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Hey all. I think it might be time to upgrade my PC soon, I wanted to know what you guys think. As customary, here's that form 
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Mostly gaming, primarily BF3.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$300-500. With taxes/shipping would be nice, but I can go a little bit over.
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
San Jose, CA (Fry's + Microcenter accessible)
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
CPU? RAM? Video card? See elaboration below.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
See elaboration below.
6) Will you be overclocking?
No.
7) 7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
Planning to use 1900x1080
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
A month, give or take.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? etc.
N/A
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Yes
So here's the deal. I built my current PC (specs in sig) in August 2010. It's held up pretty well but its also beginning to show signs of age, especially in BF3. I'm currently only playing at 1440x900 right now and I can handle everything on high no problem. I haven't cranked it up to ultra yet but I expect that I'll receive a significant loss in framerates. I'm also planning to upgrade my monitor soon (not included in the $300-500 budget), somewhere between 21" - 24", which means naturally the resolution will be 1900x1080.
I don't want to do a completely new build just yet as I think I can squeeze a few more years of good gaming out of this rig (feel free to disagree). I'm not sure what my biggest upgrade would be, though. I would imagine that my video card is probably my biggest bottleneck right now. With the new 7xxx cards coming out soon and prices for old tech probably dropping, is a new video card the way to go? How about my CPU? I know it's dated tech right now, but can it still give me a few more years or is it going to hold me back as well if I get a new GPU? RAM-wise, would upgrading to 8GB yield any performance increases? I might considering doing that especially since RAM is dirt cheap right now.
What do you guys think? What do I upgrade first and what do I upgrade to? Or, given my budget of $500 and the potential to make another several hundred dollars from selling my current stuff, would it be better to go with an entirely new build?
1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
Mostly gaming, primarily BF3.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
$300-500. With taxes/shipping would be nice, but I can go a little bit over.
3) Which country do you live in? If the U.S, please tell us the state and city if possible.
San Jose, CA (Fry's + Microcenter accessible)
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
CPU? RAM? Video card? See elaboration below.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
See elaboration below.
6) Will you be overclocking?
No.
7) 7) What is the max resolution of your monitor? What size is it?
Planning to use 1900x1080
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
A month, give or take.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video (as a backup or main GPU)? etc.
N/A
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If so, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?
Yes
So here's the deal. I built my current PC (specs in sig) in August 2010. It's held up pretty well but its also beginning to show signs of age, especially in BF3. I'm currently only playing at 1440x900 right now and I can handle everything on high no problem. I haven't cranked it up to ultra yet but I expect that I'll receive a significant loss in framerates. I'm also planning to upgrade my monitor soon (not included in the $300-500 budget), somewhere between 21" - 24", which means naturally the resolution will be 1900x1080.
I don't want to do a completely new build just yet as I think I can squeeze a few more years of good gaming out of this rig (feel free to disagree). I'm not sure what my biggest upgrade would be, though. I would imagine that my video card is probably my biggest bottleneck right now. With the new 7xxx cards coming out soon and prices for old tech probably dropping, is a new video card the way to go? How about my CPU? I know it's dated tech right now, but can it still give me a few more years or is it going to hold me back as well if I get a new GPU? RAM-wise, would upgrading to 8GB yield any performance increases? I might considering doing that especially since RAM is dirt cheap right now.
What do you guys think? What do I upgrade first and what do I upgrade to? Or, given my budget of $500 and the potential to make another several hundred dollars from selling my current stuff, would it be better to go with an entirely new build?
