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Thread: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

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    Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Hey all,

    I'm trying to figure out where to go with upgrades, looking at the 970's and 980's with 4GB of memory is making me wonder if I should be upgrading my system at all,

    I realise my system isn't particularly bad at the moment, although recently during raids in WoW and while trying to run Star Citizen with high settings and a couple of other games, I've had some FPS drops.

    My current set up running on Windows 8.1 is;

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    I'd like a bigger monitor at some point, but I want to have the same height as my HP as I like the real estate (1200)

    But I don't know if I should look to waiting for the new Intel CPUs, and have a DDR4 capable motherboards, or if I should look at picking up a new GPU with 4GB of memory.....

    decisions decisions

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    Senior Member Bonebreaker777's Avatar
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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    New GPU only I would say, the rest of the system is pretty good (still).

    What monitor you think you will be after? 1440p? Or 2k? (I do apologise if 1440p is equal to 2k).

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bonebreaker777 View Post
    New GPU only I would say, the rest of the system is pretty good (still).

    What monitor you think you will be after? 1440p? Or 2k? (I do apologise if 1440p is equal to 2k).
    I'm not to sure really, I've looked at some 27inch monitors but alot seem to have lower height resolution? so smaller than 1200

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    I'd wait for Star Citizen to progress a bit further so you can see what architecture it's likely to benefit from the most - by then there will be a better range of GPUs to choose from for your money too.

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Quote Originally Posted by Uggers View Post
    I'm not to sure really, I've looked at some 27inch monitors but alot seem to have lower height resolution? so smaller than 1200
    Depends on your budget. Just google 2560 x 1440. There is quite a few monitors with that resolution I would say.

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Thanks I'll take a look,

    Perhaps just a new monitor and a 970/980 will do for now (monitor first)

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Star Citizen is an AMD sponsored title and is being given away as part of one of their games bundles.

    So I would wait until the game is released,and it does support Mantle too.

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Quote Originally Posted by Uggers View Post
    I'd like a bigger monitor at some point, but I want to have the same height as my HP as I like the real estate (1200)
    Do you mean the same resolution 'height', or physical height of the two screens? I've just measure the screen height of my two monitors: My 27" Dell 1440p is about 33.5cm, whereas my 24" HP 1200p monitor is 32.5cm, if that helps?

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Quote Originally Posted by Uggers View Post
    Thanks I'll take a look,

    Perhaps just a new monitor and a 970/980 will do for now (monitor first)
    I would have done it the other way around, GPU first and then a monitor, rather than a monitor that your older card might not be able to drive as well as a new GPU.

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Quote Originally Posted by KeyboardDemon View Post
    I would have done it the other way around, GPU first and then a monitor, rather than a monitor that your older card might not be able to drive as well as a new GPU.
    Plus, there are technologies like G-Sync & FreeSync, which will be more available on monitors in the not-too-distant future...

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    I'd be inclined to agree with those suggesting GPU first. Benchmarks are showing that SLI 970s can give comfortable performance even at 4K (e.g. 51 FPS in Watch Dogs / 60 FPS in Far Cry 3). You're looking at a ~36% performance increase from a 680 to a 970 at 1080p, and a single 970 should be enough to cover you for 1600p (43 FPS in Crysis 3 @ 1600p); factor in the ability to the second card for a performance boost if you move on to 4K, for just ~£100 more than the price of a single GTX 980 and it seems like a no brainer to me. The performance gap between a single 980 and SLI 970s at 4K is 47%.

    Just replaced my 580 with an ASUS STRIX GTX 970 OC and couldn't be happier. Planning to grab another one (or 2) when I get around to buying a 4K monitor – which will probably be when DisplayPort gets support for 4K @ >60Hz, unless we see even more substantial price drops between now and then.
    Last edited by D-T; 23-09-2014 at 06:06 PM.

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    in my honest opinion it would be a waste of money to upgrade since you would have to throw a lot of money at your rig to see a very small increase, unless you SLI 680.
    also you don't need more Vram for 1080p, 2gb is more than enough for even the most demanding game.

    as for CPU/MOBO upgrades, since you mainly just game, moving over to the intel-e lineup is very costly and since you arnt using applications which can utilise the multiple core/threds, your better off going with the mainstream platform and having higher core speed. anyway newer generation chips only offer about 10% ipc so again moving to z97+4670k/4770k is not going to return much of an upgrade for the price

    you could always look into getting a G-Sync monitor, although i don't have one myself nor have i ever used one. i've heard nothing but raving reviews about them., well worth a look into

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Problem with G-Sync though is you need to run the apps in fullscreen, I have mine in fullscreen windowed for easier tabbing around especially in warcraft

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Just to make sure, do you want a monitor that is the same aspect ratio as your HP monitor or the same height?

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    well at least the same height or higher so it looks like I need a 2560 x 1440

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    Re: Upgrade Advice - What Next?

    Then the QNIX's are a solid buy if you don't have loads of money to spend.

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