Search
Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

Question on vid card and memory upgrade

Last response: in Systems
Share

Hello,

Last year I did my first build. I went cheaper on the vid card because of the monitor i was using at the time ( was only 720p ), always with the intention of upgrading both it and my memory. I've recently upgraded my monitor and am now looking to do the same with my build. What I have now is:

MB-ASUS M4A88T-M LE AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD
CPU- Phenon II X4 955
Vid card- sapphire hd 5670 1G
RAM- Gskill ripjaw 4Gb (2x2)
Seagate 500GB Hard drive
Power- Antec bp550w

For my new video card i'm looking at

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681...

or

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681...

and for the memory i'm looking at

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1682...


Hoping to get some advice on whether these upgrades will work with my system and if it will be noticeable enough to be worth the investment.

Thanks in advance for any help

More about : question vid card memory upgrade

Register or log in to remove

Thanks for such a quick response. I'm still a newb when it comes to this stuff but I was confident in the vid card improvement but have read about bottleneck problems in some systems and didn't know if this would occur with any of the improvements i am making. When it comes to the memory, I had assumed that faster and better RAM would run my games smoother and help with loading screens times ( I play Swtor mmo ). Am i mistaken at what RAM does?
Homebuilt system Expert

That's good memory, but there's no point in getting it - your motherboard won't even be able to run it at stock speeds. I like the Hyper X 8GB 1600MHz, CAS 7 kit - works like a charm.

If you really want to upgrade, do that. But unless your memory is working at 1033MHz or slower, there's not much point.

Why go with a 6870 when you can get a more powerful, more efficient, and less hot 7850 for $10 more? http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681...
Related ressources
Ask the community
Homebuilt system Expert

pjhawker33 said:
When it comes to the memory, I had assumed that faster and better RAM would run my games smoother and help with loading screens times ( I play Swtor mmo ). Am i mistaken at what RAM does?
Yes, you are. It won't really help your loading screens at all - though getting an SSD and installing SWTOR on that would make a HUGE improvement. Faster ram also won't have any visible effect on how smooth your games run - you're thinking of video ram, which is on the video card, not the motherboard.

Thanks for the heads up on that vid card DarkSable. That makes much more sense than what i was looking at. Also thanks for the info regarding the RAM, like I said, I am still a newb with this stuff and any help and info is appreciated. I understand what you're saying about it being a waste to get RAM that won't reach its potential with the motherboard I have, but would it still be worth it to upgrade from the 4gb to 8 gb?

And i guess i'll have to look into getting an SSD. I was putting it off until they started to come down in price but if I want faster loading times I'll have to do it. Any suggestions?
Register or log in to remove
 
Ask the community
Read discussions in other Systems categories
!