What should I upgrade first?

J

Jzabi

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 25, 2007
Messages
104
Greetings,
I have quite the dilemma on my hands. I have to seperate my new build into 2 purchases. Purchase one will be in a week from now, but I can't make my second purchase until December. What should I get first? (I put this in the nvidia forum, because I mainly will be using the rig to play Battlefield 3 and soon Black Ops 2).

Option A ($309):
GTX 660ti

Option B (around $364):
i5 3550
MSI motherboard
8GB of DDR3 RAM

Which option should I buy first. With the 660ti I could put it into my current rig, but may not be able to benefit from it as the mobo is PCIe x16 1.0 and nowhere near 3.0
On the other hand if I go with option B, I can have everything set up and ready to go for a new video card come December and would use the GTX275 until then.

What do you guys think? My head hurts from switching back and forth on my answer.


I am currently running:
q9550 OC'd to 3.2GHz
GTX275 (running on a board with PCIe 1.0)
8GB DDR2 RAM
Windows Vista 64 bit
 
Economics says that you should upgrade the motherboard and CPU now, since prices on video cards will likely drop by December, but prices on CPU and motherboards won't (at least not as much). You'd probably get more immediate benefit from upgrading the GPU first though (especially if you could overclock that Q9550 a little higher).
 
Well, ask yourself are you happy with the performance in the games you are playing? If you are happy, then get the motherboard, if you aren't happy get the graphics card.

I would get the motherboard first and I would advise you to do the same. You won't get full performance out of the new graphics card until you get a new motherboard and CPU anyway.
 
Jzabi said:
Greetings,
I have quite the dilemma on my hands. I have to seperate my new build into 2 purchases. Purchase one will be in a week from now, but I can't make my second purchase until December. What should I get first? (I put this in the nvidia forum, because I mainly will be using the rig to play Battlefield 3 and soon Black Ops 2).

Option A ($309):
GTX 660ti

Option B (around $364):
i5 3550
MSI motherboard
8GB of DDR3 RAM

Which option should I buy first. With the 660ti I could put it into my current rig, but may not be able to benefit from it as the mobo is PCIe x16 1.0 and nowhere near 3.0
On the other hand if I go with option B, I can have everything set up and ready to go for a new video card come December and would use the GTX275 until then.

What do you guys think? My head hurts from switching back and forth on my answer.


I am currently running:
q9550 OC'd to 3.2GHz
GTX275 (running on a board with PCIe 1.0)
8GB DDR2 RAM
Windows Vista 64 bit
Click to expand...

thats a hefty overclock. honestly get a nice video card and watch your performance boost way up.

CPU and mobo can wait until Haswell
 
Jzabi said:
Greetings,
I have quite the dilemma on my hands. I have to seperate my new build into 2 purchases. Purchase one will be in a week from now, but I can't make my second purchase until December. What should I get first? (I put this in the nvidia forum, because I mainly will be using the rig to play Battlefield 3 and soon Black Ops 2).

Option A ($309):
GTX 660ti

Option B (around $364):
i5 3550
MSI motherboard
8GB of DDR3 RAM

Which option should I buy first. With the 660ti I could put it into my current rig, but may not be able to benefit from it as the mobo is PCIe x16 1.0 and nowhere near 3.0
On the other hand if I go with option B, I can have everything set up and ready to go for a new video card come December and would use the GTX275 until then.

What do you guys think? My head hurts from switching back and forth on my answer.


I am currently running:
q9550 OC'd to 3.2GHz
GTX275 (running on a board with PCIe 1.0)
8GB DDR2 RAM
Windows Vista 64 bit
Click to expand...

Def the CPU/MB if you can. Longer term investment than a video card.
 
Thank you for the responses. I think I will go with getting the cpu/mobo/ram first, and the video card second. I agree with it from an economics stand point, as it is more likely for the video card to drop in price by December.This rig is purely just a gaming rig for the few FPS games that I play. I do everything else on my Macs, as I work with digital video on the Final Cut Suite.

Edit:
After seeing some deals at Microcenter I went ahead and ordered online my new parts a week early :)
i5 3570k
8GB DDR3 Corsair RAM
Biostar TZ77XE4 mobo (my first non-Gigabyte board)
ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 (I love these things! This will be my third.)
a geforce 8400 (I will use this with the old cpu/mobo. Going to give it to my wife to use. Not a gamer at all, unless you count farmville or facebook games lol)
cheap $20 case
 
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Love my GTX 660 Ti

but your system has a massive bottleneck. A good CPU/mobo lasts longer than video card, prices on cards may have dropped by December, and there will be not much benefit from the card until then though you paid for it now, since you are presumably upgrading to play demanding games where you will be bandwidth limited and which undoubtedly tax the CPU.
 
Good thing you wen't with a CPU/Mobo. I had a Q6600 @ 3.4GHz, upgraded a GTX260 to GTX460 and didn't see much of an improvement. Now I went from that to 3570k and saw a real boost even without an overclock.
 
OP made a smart decision. For pretty much any decent GPU Intel's newer CPUs offer substantially increased performance over previous generations of CPUs. Even day to day tasks outside of games will be more responsive.
 
Since the OP made the decision already, I'll just say there's no wrong answer in my opinion. I went the other way and upgraded video and SSD. So far I'm not CPU limited in BF 3 with ultra settings with my GTX 680. All that said, if I were to upgrade my MB/CPU it would be a socket 2011 MB and 3820 combo from microcenter.
 
Relativist said:
Since the OP made the decision already, I'll just say there's no wrong answer in my opinion. I went the other way and upgraded video and SSD. So far I'm not CPU limited in BF 3 with ultra settings with my GTX 680. All that said, if I were to upgrade my MB/CPU it would be a socket 2011 MB and 3820 combo from microcenter.
Click to expand...


Very much agree with this. In terms of tasks outside gaming, I think its a real stretch to imply that somehow an SB/IB proc matters in any meaningful way vs a 4Ghz 9550. People like to justify/rationalize the choices they make so I know anyone who goes a particular path will say the difference is huge, but reality is that unless you are doing something seriously computationally intensive, the leap just isnt such a big deal for day to day BS.

I have a mix of both SB and Nehalem parts on various machines and I dont see any difference doing basic things. Word/Chrome/Outlook/WMP/et al all maxed out long ago.

In terms of games, the GTX275 is a bigger bottleneck in the OPs scenario really. Even with one display. If this werent the case then, at the time, there would have been 0 need for SLI and yet I remember seeing nice scaling gains on SLI GTX280 back when those cards were new and at the time I was running Kentsfield QX6700+2 xGTX280.

The economics are tough to call also, IMO. I dont think, quite honestly, there is any "good time" to jump in with technology. A motherboard really isnt such a long term investment at all. Look at the first rev of SB boards, that had PCI-E 2.0+the gimped PCI-E support in SB. This was clearly a non-enthusiast stop gap. Now SB-E and IB at least give you PCI-E 3 which allows for enough bandwidth given the reduction in PCI-E lanes to actually not be a step backwards for SLI/XFire configs, but that also requires having PCI-E 3 cards and a PCI-E 3 mobo. IB is the "end of the line" for this socket and then Haswell (due around the time video cards *may* go down in price, but also when new parts are likely to launch) will be a new socket.

Moral is that if you need to upgrade mobo, CPU and GPU, you can really just buy either one and see big benefits, but if you expect that either one will be even a little 'future proof', that is really unlikely unless you buy at the *very beginning* of the cycle.

Right now the current socket is at the end of its life as are the 6x0 and 7xxx cards. Its a wash really.
 
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I'm not justifying anything. Mobo/CPU will always last longer, for the reasons you just stated, and is why the OP's situation is indeed a wash, as the video card is quite weak, whereas the CPU is still ok.

Now, for Battlefield 3, I tripled my minimum FPS upgrading from Athlon x2 5000+ to i5 3570k. If I wasn't playing Battlefield I could easily be satisfied gaming on a 5 year old platform for a while longer.
 
The Battlefield series has always been my favorite, and one of the biggest reasons why I upgraded.

Before the upgrade I was getting around high 50fps which would dip to high 20s during extreme firefights etc...
After the upgrade I now get high 70fps, and nothing lower than high 30s.
I play on 1920x1080, most settings are high except for shadows which are low, terrain detail medium, and AA is off. So, to me the upgrade was worth it not only due to the higher fps but also the fact that I now have a modern rig. My PCIe slot is now PCIe 3.0 instead of 1.0. Also it is comforting to know that I have more CPU upgrade options with this socket down the road compared to the old motherboard which was pretty much already at the best CPU I could get (except for the C2Q extremes).

My only regret is not getting the low profile version of the Corsair Vengeance RAM. I had to install them in slots 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 3, because my CPU heatsink's fan sits overtop of slot 1. From what I can tell though if I do add more RAM in the future I can just buy the low profile version (which has the same specs) and put them in slots 1 and 3.
 
Jzabi, that's a great increase especially since your using the same video.

Since I poured my upgrade $ only into video I'm getting 60 fps at 1920x1200 almost always with dips into the 50s when things get heavy, all ultra settings on & adaptive Vsync on. I am 100% certain that if I had Vsync off a modern system would beat my max fps, but I'm monitor limited anyway.

At the end of the day both sides need upgrade from time to time, and these old systems eventually need replacing. Hell just the upgrade to windows was more than worth it, I used to have Vista till late last year as well!
 
Jzabi said:
My only regret is not getting the low profile version of the Corsair Vengeance RAM. I had to install them in slots 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 3, because my CPU heatsink's fan sits overtop of slot 1. From what I can tell though if I do add more RAM in the future I can just buy the low profile version (which has the same specs) and put them in slots 1 and 3.
Click to expand...
I did exactly the same thing, was slapping myself for not looking properly at what I ordered but yeah, we can just get LP versions to go in those slots later.
 
Well, I still have Vista 64 bit. I'm waiting until Windows 8 to upgrade the OS.
 
TheReproducer said:
I did exactly the same thing, was slapping myself for not looking properly at what I ordered but yeah, we can just get LP versions to go in those slots later.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I didn't find out until afterwards that the LP version even exists.
 
Jzabi said:
Well, I still have Vista 64 bit. I'm waiting until Windows 8 to upgrade the OS.
Click to expand...

Oh wow, interesting, I was trying to wait as well but I wanted the direct upgrade where I wouldn't need to reinstall all my software. I don't believe that will be available from vista to 8. So if that's important to you, consider it.
 
Relativist said:
Oh wow, interesting, I was trying to wait as well but I wanted the direct upgrade where I wouldn't need to reinstall all my software. I don't believe that will be available from vista to 8. So if that's important to you, consider it.
Click to expand...

Crap, I didn't know that. Well, guess I'll be installing all my games and programs again.
 
Windows 7 is still available I believe, but I do not recommend it since 8 is so close and you don't mind doing a fresh install. Like I said I did the upgrade while back, and a fresh install is sometimes a nice thing to do, I just wanted to warn you in case you were expecting a direct upgrade. BTW are you going SSD one day?
 
Relativist said:
Windows 7 is still available I believe, but I do not recommend it since 8 is so close and you don't mind doing a fresh install. Like I said I did the upgrade while back, and a fresh install is sometimes a nice thing to do, I just wanted to warn you in case you were expecting a direct upgrade. BTW are you going SSD one day?
Click to expand...

I plan on doing (another) fresh install when Windows 8 comes out. SSD would be nice, but I am still holding off on it for a year or so. After a new graphics card I would like to upgrade my monitor. Right now I have two 21.5" screens. Would love to get a 27" monitor or two.
 
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