Next component to upgrade?

[Bochin]

Hi guys,

I'm currently exploring an option to spend approx £500 on my PC as I haven't touched it for ages and feel a need for it

Currently got:
CPU: Intel - Core i5-2500K (overclocked to 4.3Ghz)
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Pro R3.1 P67
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 2400
Video Card: Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 970 G1
Monitor: 2x 24'' iiyama 1080p

I also got Oculus which i use sporadically for few games like Elite Dangerous, Robo Recall and hoping to try a new Hellblade i just purchused on GoG

As mentioned due to my budged I would have to choose between CPU+Mobo+RAM; GPU or 1440p Monitor/s.

Ideally i would like to upgrade at least one of my monitors to 1440p which i can now pick up for ~£185 (not sure how good it is https://www.scan.co.uk/products/27-i...p-hdmi-usb-hub)

GPU wise I could stretch and upgrade to 1080Ti (including selling my 970).

However my biggest problem is with CPU as this would require new mobo and ram and im just not sure if i would really see any benefit of it as my 2500k is overclock to decent speed.

Im not (unfortunately) heavy gamer any more and play a lot of older games (Witcher 1-2, Mass effect Civ 5-6 etc).

So the bottom line question from me would be of the order of the upgrades? Should i go and first change monitors and see how this will hold up?

Or take a leap with the cpu to the latest gen 8600k or even 9600k which would hopefully last me then again for 7+years (2011 when I bought my 2500k).

GPU im a bit worried to upgrade as with the new gen just lunching it might be more economical to sit tight for another few months etc for the prices of the older ones to drop like 1080ti etc.

Any suggestions would be much appropriated.

[philehidiot]

So the question is of course whether upgrading the GPU would result in bottlenecking from the rest of the machine. Looking at the recent Anandtech article rating the best CPUs for gaming it went for the Ryzen 3 2200G and an i3. Doing a comparison of the specs of your CPU to this, you get an average bench of 71.7% for yours and 75.2% with single core scores of 99.4 and 99.5. Therefore I'd say there's no point in upgrading your CPU, RAM and mobo. I would also guess that the 1080Ti would not be bottlenecked by your current set up and I would upgrade the GPU.

Scores from: https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/

[jshalyf]

Based on games you are playing, grab a decent 1440p monitor and a new gaming mouse such as logitech g703. Then job done.

[DanceswithUnix]

How smooth do you find your VR gaming? I would go for a GPU upgrade, but this close to black friday I would probably wait for some bargains to turn up.

The 2070 seems half way between 1080 and 1080ti performance but a lot cheaper than a 1080ti. Given how Nvidia like to favour driver support in their latest cards I would be tempted by a 2070 tbh. That gives more money for a really nice 1440 monitor where I think you could more notice the difference in money spent.

[jshalyf]

He doesn't play modern AAA games. I think 970 is sufficient for old games in 1440p.

[philehidiot]

Something a little left field - a decent sound card?

[DanceswithUnix]

He doesn't play modern AAA games. I think 970 is sufficient for old games in 1440p.

He's playing Elite Dangerous on a Rift. That's needs quite a lot of grunt.

OTOH, I work on my home PC more than I game so I went for a 1440p 27" monitor long before I had a graphics card I could really drive it with so I can see the attraction if the OP thinks more pixels is a quality of life upgrade.

It could be argued that a Vega 56 for £350 would nicely drive the £185 monitor making good use of the Freesync. That's £535 total ignoring sale price of the 970, but assuming the PSU is up to the task and you can find a Vega card that fits in the case (some a very long).

Something a little left field - a decent sound card?

Aren't headphones all USB these days?

[Firejack]

Aim for getting adaptive sync setup. Either by Freesync or G-sync. Makes a huge difference to gaming. Extends the life of your system as a whole, you will no longer need to maintain that 1080p @ 60 fps to enjoy super smooth, tear-free gameplay.

I've upgraded CPU, Memory, Motherboard, Power/Cooling and my Monitor in the last 12 months. Going from 1080p 60Hz to 1440p 75Hz with Freesync was the best upgrade from a gaming perspective. None of that distracting tearing when you go above your monitors refresh rate, or stutters as you drop below, or horrible input lag when you try to use v-sync to get rid of the tearing. Works wonders in older games too, like The Witcher 1, which is far more enjoyable with Freesync as I was never able to get the game to pin to a 60fps target because of the ageing game engine.

I wouldn't get that iiyama monitor you linked, its Freesync. Makes sense for you to get G-sync since you already have an NVIDIA card. G-sync is proprietary and will cost you £50-80 more then the Freesync equivalent. The other problem with that iiyama monitor is the limited variable refresh range. Just 48-70Hz, mine is 48-75Hz and I find a little bit of tweaking is required to make sure I stay in the target window. I think most G-sync are 30-144Hz for a decent one and Freesync 40-144Hz. The bigger the range the better but I'd say get something with this range is ideal.

At first you'll think there is no difference gaming with adaptive sync. Try going back to your old monitor after a week and you'll wonder how you survived. I get 50-70fps swings playing Planetside 2, 50-58fps in Destiny 2 and I feel both are annoying to the point they are unplayable without Freesync enabled.

[DanceswithUnix]

G-sync is proprietary and will cost you £50-80 more then the Freesync equivalent.

That's only true if there is an equivalent, but generally there isn't. A quick look on Ebuyer and Amazon I couldn't see a 27" 1440p Gsync monitor for less than £450.

OTOH I've tried playing stuff with Freesync turned off, vsync on but at 144Hz refresh and thought it a very good experience, so just a high refresh rate might be an idea.

[Firejack]

Yes you are right. The price difference seems to of got bigger between Freesync and Gsync! At Ebuyer; Acer Predator XG270HU (Freesync) £366 vs £481 for Acer Predator XB271HUA (G-sync). Both 144Hz 27'' TN panels.


What was the thinking behind turning Freesync off but leaving V-sync on at 144Hz? Just your inner geek testing all the possibilities for curiosity sake?

AMD recommend Freesync on + Vsync on (in game) for the best possible experience. Which is what I use and its great for gaming.

[DanceswithUnix]

What was the thinking behind turning Freesync off but leaving V-sync on at 144Hz? Just your inner geek testing all the possibilities for curiosity sake?

AMD recommend Freesync on + Vsync on (in game) for the best possible experience. Which is what I use and its great for gaming.

When I got my monitor playing full screen windowed wasn't supported by Freesync, and some games like Elite really benefit from being able to move the mouse onto a second monitor to go look something up in a browser (trade routes & prices, ship builds). So I could either play full screen with Freesync, or full screen windowed without. These days Windowed is a supported freesync mode so it wouldn't matter, but I had a few games like that and they were fine. At 144Hz you get a frame every 7ms, so the stutter and lag of waiting for vertical sync are hard to notice. At 60Hz a missed frame with vsync on drops you to an effective 30Hz which feels lumpy and horrible. Maybe I'm easy to please and others would really notice, but it worked for me.

But yes, freesync with vsync on is my usual config. Not that clipping at a max 144Hz at 1440p is something that happens much unless you are doing something like staring at your feet in a game.

[Bochin]

Thanks guys for all your replays they are much appropriated!

Looking through the things you all have said it seems upgrading cpu+mobo+ram might not be the best choice at them moment even thought that was something i really wanted to do. It seems the most economic option of upgrading it now and forgetting about those components for the next 7+ years probably. However i wouldn't most likely see any difference in the games i play and i think benefit of PCI express 3.0 on 970 would be marginal

I have noted a comment about soundcard but as i spend most of my gaming time on headphones due to kinds being in beds by that time i don't think that would be best option for me.

Therefore we coming to choice between GPU and monitor. I really don't think comfortable getting GPU at the moment due to the new generation and the fact i do not spend enough time in VR and for most of my current backlog games the 970 (overclocked) should handle 1440p reasonably ok (based on benchmarks).

I do however got a big problem choosing monitor, i have spend over 4h now watching materials just on comparison between TN and IPS :/ I,m worried that as i wouldn't want to spend £500 on just one monitor but preferably save some cash to speed up next upgrade maybe around Feb for my birthday i would not be able to pick up good IPS.

I appreciate the iiyama i have linked originally is a cheaper version but i do own two iiyama and im very happy with them

I came across this one https://www.scan.co.uk/products/27-a...-m-dp-hdmi-vga but as it is IPS im worried it might suffer from ghosting or glow as i will be watching some movies on it :/

This one could potentially be an option, i could next time i upgrade GPU go for AMD to use the benefit of FreeSync https://www.scan.co.uk/products/27-i...peakers-dp-hdm but it is TN panel not IPS.

Would anyone care commenting on two choices i linked above or maybe providing some alternatives?

[Firejack]

I spent hours and hours on monitor reviews too. Getting the right monitor is probably the hardest item to buy for a computer. The worst part about getting a new monitor is the fact there is a luck element to getting a good monitor. The quality control of monitors seems so poor compared to TV's. Colour variations, backlight bleed, dead pixels and defects are common. For that reason I pass on some advice given to me and that is to buy from Amazon. They will exchange or refund without argument. I bought from Amazon and had a whole column of stuck blue subpixels. Amazon delivered the replacement and collected the faulty monitor the next day.

[DanceswithUnix]

Sadly if you want no compromises you need to stump up quite a bit of money for something like this:

https://www.ebuyer.com/798344-samsun...lc27hg70qquxen

Generally IPS would be better for watching movies, TN for gaming.

[Bochin]

Well after a lot of deliberation and talking to my accountant (wife) i have accepted the fact that since i planned to spend £500 and after all your advice I went with option of monitor I can say I'm "happy" to spend my whole budget on monitor which hopefully will last me looooong bloody time!!

However im still not convinced with going IPS as initially i was intended to maybe go for something like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-MG279Q...2f6fc7d0d&th=1

But some review showing the glow are just mad!!

I'm still going to have to make a compromise between IPS/G-Sync vs FreeSync and refresh rate as i can't see getting good quality 1440p 144hz Gsync IPS monitor

I see the one you suggested DanceswithUnix is a VA panel which i haven actually considered i might look into finding out more about this.

On the other hand im a bit stuck with Gsync vs FreeSync as i own 970 and was planning upgrade latter to maybe 1080Ti etc wasn't even considered AMD (used to use AMD for many years before 970).

If i understand correctly the syncing comes into effect when GPU cant produce steady 144hz isn't it? Which with my current GPU and 1440p will be almost always :/

Should i start separate topic in Monitor section as this is where all my question will be now aimed?

[DanceswithUnix]

If i understand correctly the syncing comes into effect when GPU cant produce steady 144hz isn't it? Which with my current GPU and 1440p will be almost always :/

Yes, but you can't judge a 144Hz monitor like a 60Hz one. Let me explain...

There are two effects that hurt on a fixed 60Hz monitor.

If Vsync is on, then as soon as the gpu drops below 60fps the graphics pipeline waits for the next vsync time to come around which means waiting another 17ms so you get an effective 30Hz screen update. The game might be trying to work a few frames ahead, and will struggle to cope with that so the game feels laggy responding to mouse inputs.

If Vsync is off then you don't get the lag effect, but instead you get visual tearing where part of the screen where different parts of the screen are showing different frames.

So you want Vsync on to get rid of the tearing, and here is where I think 144Hz gets you an instant advantage. If you drop a frame (as you said, that's a certainty) then the next vsync comes along in 7ms so you get an update at an effective 72Hz which is still better than a fixed 60Hz monitor. If the GPU misses that deadline, then 3 frames is 48Hz. That's less than 60Hz but usually still quite playable. Tuning a game to always stay above 48fps and usually above 72 is I think easier than the dead cutoff of 60fps you get with a conventional monitor. 4 frames is 36Hz, so you have to be into the 5th frame to get an effective 28.8Hz to be lagging as badly as a 60Hz monitor where the gpu could only manage 59fps and missed the frame deadline.

The best write up I have seen about tearing and input lag is this article: https://www.anandtech.com/show/2794/3


As for the Samsung, my daughter has a 24" Samsung quantum dot 144Hz 1080p monitor so similar to the one I linked and she loves it. She spents most of her computer time doing art on it so a TN panel wasn't really an option, but she also games so this was better than the Dell IPS screen I also considered.

https://www.144hzmonitors.com/review...27hg70-review/