To upgrade or to start from scratch?

[ednossa]

Hey guys,

I have not had the chance to keep up with the hardware world in the past 2-3 years. I feel like my rig is starting to give me a hard time : Example - tearing when watching movies, when playing BF4 on ultra (if i go sniper, everything is pixel-y and generally just unplayable, reducing quality removes judder/lag but still keeps this sniper issue).

Pretty much I'm at a crossroads, change a few things and keep it running with mainly old parts or change the entire rig. As cash is tight, i'd prefer the former but i'm worried about causing a bottleneck situation.

I'd like to know what you guys think. This is my current rig:
Windows 7 Pro
BIOS: BIOS Date: 12/09/10 20:41:43 Ver: 08.00.15
Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1055T Processor (6 CPUs), ~2.8GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Card name: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series
750W power supply Antec earth ATTS?
HDD : 2TB 7200rpm
as well as a 200GB mushkin SSD (that I dont use because i was too lazy to backup everything and reformat and whatnot...)
Audio : onboard audio via high definition audio
Monitors : Two screens, one extended to another.


I'd love to keep the changes under 800$ if possible. If you all think i should just scrap it and start over again, i will just have to do that and turn this into a little media system or something...

Thanks !

 

[corcorand82]

Hi!
sounds like your video card is the problem. Heres what I use: a good budget option for gaming.
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GDDR5-2GB-DVI-D-Graphics-GV-R725O5-2GI/dp/B00HV1HWD4
Should be worth the 100$. your CPU and RAM are pretty good, 6 cores should get you by just fine. 16GB of RAM is definitely overkill, unless that was a typo and you meant 6gb RAM.
Your GPU is probably the issue. how much Vram does it have? a 6900 might have issues with dual screen gaming.

 

[ednossa]

Hi!
sounds like your video card is the problem. Heres what I use: a good budget option for gaming.
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GDDR5-2GB-DVI-D-Graphics-GV-R725O5-2GI/dp/B00HV1HWD4
Should be worth the 100$. your CPU and RAM are pretty good, 6 cores should get you by just fine. 16GB of RAM is definitely overkill, unless that was a typo and you meant 6gb RAM.
Your GPU is probably the issue. how much Vram does it have? a 6900 might have issues with dual screen gaming.

Most definitely not a typo. I got the ram on supersale so decided to buy it. I had a problem with my computer always showing high percentage of ram usage so I decided to just overkill it. now I usually always have 6-8gb of free ram. I believe my card was a radeon 6970 with 2GB of ram. Not sure about how much Vram it has...

 

[corcorand82]

Ok! dang. I usually get by with 8Gb.
The older cards usually use ddr3 or ddr2 (If your really cheap). This limits the ram frequencies to about 1600Mhz. The Gigabyte card I am proposing had Gddr5 Ram, many times faster than conventional ddr3 ram at a whopping 4100mhz.
I suggest you upgrade the video card as stuttering video and pexely gameplay are usually caused by a faulty or older GPU. Hope this helped!

 

[ednossa]

Ok! dang. I usually get by with 8Gb.
The older cards usually use ddr3 or ddr2 (If your really cheap). This limits the ram frequencies to about 1600Mhz. The Gigabyte card I am proposing had Gddr5 Ram, many times faster than conventional ddr3 ram at a whopping 4100mhz.
I suggest you upgrade the video card as stuttering video and pexely gameplay are usually caused by a faulty or older GPU. Hope this helped!

Thanks ! I will see if I'm able to get one of these cards at my local computer parts store. If not ill just order it on NCIX. Also, I have been running emulators for a little while, gamecube, ps2, etc. Would these be more CPU or GPU intensive? My CPU usage widget usually shows a CPU rating of 60% over all 6 cores but I don't have a reader to tell me my GPU usage. I'm just wondering if the new videocard will fix this issue as well.

 

[corcorand82]

Ok! dang. I usually get by with 8Gb.
The older cards usually use ddr3 or ddr2 (If your really cheap). This limits the ram frequencies to about 1600Mhz. The Gigabyte card I am proposing had Gddr5 Ram, many times faster than conventional ddr3 ram at a whopping 4100mhz.
I suggest you upgrade the video card as stuttering video and pexely gameplay are usually caused by a faulty or older GPU. Hope this helped!

Thanks ! I will see if I'm able to get one of these cards at my local computer parts store. If not ill just order it on NCIX. Also, I have been running emulators for a little while, gamecube, ps2, etc. Would these be more CPU or GPU intensive? My CPU usage widget usually shows a CPU rating of 60% over all 6 cores but I don't have a reader to tell me my GPU usage. I'm just wondering if the new videocard will fix this issue as well.

The CPU is the most important part for emulation (normally because the games have less demanding graphics and because the CPU has to decode the imformation). the Video card comes with software that allows you to monitor the health of the device. As far as how much load is on the GPU, I suggest you look here. www.gputemp.com

-dan