Gaming Computer Suggestions

[Lando94]

I am in the process of upgrading my PC as its about time I upgrade some of my hardware. I have a general idea of what I want to get but I feel like there's always better advice I could receive before I made my final decision.

Current PC specs:
AMD FX(tm)-8120 Eight-Core Processor, 3100 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 630
ATX 350W PSU (I know it's terrible... It'll quickly be my first upgrade)
8g RAM
ASUS MSA97 R2.0 mother board

I eventually want to end up running 3 monitors and run games at high to ultra resolution with comfort. I am willing to spend a fair amount of money to get upgrades but I don't want to go insane with spending. Any suggestions as to what is a good upgrade and will be compatible with my motherboard and cpu?

Thanks for you help!

 

[Rammy]

What you are asking is pretty vague, as its kinda akin to "how long is a piece of string?"

Your motherboard would support an upgraded CPU such as the FX8350, but given your CPU is your strongest component, it's probably not the place to start.

As you mentioned, if you are putting in a proper graphics card, you will need to upgrade your PSU. This is really going to be dictated by which graphics card you chose, as well as your budget, and whether or not you want "extras" like modular cabling. A quality 550-600W PSU is plenty for the vast majority of single cards on the market, so isn't a bad place to start. If you are overclocking, running multiple graphics cards or something especially high end, this figure would need to be raised accordingly.

As for graphics cards, what you need to spend depends on what you want to achieve. Most modern games on a single 1080P display can be run by a ~$100 graphics card perfectly comfortably, as long as you are happy to turn down a few settings here and there. This type of card can also run multiple displays (usually 3 or 4, depending on the card) but it can't realistically run games at 5760*1080 (3 1080P displays). If what you are asking is to run modern games at 5760*1080P, then you would need to spend exponentially more, think $500-700 at least on a single very high end card, or two cheaper ones, not to mention the cost of a power supply to support it, potential motherboard changes and processor upgrades.

That's two ends of a scale, and obviously there are a lot of solutions between. If you can offer the specifics of what you intend to do, and the results you would like, then people can help you narrow down that spectrum to something sensible.

 

[Lando94]

Thanks for you answer Rammy. I can see the vagueness to my question and I'll try to make it more clear.

I'm really into online gaming ranging from gw2, WoW, to league of legends, and battlefield 4. After talking with a friend since my last post I came to the conclusion that a 3 monitor setup is a little unnecessary, as I'm not into simulation gaming and don't plan to be, so I have changed my plans to a dual monitor setup, either two 24in screens or a 27in and 24in. As for my gaming experiences, I want to be able to run games like gw2, tera online, and league of legends with ultra resolution settings.

For a graphics card I have been looking into the amd r9-280x, specifically the card made by gigabyte. It seems it's benchmarks are a little better than what nvidia has to offer at this price range. For a graphics card I don't want to pay much more than $300. My only concern is I'm unsure if this card can connect to my motherboard because I've never installed a graphics card before. Could this work?

For my psu I have been looking at the CORSAIR HX Series HX750 750W. I realize that's a good bit more than the wattage necessary but since psus run cheaper I figure it would be smart to future proof. Plus it's currently on sale.

I hope this makes my original question a little more clear. Thanks!

 

[Rammy]

Well WoW, LoL, and even GW2 aren't massively demanding. BF4 on the other hand, is among the most demanding games out there now.

I still don't fully know what it is you need, as I think there are a couple of things you are missing.
Firstly, do you want to play games across two monitors (ie stretched across, or multiple clients) or are you just looking to play on one, but have a second running at the same time (for web browsing or whatever)?
Secondly, the size (dimensions) of your screen(s) are irrelevant, but their resolution (or the resolution you want to play at) is not. Resolution the number of pixels your graphics card needs to fill in, so makes a huge difference.

As for compatibility, you have no issues. Your motherboard is PCIe 2.0, and most graphics cards these days are PCIe 3.0. The systems are backwards compatible, PCIe 3.0 just has a larger bandwidth to cover future development. Right now, it isn't going to cause any limitations. As for installation, its very straightforward; drop the card into the slot, it should click, one screw locks it in place. Then it's just a case of connecting the PSU cables.

As for the R9 280X, you are right it is very competitively priced, and could well be the card to go for. For a single 1080P display, it's very very strong. As BF4 is potentially the game that's going to cause you most problems, I'll focus on that. Assuming a 1080P display, and more or less maximum settings, you can hope to achieve somewhere in the ballpark of 50fps with a single monitor and it would drop under 30fps with a second added. Obviously you can tweak settings to boost performance accordingly and get things to a comfortable level.
If you want to run at higher resolutions than that, or want to enable the supersampling setting, then you realistically need to spend more money to get a decent performance level.

In terms of alternatives, at that level you have three cards, the R9 280X, HD7970Ghz and the GTX770. The 280X and 7970 are very similar, as they are internally the same thing, with some small changes. The 280X is going to take over entirely, but if you are looking for a bargain then its quite possible you'll see heavily discounted HD7970s popping up from time to time as they try to clear stock. The GTX770 offers similar performance and if you have a preference towards Nvidia, then the price gap really isn't that big, but if it were my money I was putting down, then I too would be very tempted by the Gigabyte 280X.

As for PSUs, the HX750 is a decent quality unit but 750W seems like a slightly pointless amount in this case. If you have an intention of going for Crossfire 280X at some point, then it isn't really sufficient to support that, so it's not really helping you. Given its current price, it's a pretty good buy, but if it changes, I'd be flexible and shop around. In the next week or so there will be a lot of good deals.