What to upgrade?

[Tcshad]

Hey guys, hoping to earn some spare cash soon and I was wondering what's best to spend this money on, for my PC?
I'm a gamer, and a YouTuber, I spend a lot of time playing games (variety of different games) a lot of time on Photoshop and Sony Vegas rendering 1080p video etc. I also multi task a LOT (skype video calls, a few photoshop windows, maybe a few vegas windows, that kinda thing

At the moment I have:
Intel i5-2500k (just a little over clock speed for now, as was getting some crashes before when I pushed it)
Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo
Asus P8-Z77 LX Motherboard
2x4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600
Corsair TX750 V2 PSU
1x500GB WD Caviar Blue HDD
1x500GB Samsung Spinpoint HDD
Sony Optical Drive.
XFX Radeon HD6870 GPU
and peripherals such as my gaming headset, microphone, etc etc.

Any ideas guys? Thanks a lot!

 

[Roxas2030]

GPU upgrade! Either crossfire or switch over to the 670 I still think the i5 is still one of the CPUs out tehre so keep that.

 

[Tcshad]

Not worth a move to Ivy or an i7 (rendering and stuff in mind?)
And hmm, the 670 seems a lot more expensive than crossfiring my 6870, say for (benchmark) BF3, what increases would you imagine I'd see from 1 6870 to:
One: a Nvidia 670 or
Two: 2x6870s

Also, is an SSD + another 2x4gb ram upgrade worth it?

Thank you =]

 

[Roxas2030]

SSD is a must, would help access times accelerate MUCH higher than HDD access times.

GTX 670 benchmarks for BF3:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-670-review,3200-5.html

Crossfire 6870:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063-11.html

Now you have to consider other parts as well .With 2 cards micro stuttering can be can issue. The card you want depends on your resolution. Higher resolution than 1920x1080 would favor a GTX 670. Multi-monitor set-up would also favor GTX 670. Not only that Nvidia cards are apparently better at number crunching.

As for your CPU, percentage wise how much do you game compared to rendering and Photoshop?

More ram will help tremendously in the professional side of you computer. 8gb is recommended for the gamer and 8GB+ for enthusiasts and professionals.

 

[Tcshad]

Probably 50/50, I game a few hours a night, and I render / use photoshop etc a few hours too
And thanks for the benchmarks etc, I might get the extra 8gb of ram then, because render times are a bit slacky compared to what I want, I know an SSD would boot windows (if on the ssd) faster, boot programs on it faster etc. but would that help improve render times too?
Thanks for your help

 

[Tcshad]

Also, I see the crossfire specs are pretty good, nearly a 100% increase, would that be comparable for most games? Thanks again

 

[Onus]

Find out if your rendering software supports GPGPU acceleration, and factor that into your decision of whether to get another HD6870 or a GTX670. Keep in mind that Kepler compute abilities are not particularly strong (i.e. you might want a GTX570 instead).

 

[Roxas2030]

An SSD will not help improve render time since CPU does all the rendering. However if it all takes place in the SSD times will improve. If you want to do that make sure you get a big enough SSD for that.

Here is the full review for GTX 670 with multitude of games and programs being benchmarked:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-670-review,3200-6.html

Here is the GTX 6850/6870 CFX review as well:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6850-6870-crossfirex-review/

The latest Photoshops (starting from CS4) and Sony Vegas both use GPGPU acceleration, to my understanding CUDA will be better for that with its slight advantage.