Old pc upgrade, or change?

[offerbaby]

Hello there,
I've been gaming on/off for years on League etc at 70ish fps, feeling like i need a new spaceship to play on though and i'm not sure where to start. So i'll give you my system specs below, and i'd sincerely appreciate some feedback on what would either 1) need replacing, or 2) could i salvage anything from my baby?

She's a DELL Studio XPS 8100 (bought in 2009 I believe).


I really would like to be looking at playing recent fps' on ultra w/o fps drop below 60 - just not sure where I should head here, she was quite the beast in her time.


Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 650 @ 3.20GHz, 3201 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

Adapter Description NVIDIA GeForce GT 730

Size 931.51 GB (1,000,202,273,280 bytes)

(Can't find out what motherboard she has, just says this) BaseBoard Model Not Available

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 6.00 GB

Think that's pretty much everything, any help would be appreciated - thanks for your time!

 

[pohemi]

Your entire system could use a refresh, the only thing worth saving might be your drive(s). I would look at something that uses DDR4 type RAM and at least a GTX 1060 video card.

 

[bboiprfsr]

what's your budget? what's your monitor resolution? Dell is proprietary when it comes to its hardware (power supply and motherboard). The OS is tied to its motherboard as well.

Product cycles happen all the time, especially refreshes and optimizations to sell products. Kinda like the Honda Civic 2007 vs the 2008 model. Keeps getting more power efficient and more performance. Same thing with PC's. Die shrinks, more transistors, better power consumption, et cetra. comparing a 2009 vs 2017 PC is pretty crazy due to the competition each company offers at trade/expo shows every year to stay innovative and competitive. those 5% - 15% performance increases each generation by intel is another thing to consider. your i5 650 is 1st generation. We're now on the 7th generation of intel processors. that's like 150% to 220% faster in terms of processing alone. I dunno. That's up to you. If you simply do email, watch youtube, browse online and netflix, your computer is fine. If you want to game, that's a different story and a hefty price tag.

if you want to play modern games at ultra/max settings, are you willing to pay over $1500 (pc alone, not including the peripherals, $60 game(s), monitor, speakers, etc)? Of course, there are an infinite amount of ways to manage your budget (like sticking to 1080p gaming versus paying a premium for 1440p or 4k resolution).

TLDR: budget = all of the above whether you feel it's time to upgrade

 

[neblogai]

For playing games released up to now- just get a GTX1050Ti- very few (5%-10%) games might have problem running on 6GBs of RAM. Almost everything will run at playable fps. If you want more performance- no point in upgrading- sell all system, or keep just HDD, like previous poster suggested.

 

[dontlistentome]

"I really would like to be looking at playing recent fps' on ultra w/o fps drop below 60"

Not on this computer. It's a dual core for one thing. Yes it has hyperthreading, and if it was a newer faster dual core that would make a difference. You could add a videocard like a 1050 Ti but you'd still have some ugly framerate drops due to the slow CPU.

Ultra settings at above 60fps at all times at 1080p- that's going to cost money, that's not something you upgrade an old computer to do. What you can do is add a card, like an AMD RX 460, that doesn't require much power and pairs well with your CPU. Then accept that some games are simply too demanding for this system.