Upgrade or new build?

[Dauntae]

Not nesaserily needing a new PS, Everything seems to be getting much more efficient and what brand is that PS, If it's a quality one he should be fine with it as long as he only runs one GPU.

 

[PP Mguire]

His current build specs are basically irrelevant. He needs to upgrade, he can barely play current generation total war games.

He has a 280X and 550 watt PSU. I'm assuming with this new build he will need a new PSU?

Other than the case does that build list look alright?

They are very relevant. I mean, if he has an old *** Athlon X2 then sure, but a newer quad Phenom 2 won't really be bottlenecking and he could be wasting his money. Also, it'll show what RAM he has, what PSU he has, anything we can reuse. The more money saved the more money he can put to a GPU because the 280x isn't that great anymore. It's literally a rebranded 7970 that has been around since 2011.

 

[Thresh25]

EA recommends an i7 4.0ghz to run the game on ultra at 1080P. He has an older amd phenon 2 x4. He won't be buying a new GPU as he bought this one last summer. As far as his ram goes, I will find out on that. His PSU is an antec 550W psu.

my understanding is that total war games are very processor intensive. I don't think just buying a new GPU will help him to future proof his build, which is what he wants to do. He will likely buy a new card later on down the road.

edit: all his parts other than his SSD and GPU were originally bought in the summer of 2011. As such he wants to upgrade them

 

[PP Mguire]

Yea that's what I thought, I recently had to use my 940BE for a couple of weeks with one of my Titans paired to it and had no issues with any game "CPU intensive". The only reason they put an i7 on there is due to clockspeed and because it's "the best". If you notice for recommended they also have a Fury X or 980 which far exceeds the 280x (although idk where you got this info from). Can almost bet a benjamin that there is no performance difference between the 4570 and i7. I'll also put this here to kinda clarify what I've been saying, this came from the horses mouth.

"I worry about being able to run it at 60fps on my rig!
We are confident that the Recommended Spec delivers a great experience of the game without spending on extremely high specification parts. We believe that 35-45fps is great for the majority of people playing our strategy games. But we realise that for some players 60fps is the benchmark, and so have provided a guidance spec for that too.
What about AMD CPUs?
Min Spec equivalent would be: AMD Phenom II X2 550 and Rec Spec equivalent would be: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz. We will update the official wiki page with this info."

They say in their FAQ the game is meant to take advantage of newer hardware over the years, meaning you want a good GPU off the bat and ultra/60 won't be attainable unless you have a rig like mine. You also decided to skip their minimum which is a Core 2 Duo and a Phenom 2 X4 far exceeds that. So sure maybe his stuff is from 2011 but who cares? My stuff is from fall 2012, guess I better go upgrade..... ANyways, the original parts you linked are fine if he wants to go that route. Honestly his PSU is fine and I personally feel the CPU is fine if it's something like a 955BE. My gf plays all the same games I do with a Quadro M4000 (970) and a 955BE stock with no issues. That includes GTA V which everybody swears up and down eats CPUs....it doesn't. I have a feeling he'll be needing a new GPU rather quickly.

 

[Thresh25]

Well I can tell you that he lags and crashes in Attila total war. When we are playing together we have to play on medium graphics with medium unit size to avoid lag.

I skipped the minimum settings because he does not want to play on the minimum....

And I mentioned the 2011 thing because you had said that about the 280x...

Thanks for the "help."

 

[PP Mguire]

If by sarcastic help you mean legit advice, then you're welcome. If he lags and crashes in a game that's over a year old with hardware requirements from 2011 then he has problems elsewhere.

Yes, in graphics cards 2011 is freakin old. A gtx 970 runs circles around the 7970. This is why you don't buy AMD graphics cards but nobody wants to listen to me.

Look, you want somebody to tell you to just go out and blow your friend's money then go to LTT, Tom's Hardware, or TPU. You want somebody to actually help you stick around here and listen. You want to me to put Attila on my GFs PC and show you? I'll do that.

 

[Thresh25]

Well from the original post my question was really never answered. I didn't ask for whether or not you believe his (or my for that matter) current specs are sufficient, I asked for a build list. I appreciate wanting to save us money in that regard, but I still have repeatedly asked for a build list or approval of the build I put together. I disagree with your notion that a video card with a bad processor will run the total war games fine. I went from a 6850 to the gtx 780 I have now and for total war I did not see massive improvements. The games have historically not been well optimized for GPUs and instead focus more on CPUs. This information is all over the internet for Total war. I am going to hold off on the upgrade until I see how my rig handles it, but he on the other hand has problems with the current total wars and he wants to begin to build his rig for the future. To do that, he needed a build list with a new mobo, cpu, and ram.

I think this forum use to answer the question at hand a little better in the past, as I have used it to help me with my builds dating back to 2008.

 

[PP Mguire]

If you took the time to read you would have seen I already answered your question. I've also been the one to properly answer every question that has come across the build and upgrade subforums since I've been brought back which is why most people say wait for my opinion on the matter.

The Total War games act just like Supreme Commander did back in the day with AI handling being done on basically one core. No matter how much CPU power you through at it you'll always have a bottleneck that you'll have to deal with. This won't change until they adopt DX12 to move AI processing to the GPU for sufficient handling. So you can throw as much CPU horsepower at it as you like and it'll only get marginally better with each upgrade.

 

[Thresh25]

So I'm confused then, if it runs on mostly one core of the processor and the AI handling isn't being done by the GPU, then how how would a GPU upgrade help anything?


edit: Also, is the 970 a significant upgrade from the 780? I think I can sell my 780 for about 250 and get a 970 for 330 so that wouldn't be spending much out of pocket if the upgrade was worth it.

 

[PP Mguire]

I had a lot typed out and Techist error page strikes again. I'll try again later.