Upgrade?

[opel80uk]

Hi All,

I’m looking to upgrade my PC, and was wondering whether you could advise me on what you think could do with a change. As usual, I mainly use the PC for gaming, and am looking at games like GTA V, B4 etc and I play on a single screen 24’ HD monitor. Below are my current Specs:

Phenom II X4 955BE
Gigabyte MA770-UD3 revision 2
4gb PC2-8500
Samsung F1 1tb HDD
MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 Twin FrozR II OC 2048MB
Corsair HX450W 450w
Antec 300


I don’t have a budget as such, and I was actually thinking of selling this rig and spending approx £1000 on building a new rig, but thought that might be a bit of a waste of money, if I can upgrade to half decent specs for say £400-£500ish. I was thinking a new CPU (maybe one of the higher end AMD ones like the FX 9370, new motherboard and move up to 8GB RAM. I presume I would also need to change my PSU as well? If a new build would be the better the option value wise, then I can consider that instead.

Any advice is appreciated.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would look at the following:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-FX8320-E...eywords=fx8320
http://www.amazon.co.uk/M5A97-EVO-R2...ywords=970+evo
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-BLT2...ds=8gb+crucial

Maybe,get an FX8350 if you CBA overclocking.

This motherboard will probably do the trick if you are not overclocking:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/M5A97-R2-0-M...words=asus+970

However,the Asus M5A97 Evo is a solid motherboard.

Regarding the PSU,the HX450W probably would be fine,but something like an XFX PRO 550 for around £50 or an XFX PRO 650W probably would give you some more leeway. However,they are not modular.

I would probably see how your HD6950 2GB would fare,but I would probably think a new graphics card might help with BF4. I would look at an HD7950,HD7970 or R9 280X.

However,your case has a maximum graphics card length of around 11" so you will need to check compatability first.

[Traldera]

I would try and push to 16gb of RAM, 8gb will not be enough by the middle of next year, and with your graphics card and new CPU 8gb might bottleneck, if you get a new card it will definitely bottleneck it.

[scaryjim]

I would try and push to 16gb of RAM, 8gb will not be enough by the middle of next year ....

Got any evidence to back that up? The performance of the CPU and GPU will have absolutely NO impact on the amount of memory used...

I've yet to see any of my desktops or laptops max out 4GB, let alone 8GB. Sometimes see them head north of 3GB though. But 8GB should be ample for years yet. Windows 7/8/8.1 have all halted the trend of spiralling RAM usage by the OS, so now its mostly your browser that chews through memory. Unless you have very specific requirements and *know* that you'll use more than 8GB, there's no point spending money that could go towards improving another part of the build.

[Traldera]

Got any evidence to back that up? The performance of the CPU and GPU will have absolutely NO impact on the amount of memory used...

I've yet to see any of my desktops or laptops max out 4GB, let alone 8GB. Sometimes see them head north of 3GB though. But 8GB should be ample for years yet. Windows 7/8/8.1 have all halted the trend of spiralling RAM usage by the OS, so now its mostly your browser that chews through memory. Unless you have very specific requirements and *know* that you'll use more than 8GB, there's no point spending money that could go towards improving another part of the build.

Its all relative. OP wants to use the PC for gaming. If you have more CPU and GPU the settings will probably be maxed out, which will probably affect RAM usage, although that bit is a guess.

The rest isn't:

And no, no 'evidence', but you forget we are about to enter a new console generation. This will push basic PC requirements up fairly quickly over the next year as new generation engines make their debut. Game devs and publishers tend to be a bit lazy with PC optimisation for plenty of reasons, so we always end up needing more RAM.

Given the OP is still using a phenom x4 and 4gb RAM, I'm going to take a wild guess he/she has a thing for longevity. 8gb will definately not have that.

Yes you could buy 8gb now and 8gb later, but generally its quite a bit cheaper to buy a 16gb kit than two 8gb kits. If you look in the right places.

[opel80uk]

Maybe,get an FX8350 if you CBA overclocking.

This motherboard will probably do the trick if you are not overclocking:

However,the Asus M5A97 Evo is a solid motherboard.

Regarding the PSU,the HX450W probably would be fine,but something like an XFX PRO 550 for around £50 or an XFX PRO 650W probably would give you some more leeway. However,they are not modular.

Thanks CAT. I can overclock if that's the more sensible thing to do, as there is a saving of £30 between the FX8350 and the FX8320. Can I OC the 8320 with the stock cooler?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks CAT. I can overclock if that's the more sensible thing to do, as there is a saving of £30 between the FX8350 and the FX8320. Can I OC the 8320 with the stock cooler?

A bit I suppose,although an aftermarket cooler will give you bigger gains.

[GeorgeStorm]

Are you currently struggling in anything?

I'd be more tempted to buy a half decent aftermarket cooler and overclock your current cpu a bit first before upgrading anything.

16gb of RAM may be a good idea, it depends how much you currently use, I'm back on 8gb and finding it ok, but in the past I've gone over 8gb so if you tend to use a lot of RAM then it may be worth getting more.

[scaryjim]

... Given the OP is still using a phenom x4 and 4gb RAM, I'm going to take a wild guess he/she has a thing for longevity. 8gb will definately not have that. ...

I first bought 4GB of RAM for a new build 5 years ago. That same computer is still being used, with 4GB of RAM, for gaming. It has yet to be seen running with - or even near - 4GB of RAM usage. I have two laptops with 8GB of RAM. I have yet to see either of them run with as much as 4GB of RAM usage. Neither new gen console has more than 8GB of RAM in total - that's for OS and ALL game resources. Since decent mid range graphics cards start with 2GB of VRAM nowadays, 8GB of system RAM actually gives you 10GB usable (unless your GPU is tapping some system RAM, of course, but that's a different question).

Saying that 8GB of RAM is going to become a bottleneck in the near future is, frankly, ridiculous.

The cheapest 16GB kit on ebuyer is currently £40 more expensive than the cheapest 8GB kit. That's the difference between an FX6350 and an FX8350. So, if someone asked you whether they should buy an FX 6350 and 16GB of RAM, or an FX 8350 and 8GB of RAM, which would you advise?

If it's the former, then I'm sorry but you're just plain wrong.

[Traldera]

Yeah fair point on that, the CPU upgrade is more important there.

However, how you havent gone over 4gb ram is insane. I know someone struggling with BF4 performance due to the 4gb RAM

[scaryjim]

tbf I personally don't play that many games (I'm old, after all, and stick to my classics ), but my step-son does (he's the one now using my old machine with 4GB) including some pretty recent ones and I *know* he'd have been bending my ear for an upgrade if the performance wasn't good enough

I'd be interested to see some perfmon charts in the latest games though: I didn't think games were particularly RAM heavy? Perhaps your mate is running BF4 while he's also got 10 Chrome tabs open on his desktop - if there's one class of programs that *do* eat RAM nowadays it's web browsers...

[Saracen]

Yeah fair point on that, the CPU upgrade is more important there.

However, how you havent gone over 4gb ram is insane. I know someone struggling with BF4 performance due to the 4gb RAM

Could their struggling be due to other factors, like a load of unnecessary stuff loading into memory at start-up, though?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Some games are poorly coded. PS2 for example is one,which can end up using a couple of GB after long gaming sessions(and ends up causing problems too). I would consider 8GB of RAM optimal if running it,as it means you have enough spare RAM for the OS and other processes.

[Traldera]

Some games are poorly coded. PS2 for example is one,which can end up using a couple of GB after long gaming sessions(and ends up causing problems too). I would consider 8GB of RAM optimal if running it,as it measn you have enough spare RAM for the OS and other processes.

Pretty much my point.

When you combine this with the fact we havent seen any next gen engines yet (BF4 doesnt really count), I'd consider 8gb a minimum, not ideal.

My advise to the OP is this: If you do go for 8gb only, only use half the RAM slots so you can double it in future if needed. It might cost a tad more getting larger capacity sticks, but I'm pretty sure you'll regret it if you dont.

Just to point out, I was on 6gb (LGA 1366) until last year, and I was starting to bottleneck. Using half the slots meant I could just double up on what I had to 12gb for something like £30.

[opel80uk]

Thanks to all for your input, was very helpful.

In the end I went for the FX8350, Asus M5A97 Evo, and Crucial Tactical 8GB RAM. Got the lot for £285 inc delivery from Amazon. Was the cheapest I could find as, although I did find them separately on the net eleswhere for a bit cheaper, once I included delivery to the ROI, it was coming in more expensive.

I did want to invest in a new GPU, but it seems that, for the ones CAT listed at least, they are too big without modifying my case, so I will see how my HD6950 gets on for now, and as such, will hold off on the PSU as well. On a related note though, what are the views on OCZ PSU's? I can across this and thought it was reasonable value when you take into account the free delivery, but don't know much about the brand:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-OCZ600MX...ds=modular+psu

Anyway, thanks again for the help, much appreciated.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The OCZ ZS are their better range:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-OCZ-ZS65...eywords=ocz+zs

The ZT is the equivalent modular range:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-OCZ-ZT55...eywords=ocz+zt

However,there are supposed to be noisy.