Upgrade advice

V

valakas

Baseband Member
Messages
25
I came here a few years ago for advice to build my first computer, I received great advice so Im back again looking to upgrade my system. Its main purpose in life is gaming. Below are my current specs.

I figure I need to upgrade/increase my ram, GPU, and possibly PSU. I also would like to finally get a SSD(tired of being the last person to load in BF4!).

I would like to keep my budget in the $800 range, that is flexible so open to better buys if its worth the $$$.

Any advice is much appreciated!


OS: Windows 7 64bit
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor

MB: ASUS M5A97 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0

PSU: Antec BP550 Plus 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6790 xfx

Ram: GSKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3

HD: Western Digital WD Black WD7502AAEX 750GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard

Monitor: ASUS VH232H 23.4" (1920x1080)
 
 
It would help knowing what kind of games you play to further assist you with this upgrade.

I personally wouldn't go with a 780 if you are still using the 965 CPU.
 
While having 4 cores disabled with HT on using my 3960x and a 580 stock I get a solid 40+fps in BF4 at 1080p. With a 780 and a 965 he will be perfectly fine. No game is CPU demanding enough to actually warrant an upgrade from that platform right now, especially since he has 4 real cores.

That's like saying the first gen i7 in my laptop isn't sufficient for modern games yet I'm heavily GPU bottlenecked on it with a 460m. I know for a fact his 965be runs faster than my laptop's i7 so he will run BF4 absolutely fine. If you need further proof look at how an FX 4100 handles games today. A 965be is faster than an FX4100.
 
Last edited:
I ran BF4 for a couple weeks off and on after release and from my personal experience the 8350 "8-core" I was using at the time paired with my 780 I could barely maintain 60fps on ultra. However some of the latter I5's and I7's have much better benchmarks on the game so far.

But with that being said, OP may not want to run on ultra.
 
Indeed, but what resolution were you running, and what resolution scaling? Anything over 100% scaling eats any card. I was running a 680 with my 3960x and was only capable of 150% max with my "max fps to visual" setup. I maintained about 55fps with dips into the 45 range. My friends 4770k 780ti SLI setup with 2D Surround was getting about 5fps when resolution scale was set to 200% lol. Pretty terrible considering that's 1400 in GPUs.

i5s and i7s perform better due to their higher single threaded performance which is a given, but another thing is the beta and initial release had MUCH higher CPU usage due to debugging. The December patch eliminated this. My Youtube videos show a pretty large difference in frames while running in "dual core" mode with HT. The first being during the beta, the second being after the December patch.

I'm not saying he wouldn't benefit from getting something like a 4670k, but honestly it's not necessary. Especially if he wants to spend the cash on such a GPU.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

M
Upgrading Old Computer- Please help
Replies
2
Views
727
PP Mguire
PP Mguire
Chazzer3
Basic upgrades to a work PC - from MS Office to a bit of graphic design work
Replies
2
Views
1K
Chazzer3
Chazzer3
The_Lyrics
Finally upgrading after 10 years
Replies
2
Views
857
The_Lyrics
The_Lyrics
A
Feedback on What To Get For New Build/Upgrade?
Replies
7
Views
2K
Zero2110
Z
M
Graphics Card upgrade...replacement for GeForce GT330 1024M DDR3
Replies
7
Views
1K
PP Mguire
PP Mguire
Back
Top Bottom