Petrofsky i got another question lol.

When i think about improving frames per second on pc games, am i basically thinking about improving my CPU and GPU, with 4-8gigs of ram being standard? It's probably an obvious question but i'm building my own PC for the very first time. Anyway, cheers.

There are greater experts by far than I here, to be sure, but, yes. It depends on the game. Some games are what you call CPU-intensive, and others are more GPU-intensive. If you poke around in the Tom's Hardware site by game name, you will find all sorts of game benchmarks illustrating this fact. Here is the CPU scaling study for Battlefield 3, for example. You can see that the CPU doesn't matter for that game. That said, a weak GPU will generally cripple gaming more than a weak CPU, if we're talking reasonable baseline power in each component and reasonably high in-game settings. The GPU does the rendering, mostly, and that's where the visuals are, mostly, and the computing speed demand.

I think we all agree that memory has negligible effect in gaming beyond the standard 4 Gig, and that faster memory does nothing, too. I have seen studies that show Windows 7, anyway, using as much memory as you give it in certain applications, but no improvement for gaming.

By the way, your keyboard is exhibiting that strange failure I keep seeing---the shift key doesn't work in combination with "i".

 

[the_god]

Awesome thanks for all your help, I'll get around to fixing that strange failure sometime soon maybe