What should i upgrade in my current system?

[VladTC]

or what i could add at all
My current system is:

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 645
RAM: 4.00 GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 669MHz (9-12-12-30)
Motherboard: ASRock N68-S3 UCC
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6670 (Sapphire/PCPartner)
Monitor: SyncMaster (1280x1024@60Hz)
HDD: 488GB Seagate ST500DM0 02-1BC142 SCSI Disk Device (ATA)
PSU: LPJ9-25E 420W (most likely linkworld LPJ9-25)

I use this pc for gaming, (soon) coding, and (soon) drawing in Photoshop.
What also important is is recording my gameplay and rendering it out after that ! My rendering is quite slow and i have to dumb down the quality alot to have it rendered in a reasonable time. Sometimes i lag during the recording too.

So basically, what should come first in upgrading ? The money i can use is around 150 Euros, which is around 190 Dollars.
Basically less than 200$ i guess.

Thanks !

 

[MindoverMaster]

Where are you located?

I'm not too keen on AMD CPUs, but I think that Athlon is a bit aged.

Definitely get 8GB of RAM dual channel. I think you mean DDR2. DDR3 doesn't have 669 speed. (actually, that's supposed to be 667)

An SSD wouldn't be a bad thing. But I don't know how much they go for near you.

 

[carnageX]

IMO, before you do any major upgrades (i.e. GPU), I'd recommend upgrading your PSU to something better.. Either an Antec, Corsair, or Silverstone IMO. 420w, and a brand that I don't recognize probably won't last very long with a high GPU load.

 

[VladTC]

I dunno, Speccy, the program i used to get info on my pc, told me its ddr3 ! And i'm from Germany but i dont know why it would matter that much.
I'm not sure an SSD would make my rendering and gaming faster, or if i want to reinstall windows just to have in on the SSD

 

[VladTC]

IMO, before you do any major upgrades (i.e. GPU), I'd recommend upgrading your PSU to something better.. Either an Antec, Corsair, or Silverstone IMO. 420w, and a brand that I don't recognize probably won't last very long with a high GPU load.

Not sure, it did work for half a year already and i dont see any real problems. And if it does die sometime later i'll get a new one when needed i guess

 

[carnageX]

One thing you don't want to skimp on is a PSU; it's what delivers power to all of your components. You'd want a good PSU to deliver clean and constant power to your components. And if you were to upgrade your GPU, it would consume more power and put more stress on the PSU that it possibly couldn't handle (cheaper brands are especially prone to this) and could blow and possibly take components out with it.

 

[VladTC]

One thing you don't want to skimp on is a PSU; it's what delivers power to all of your components. You'd want a good PSU to deliver clean and constant power to your components. And if you were to upgrade your GPU, it would consume more power and put more stress on the PSU that it possibly couldn't handle (cheaper brands are especially prone to this) and could blow and possibly take components out with it.

hm, well it makes sense.. Though i'm not sure how much are PSU's and which ones are good

 

[carnageX]

Decent Corsair or Antec is anywhere from $100 to $200. Usually around $120, I believe.

Edit: Here's a good one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139031

 

[patonb]

I'm with carnage here. The 6670 recommends a 400W psu. The biggest question is how many Amps are on the 12V.

I think you are just squeeking buy on the power side of things, if the gpu starts being under powered i think it will lag.

What program are you rendering with? If it takes advantage of multi-threading on lots of cores, an x6 may be an option. But unless you can use all 6 cores, its wasted money.

But in reality, i think you need a better gpu and with that, means a bigger psu or 600W ish. This however is over $200.

oh Forget getting ram....... 8Gig of ram won't help you, stick with 4Gig, the timings are crappy but it it 1333 ddr3... Why do people not remember it's DOUBLE data rate, so 669 x 2 ~ 1333. A quick google search on the board confirms, it's only DDR3 capible.

What are your temperatures... If youre getting to hot, you could be hitting throttling, and an inexpensive cooler could be a great investment.

In any event, you have 2 real bottlenecks in your system.. GPU and PSU, which will cost bout $300 (in the US/Cda) to upgrade.

Do you have an online store to let us look at prices over there?

 

[PP Mguire]

To make rendering times better you want a faster CPU. To make your gaming better you will need a better GPU. To make the overall feel of your system faster (programs loading ect) you want an SSD. For programs like Photoshop more and faster RAM plus an SSD will make the biggest difference. Recording and encoding your recording will also benefit from an SSD because it has to read and write to the same drive. When you are recording if your drive can't write fast enough it will cause a hiccup. Then when encoding that recording if you copy the file over to the SSD it can read fast enough to fully utilize your CPU.

To do any of this a PSU upgrade is highly highly recommended.