Need some suggestions, im stuck

F

frawressvictoly

New member
Okay guys im new, but I have been lurking around the boards reading for a few days. I have come to a cross roads and I think after all my reading latly I have confused myself more then helped my self so I figured its time to ask.. I built my current computer about 2 to 2.5 years ago. Its starting to get a little rusty with current games coming out. Rage is having all kinds of issues and after sorting through a dozen cap files and updates for my GPU I finally got the game "playable". BF3 runs but not great, only about 20 fps when I need it most. Even MMO;s like wow and my beta test for SWTOR are starting to lag due to system and I don't run addon's in that game.

Okay to the point

I am trying to figure out what my best upgrade path should. I don't want to completely rebuild the system from the ground up.

So my current setup is

CPU :: Intel i7 920 @ 2.76 DangerDen water block custom H20 rig

GPU :: AMD HD 5850

MoBo:: Asrock x58 extreme

RAM :: 6gb G.SKILL 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) *on friday I ordered 16 gigs of CORSAIR Vengeance ram on sale (not hear yet).

hhd :: 1tb WD 7200rpm

OS :: Windows 7 Home Premium

PSU :: Corsair 1000 watt (cant remember the model)

My thoughts... Here is where not looking into pc performance in over 2 years hurts me.

I was thinking get a SSD for my OS small one like 32 to 60gb (they still seem to cost alot if you go much larger). Im not sure if this is wise or even worth the money, I just keep hearing from people how great an SSD is. I would say, sure SSD is great to load windows fast but that doesn't help with these large file games that take upwards of 20gb and so on does it? I wouldn't think that having my os running on a SSD and my games on the 1tb storage drive wouldn't do anything correct?

I was thinking a new GPU would be my single best upgrade for gaming performance (main reason for upgrades). I was looking at the GTX 570 from nVidia. Not sure if its worth the 320 bucks. Benchmarks seem to score high on that card.

Lastly I would say a new MOBO and CPU (im hoping mine would hold out for another year) I did look at the i7 2600k or 2700's and an asus mobo (im done w/ asrock)

Other then that I am at a loss. I hope you guys can help me out here and I am sorry about a wall of text.
 
My first suggestion would be a mobo and CPU upgrade, not cheap but worth the money IMO. I would go for a half decent 1155 mobo and an i5 2500k cpu. This right now is the gamer’s choice.

You will easily hit 4.2-4.5GHz and it will be epic for gaming.

Whats realy herting you is hyperthreading, no good for gaming.

Option 2 would be to overclock the nuts off your rig, and save up for 8 months or so then build a new ivry bridge setup near the end of 2012.

Your gpu should be ok for the next year.

Edit: an ssd will only improve loading time's not fps in games.
 
I forgot to mention I am sitting at 4.0 overclocked atm. I will look into that mobo and cpu combo. Any suggested shopping sites, I frequent newegg.
 
Newegg is a great site for buying PC parts. Also, your CPU and MB are fine especially at 4 ghz. I would recommend getting a GTX 560 Ti or GTX 570 and an SSD, those would really be the only noticeable performance increases. A graphics upgrade with that memory pump will vastly increase your performance in games.
 
frawressvictoly said:
I forgot to mention I am sitting at 4.0 overclocked atm. I will look into that mobo and cpu combo. Any suggested shopping sites, I frequent newegg.
Click to expand...

I find ebuyer pritty good.

If you can disable hyperthreading in the bios you should see about a 5-10 fps rise in games.

Watch this vid of our very own in house nerd
tongue.gif
reveiwing the 2500k.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=achL4hIAvpo

Its not all about a massive 5ghz oc.

I would recomend a new GPU also maybe a 6950/6970 or better still, waiting a month or so till Nvidia and AMD release thier new gpu's.
 
With the i5 2500k which mobo would you guys suggest? I am thinking of waiting on GPU for the next batch to come out so I can pick up a 570 at a good price.

For now I think I will pick up an i5 and mobo (if I can find at a good price)

Hopefully the gtx570 will drop in price soon.

I have 16 gigs of ram in the mail on its way.

I still haven't been sold on SSD. The price for the size I would want for my games just doesn't make it cost effective yet. I did think about buy a little 32 gig one just to run my os off of but even that could just be a waste of money atm.
 
Either of these would be great.

Asus P8Z68-V PRO Z68 Socket 1155 £150

MSI P67A-GD53 P67 Socket 1155 £100

Im building and i5 gaming rig right now, using ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3.

If you get a board that is gen 3, then you will have support for pci-e 3 and Ivry bridge cpu's soon to be released.
 
8bit said:
Either of these would be great.

Asus P8Z68-V PRO Z68 Socket 1155 £150

MSI P67A-GD53 P67 Socket 1155 £100

Im building and i5 gaming rig right now, using ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3.

If you get a board that is gen 3, then you will have support for pci-e 3 and Ivry bridge cpu's soon to be released.
Click to expand...

Do any of these board support sli or xfire? I have never gone that route in the past but it does interest me a bit.
 
With your current rig, a GPU upgrade or SSD would see the most difference. Going from a 4GHz 920 to a 2500k is not worth it IMO. You'll have fun with a new platform, but that's about it.
 
There wont be much difference going from x58 to sandybridge.Ivybridge will be next upgrade if it were me.SSD or a better gpu is better for you,ssd as the best option.
 
hmmblah said:
With your current rig, a GPU upgrade or SSD would see the most difference. Going from a 4GHz 920 to a 2500k is not worth it IMO. You'll have fun with a new platform, but that's about it.
Click to expand...

Thats back to my old idea. I wish I understood SSD a little more. The only way I see it being worth while is if I load games on the SSD, which would mean I need a pretty large size ssd drive, this is extremely pricey. MY first idea was SSD 32 to 60 gigish for my os to run and boot fast, This would force me to load games on my storage drive. I have a 1tb im using now and another 500gig hdd just sitting around now. I guess im confused and thinking if I still went that route (os on SSD and games on storage drive *they take up oodles of space*) then I wouldn't really see any difference or am I wrong?

Also, talking GPU's. My brother in law jsut bought a Digitalstorm prebuilt machine. I have to admit it is by far the nicest none homemade pc I have ever seen. Anyways he has a gtx570 in his rig. That card seems to be a monster.

I am debating a gtx 570 or maybe SLi'ing two smaller cards. Thats a whole different bag of marbles I guess.
 
okay that is good that was as confused about it as I thought. Well aside from windows and gaming I really dont use this machine for much. I have a mac for work and such.
 
frawressvictoly said:
Thats back to my old idea. I wish I understood SSD a little more. The only way I see it being worth while is if I load games on the SSD, which would mean I need a pretty large size ssd drive, this is extremely pricey. MY first idea was SSD 32 to 60 gigish for my os to run and boot fast, This would force me to load games on my storage drive. I have a 1tb im using now and another 500gig hdd just sitting around now. I guess im confused and thinking if I still went that route (os on SSD and games on storage drive *they take up oodles of space*) then I wouldn't really see any difference or am I wrong?

Also, talking GPU's. My brother in law jsut bought a Digitalstorm prebuilt machine. I have to admit it is by far the nicest none homemade pc I have ever seen. Anyways he has a gtx570 in his rig. That card seems to be a monster.

I am debating a gtx 570 or maybe SLi'ing two smaller cards. Thats a whole different bag of marbles I guess.
Click to expand...

I paid $300 for my 80GB SSD when it first came out. The only benefit you will gain from having games on your SSD is loading times. WoW is like a dream on it. Gameplay will be unaffected though. A 120GB SSD really isn't that badly priced now especially with how expensive mechanical hard drives are.

The 570 is a great choice. I'd go with that before I'd try SLI with slower cards.
 
hmmblah said:
I paid $300 for my 80GB SSD when it first came out. The only benefit you will gain from having games on your SSD is loading times. WoW is like a dream on it. Gameplay will be unaffected though. A 120GB SSD really isn't that badly priced now especially with how expensive mechanical hard drives are.

The 570 is a great choice. I'd go with that before I'd try SLI with slower cards.
Click to expand...

Now is wow loaded on your SSD also or a storage drive? Im going to be playing SWTOR when it release on the 20th this will be my main game and I would love to have fast load times. So with that being said I know during beta it took atleast 20gigs of free space. Would I have to load SW or even wow on the SSD to see the benfits of faster loads or can I still put these games on my storage drive and just ahve windows on the SSD? These are what keep throwing me off. I would think they would have to load onto the SSD if on the storage drive it would be the same ole same ole.

This being said im looking at ssd's now. What is the size needed? Doesn't windows take about 30 to 50 gigs on its own?

So im going to prob look into placing an order in the next week or so for a gtx570 I know I like that gpu. I will try to get an SSD this week or even today if I can figure out just what I need.
 
frawressvictoly said:
Now is wow loaded on your SSD also or a storage drive? Im going to be playing SWTOR when it release on the 20th this will be my main game and I would love to have fast load times. So with that being said I know during beta it took atleast 20gigs of free space. Would I have to load SW or even wow on the SSD to see the benfits of faster loads or can I still put these games on my storage drive and just ahve windows on the SSD? These are what keep throwing me off. I would think they would have to load onto the SSD if on the storage drive it would be the same ole same ole.

This being said im looking at ssd's now. What is the size needed? Doesn't windows take about 30 to 50 gigs on its own?

So im going to prob look into placing an order in the next week or so for a gtx570 I know I like that gpu. I will try to get an SSD this week or even today if I can figure out just what I need.
Click to expand...

When I played WoW it was installed on my SSD. You will not see any loading benefit if the game isn't on the SSD. 60GB won't be enough for a large MMO and Windows. 80 is barely enough, but doable. There are tweaks to get the most useable space on an SSD by disabling hibernation and moving the pagefile to your mechanical storage drive. Best advice I can give on an SSD is to get the largest you can afford. It's something you will keep for awhile and the benefit can be great.
 
hmmblah said:
When I played WoW it was installed on my SSD. You will not see any loading benefit if the game isn't on the SSD. 60GB won't be enough for a large MMO and Windows. 80 is barely enough, but doable. There are tweaks to get the most useable space on an SSD by disabling hibernation and moving the pagefile to your mechanical storage drive. Best advice I can give on an SSD is to get the largest you can afford. It's something you will keep for awhile and the benefit can be great.
Click to expand...

Okay thanks for the tips and your time. I wanted to make sure I understood this completely before making any changes or buying anything.
 
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