Help with upgrading my PC

Maviard · Dec 18, 2014

Greetings all. I want to upgrade my pc, but dont have alot of money drop over $1000 to get a decent rig.
What i have atm is this:

- Intel (R) Core 2 Quad q8300 @ 2.50 ghz x4
- AMD Radeon HD 6670 1gig vram
- 8 gigs of ram

I know what i have is a bit old, but i need help with upgrades. i was thinking about getting the Geforce GTX 750 Ti. With that vid card would my processor be the bottleneck? Keep in mind im poor, and need cheap yet acceptable upgrades compared to what i currently have. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Maviard

Kirisute · Dec 18, 2014

As a system builder and seller I'd reccomend:
An i5, a 750 or 750 ti, 8 gig ram.
With a but of building knowledge yourself all you would need to purchase would be motherboard, CPU, ram and gpu.
That should set you back in all honesty maybe £300 if you go mid range i5.

I roll ED on an i5 with a 650ti and an i7 with a 750ti and both run ultra auto detect at 1920*1080 with no issues at all.

Danneh · Dec 18, 2014

I think you'll be fine with that, it's pretty rare that your CPU will be the bottleneck. I'm running an i7 920 @ 4GHz with a HD7850 and 6GB of RAM, and the game runs real smooth on high settings, or medium in my DK2.

Not to mention, to upgrade your CPU will require a new motherboard, and therefore new RAM, which will get expensive real quick. An alternative is picking up a good CPU cooler and overclocking, you can probably squeeze out 3.2-3.5GHz, I seem to remember those Core 2 Quads being pretty decent little overclockers. If you want more info on overclocking, I've been a member on http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/ for a good while, great community.

kylania · Dec 18, 2014

Here's my go to guide when I want to upgrade:

http://techreport.com/review/27488/tr-christmas-2014-system-guide

I usually start with "The Sweet Spot" and up or downgrade specific parts as needed.

Darkstar_IE · Dec 18, 2014

Maviard said:
Greetings all. I want to upgrade my pc, but dont have alot of money drop over $1000 to get a decent rig.
What i have atm is this:

- Intel (R) Core 2 Quad q8300 @ 2.50 ghz x4
- AMD Radeon HD 6670 1gig vram
- 8 gigs of ram

I know what i have is a bit old, but i need help with upgrades. i was thinking about getting the Geforce GTX 750 Ti. With that vid card would my processor be the bottleneck? Keep in mind im poor, and need cheap yet acceptable upgrades compared to what i currently have. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Maviard

I build my own gaming rigs, and have done for years. My current rig is a few years old now, but still runs ED very smoothly with 60+fps. I'm running a Phenom II 3.2Ghz x4 (Black edition, but not overclocked - yet) 8 Gig of RAM on Win7x64. The one thing I did this year, was give "the ol' girl" a mid life kicker, and upgraded from a 1GB 5850 VapourX Toxic, to an ATI Radeon HD7970 1Ghz/3GB. It made a BIG difference. I can generally max out any game now, and still run smoothly. I generally run 1920x1080 on a 28" wide monitor, - I don't push it any higher though the card would easily do more. There are a couple of things I would say. First of all, clean up your system, I find free programs like cleansweep and malware bytes are great for getting rid of unwanted junk, and cleaning the registry. Then if you are looking to get good bang for your buck, I would say a higher spec video card would be worth the investment. 8GB is plenty, and your processor isn't that slow, so the 1GB video is probably where you would see the biggest difference ( speaking from my own experience). Also there are a lot of new cards on the market now, so some of the older cards will be around the $200 mark, and still give you a significant boost over what you have.

adoredtv · Dec 18, 2014

Yes OP the 6670 you have is your current bottleneck.

For Elite that Core 2 CPU might be ok still. Depending on your power supply (you'll need a 6-pin connector for the R9 270), consider an R9 270 instead of the 750 Ti as it's more performance for the same money.

Rolands · Dec 18, 2014

adoredtv said:
Yes OP the 6670 you have is your current bottleneck.

For Elite that Core 2 CPU might be ok still. Depending on your power supply (you'll need a 6-pin connector for the R9 270), consider an R9 270 instead of the 750 Ti as it's more performance for the same money.

If electricity bill is an issue then chose the 750 ti, it is the best performance to watt card outh there

adoredtv · Dec 18, 2014

Rolands said:
If electricity bill is an issue then chose the 750 ti, it is the best performance to watt card outh there

It's not that much really, you're talking the difference of 40W while gaming which will barely come to £10 a year. I'd rather have a card that was 30% faster for the same money.

Maviard · Dec 30, 2014

Alright its been...almost two weeks. I ended up getting a GeForce GTX 970

I got approved for the Fry's credit card and got myself a nice upgrade. Next step is the mobo, ram, processor and cooling in about 5-6 months

Elite runs on HIGH like a light saber through butter.

Darkstar_IE · Jan 3, 2015

Maviard said:
Alright its been...almost two weeks. I ended up getting a GeForce GTX 970 I got approved for the Fry's credit card and got myself a nice upgrade. Next step is the mobo, ram, processor and cooling in about 5-6 months

Elite runs on HIGH like a light saber through butter.

Sweet

Congrats - now you can get out there and enjoy the Galaxy in super fast HD. Always helps to give a kicker to the video card ... also if you notice any tearing and don't have vsync enabled, - enable it. It wont have any performance impact with your new card, but will make things look real silky smooth ( if not already)

Enjoy