Potential upgrades

T

tys90

Gawd
Joined
Jan 4, 2004
Messages
821
I'm quite a bit out of the loop on hardware and would like some suggestions for upgrades. Use my computer for gaming and watching movies/TV 99% of the time.

Currently have:

Gigabyte Sniper.M3 z77 mATX motherboard
Intel Core i5-3570k
PowerColor PCS+ Radeon HD 7870
OCZ Vertex Plus R2 120GB SSD
NZXT HALE82 650W Modular PSU
24" BenQ XL2411Z 1080p monitor

The monitor is fairly new, not needing an upgrade just putting it there for size/resolution reference.

The fan control on the 7870 is broken, it is either at full speed or off. Doesn't seem to have any adverse affect on performance but is rather annoying to hear it blasting on full speed for 10 seconds every minute.

Currently playing Overwatch mostly, not always getting great FPS even on lower settings. I also like to have TV/video up on my second monitor while playing and that slows it down even more.

Do I need to start over or are there salvageable parts here?
 
Well first and foremost that PSU might not be all that great. The 750W version didn't fair too well.

CPU/MB are fine. How much RAM do you have? If less than 16GB then upgrade to get at least 16GB. RAM is cheap and DDR3 is being phased out. So eventually the prices of new will skyrocket.

I would upgrade that GPU to something like the GTX 1070. Extremely powerful GPU that will rock the socks off Overwatch at 1080P. Availability might be limited as it was just released recently. This is the upgrade I highly recommend as it'll give you the highest performance increase out of everything.

Wouldn't hurt to replace that aging and mostly unreliable SSD with a faster and larger unit. Probably wont notice much performance increase outside of benchmarks unless you time your boot time. I recommend something like an 850 EVO or the like in 500+ GB size.
 
Skillz said:
Well first and foremost that PSU might not be all that great. The 750W version didn't fair too well.

CPU/MB are fine. How much RAM do you have? If less than 16GB then upgrade to get at least 16GB. RAM is cheap and DDR3 is being phased out. So eventually the prices of new will skyrocket.

I would upgrade that GPU to something like the GTX 1070. Extremely powerful GPU that will rock the socks off Overwatch at 1080P. Availability might be limited as it was just released recently. This is the upgrade I highly recommend as it'll give you the highest performance increase out of everything.

Wouldn't hurt to replace that aging and mostly unreliable SSD with a faster and larger unit. Probably wont notice much performance increase outside of benchmarks unless you time your boot time. I recommend something like an 850 EVO or the like in 500+ GB size.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, I am currently at 8 GB ram and a SSD was also on the list, just for more storage if anything.
 
I would definitely upgrade the GPU and run at least minimum of 16Gb's of RAM memory. How much memory are you using on the 7870?? If you are not overclocking that 3570k then you may bottleneck a 1070GTX. Maybe do a comparison of performance for a GTX770, GTX 970, or a 390x.
 
Major Rage said:
I would definitely upgrade the GPU and run at least minimum of 16Gb's of RAM memory. How much memory are you using on the 7870?? If you are not overclocking that 3570k then you may bottleneck a 1070GTX. Maybe do a comparison of performance for a GTX770, GTX 970, or a 390x.
Click to expand...

I went ahead and did the 16 GB upgrade already and have a new SSD on the way. I'm currently overclocking my 3570k to 4.2 GHz I believe but I will need to double check. How would I check on memory usage for the 7870?
 
tys90 said:
I went ahead and did the 16 GB upgrade already and have a new SSD on the way. I'm currently overclocking my 3570k to 4.2 GHz I believe but I will need to double check. How would I check on memory usage for the 7870?
Click to expand...

7870 card should be using about 2GB of dedicated video ram, in essence a lot of the video cards ram is put to use when you are gaming and higher resolutions plus how much "eye candy" you want to run your games on. The more you tax up the video card memory with this stuff the more you will feel frame rate drops. This why its important to gamers to try and balance CPU power, GPU power, adequate mobo memory, HDD/SSD speeds, etc... as not get hardware bottlenecks or performance hits. Most newer cards have larger sets now of video ram memory. I purchase 4GB cards only because I only game at 1900 x 1280
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top