Do I need an upgrade or update

[Izzoks]

Hello everyone

My parts are listed in my sig, I'm wondering if I'm due for an upgrade on any of these parts. This rig is my first build and it will be 1 year old as of Feb 2012. I'm not a fan of SLI or Crossfire, and I'm not huge into overclocking, just a student who enjoys gaming.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[fcb]

Truthfully, I think it's still a great system whether you're gaming or just day to day things. You've already got a very decent video card so it shouldn't be a problem running recent games. I guess if you are experiencing slow downs or have too many things running at once while in Windows, you may want to look into buying more memory. A 8GB (2x4GB) kit of RAM will be a great little upgrade.

 

[Perturabo]

If gaming is your main focus then you will know when you need an update. If the system is preventing you from playing a game at your desired settings and FPS then it is time for an upgrade. Looking at your system I would have thought you would probably be fine until the next gen gpus are released anyway. So it would probably more economically efficient to wait until their release if you have the upgrade itch.

 

[nothingspecial]

Second vote for a memory upgrade here, but only if you've got the itch. 8Gb kit of Mushkin Blackline 1600MHz is only around £40 on Aria.

If you've really got the itch, keep an eye on the Phenom II prices, as they'll be killed off sometime next year I expect. Might catch a bargain on a 980x or an 1100t. Doubt you'll see much difference in performance, but you'll have the peace of mind that you're on the highest spec chip there was for the platform, and it'll hold off the upgrade itch for a few more months

 

[Izzoks]

OK so for memory I'm sorta a fan of Kingston hyper X. What is better 2 x4gb sticks in 2 dim slots. Or 4 sticks of 2gig filling all my dim slots.

Or should I just fill all dim slots with 4gig sticks

 

[fcb]

It will be best to have 2x4GB kit since it'll be less stressful on the onboard memory controller. If you're not going to OC this system in the future, then you may fill all the slots with 4GB for extreme RAM capacity assuming you're using a x64 bit of Windows that recognises all the RAM that will be installed. I'd definitely say 8GB will be more than enough though.