What to upgrade

[GahLakTus]

Hi Guys,

I have had a PC I put together myself a few years ago - the specs are as follows:

CPU: Phenom II X4 965 BE OC'd to 3.9GHz
MotherBoard: MSI 790fx-gd70
RAM: 8GB OCZ DDR3 -1407 8-9-9-20 CR2
GPU: ATi HD 5870 @ 875MHz DDR5 @1225Mhz

I have water cooled to keep CPU temps around 45C during peak usage and the GPU hits 50C so plenty of cooling capacity. I use this for mostly gaming.

I am looking to upgrade the computer as most of the modern games I seem to have played recently I have had to use medium graphics settings to keep above 30FPS consistently and I want to be able to use maximum.

I am only going to be able to spend a maximum of around £650-£700.

My question what I am best upgrading and to what.

Will my 5870 by enough if I switch the other components and move to an Ivy bridge setup or am I better keeping the current CPU, MoBo and RAM and get a 680 or 7970 and possibly upgrading my CPU to a AMD Phenom II X6 1045T.

Or will I see more performance gains if I go newer but cheaper mid-range components and replace everything?

What do you think will give the best in-game performance improvement.

Thanks

 

[wr6133]

Personally I would upgrade the GPU and keep the rest. Your OC'd 965 will game better than a 1045T the 2 extra cores provide no real boost gaming and as it has a locked multi OC'ing it can be a pain in the ass.

GTX 670
http://www.cclonline.com/product/81816/NEX5X67001042-104F/Graphics-Cards/Palit-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-670-Graphics-Card-/VGA0641/

and this

SSD
http://www.cclonline.com/product/58355/AGT3-25SAT3-120G/Hard-Drives/120GB-OCZ-Agility-3-2-5-Solid-State-Drive-/HDD0547/

Would make a night and day change to your system. The SSD would give snappy load times and the GPU will max out anything you want on a single screen. All for less than £380

Or you could get an i5, z77 board and the GPU (reuse the othert parts) personally I wouldnt do this as your spending alot (around £550) when your current platform is still pretty viable

 

[GahLakTus]

Thanks for the reply wr.

I forgot to mention I already have a SSD - although I got it when they were first coming out and only got a 64GB as they were alot more pricey then. I only have the operating system and a few other things on there all my games are on a 7200rpm seagate - perhaps I should get a bigger SSD now and put my current games on there.

So you're saying with the 670 and my current set up I could get decent frame rates with a 1920 x 1200 at max settings? If so I might spend the rest on another pump and some aquacomputer stuff for my aquaero to try and keep my loop quiter. At the moment my fans run high since I swapped out 2 laing DDC's for a single aquastream.

I might try to find another 965 as well as I cannot get a stable overclock over 3.9Ghz but I know that these can do over 4Ghz on air so I might get a bit more from that.

 

[wr6133]

I wouldnt worry too much about geting a slightly higher OC I honestly see no real difference between mine at 4.0 or 3.8 and buying a new CPU for 200MHz is a bit wasteful (especially with PileDriver round the corner)

I run a GTX670 with a Phenom II and I can max most things out with solid frames (well not full ultra on BF3 with all the AA but i know guys using i5's and 670's that cant do that without seeing dips)

If your doubtful buy the GPU try it with your current rig if your still not happy you haven't lost anything you can just buy the CPU and Mobo after. On a single monitor at your resolution though I think you will be happy.