Should I get a Graphics Card for my PC or a bigger PS4 Hard Drive?

[wiilaptop]

I'm having trouble deciding between a GTX 1050 for my PC or a 1TB Hard drive for my PS4. I only have about a 110$ Budget.

My PC Specs:
-i7 920k
-4GB Ram
-AMD Radeon HD 6450
Don't know exact Motherboard or Power supply (PC was a Gift a while ago)

So as you can see, my pc is pretty bad... I just wanted to have a decent Graphics card to play games from the PS3 and other older consoles.

I Have a decent size library of games on my PS4, but I've always wanted to get a better graphics card. Please help!

 

[amtseung]

If you overclock the i7 920, get another 4GB of RAM, and get that GTX1050, you'll have a pretty damn good PC, even by today's standards. Not top tier, but solidly in the upper echelons of mid-tier.

I'm biased against consoles because I don't like controllers/gamepads in general, but $110 for a hard drive? That's 3x what you should be paying. You can get 8TB hard drives for $110.

Wait... Is it possible to put an SSD in a console? I'm curious.

 

[wiilaptop]

If you overclock the i7 920, get another 4GB of RAM, and get that GTX1050, you'll have a pretty damn good PC, even by today's standards. Not top tier, but solidly in the upper echelons of mid-tier.

I'm biased against consoles because I don't like controllers/gamepads in general, but $110 for a hard drive? That's 3x what you should be paying. You can get 8TB hard drives for $110.

Wait... Is it possible to put an SSD in a console? I'm curious.

Yeah it's possible to put in a SSD into a ps4. So your saying I should overclock my i7? Right now I believe it's running at stock settings at 2.6 GHz, I'll look into it. I was leaning towards the graphics card as well.

 

[amtseung]

Yeah it's possible to put in a SSD into a ps4. So your saying I should overclock my i7? Right now I believe it's running at stock settings at 2.6 GHz, I'll look into it. I was leaning towards the graphics card as well.

You might need a better CPU cooler to get the i7 "up to speed" (oh my horrible puns), but it should cost you no more than $35USD (I'm assuming we're in America because I'm an ignorant American). An i7 920 at 3.5ghz is far more capable than most people give it credit for (an overclock that should be very readily achievable depending on your motherboard, power supply, and CPU cooler), and at 4.5ghz (with otherworldly cooling methods), enroaches on stock i7 4770k gaming performance territory.

Overclocking is a pandora's box. There are so many external factors involved that I can't wholeheartedly recommend it, especially since finding RAM or a good overclocking-ready motherboard for a CPU as old as yours is exceedingly difficult around my area, but it's certainly worth a shot. You'll need to verify the quality and wattage of your power supply, you'll most likely need a better CPU cooler, and you might need a different motherboard (I really hope not).

My dumpster-find Mac Pro with a Xeon W3540 (basically an i7 940 without the integrated GPU stuff) at stock clocks of 2.93ghz with 12GB of RAM, can still smoothly run all three Borderlands games on mid to high (very customized; I like ini tweaking, and is required to get the full performance of any PC that isn't a potato) at 55fps+ at 1440p when paired with an HD7950. It'll run League at like 150fps on maxed out settings at 2560x1600, benchmarked as of 14~ish months ago. A GTX1050 is certainly better than an HD7950, Mac OSX is an OS for gaming, and I don't have the option to overclock anything.

Final thoughts: Before you take the leap of faith and dive into the deep dark world of overclocking (I'm kidding, it's deep, but not dark), I would see how much better the PC feels with the GTX1050 in it. The next upgrade in line would be more RAM (preferably 12GB, but 8 is plenty). If you then still feel the desire to twiddle and tweak, and "What happens if I could make my CPU run faster?" runs through your head, then we can talk again.

One step at a time.

 

[wiilaptop]

Do you think the GTX 1050 will be bottlenecked at all by my i7 920k? The card isn't the best of the best, but I want to get the most I can out of it to play games around 40-60fps at least.

 

[amtseung]

Do you think the GTX 1050 will be bottlenecked at all by my i7 920k? The card isn't the best of the best, but I want to get the most I can out of it to play games around 40-60fps at least.

Anything can be bottlenecked by anything. I mean, chances are, in your system but with the 1050 in it, your 4GB of system RAM is going to be the bottleneck.

It also depends on the games you're playing. Planetside 2 and ARMA 3 and MMO's in general will murder any CPU so hard, it'll make almost every GPU better than a GTX 670 look exactly the same. On the flip side, the new Tomb Raider, highly modded Bethesda games, and most modern triple A single player games can murder any GPU so hard, it'll make any CPU better than an i5 750 look about the same. Of course, I must include the obligatory YMMV.

Will your i7 920 bottleneck your GTX 1050? Probably. IMO, the bigger concern would be the amount of RAM you currently have, depending on OS. If it's Win7 or newer, it'll become a problem, since the OS itself will use about 2.5GB of RAM, and games can easily take up 4-5GB. Games like Planetside 2 or ARMA 3 can easily gobble up in excess of 10GB at times.

 

[wiilaptop]

Wait hold up, I went into Task Manager today and clicked on the Performance tab and saw something interesting... My PC is showing that I have "Committed" 3.5/8.0 GB. When I go to About my PC though, It shows that my installed Ram is only 4 GB. Do you know why its saying I've Committed 8 GB? I had 8 GB in the past but I had given it to a family member to do a fresh install of Windows 7 and it dropped down to 4 GB. Can you help me figure this out? Also, My motherboard has 6 RAM slots, but only the first 4 are being used.

 

[amtseung]

"committed 8 GB"
I've never had this problem before, so all I can think of is it is reading your windows pagefile as RAM. Longer answer here. Apparently, it's pretty normal.

"My motherboard has 6 RAM slots"
Yes, your motherboard is old enough to support the now defunct triple-channel standard. No one uses it anymore, except us few with server-grade hardware in old mac pro's (I've got six 4GB sticks of ECC memory in mine). It's not even faster than dual channel in practical applications. Let's just say, use up the slots if you want to, but there's really no point in doing so.

 

[wiilaptop]

"committed 8 GB"
I've never had this problem before, so all I can think of is it is reading your windows pagefile as RAM. Longer answer here. Apparently, it's pretty normal.

"My motherboard has 6 RAM slots"
Yes, your motherboard is old enough to support the now defunct triple-channel standard. No one uses it anymore, except us few with server-grade hardware in old mac pro's (I've got six 4GB sticks of ECC memory in mine). It's not even faster than dual channel in practical applications. Let's just say, use up the slots if you want to, but there's really no point in doing so.

I fixed it. I now have 8GB of ram in my PC. My GTX 1050 won't be bottle necked as much anymore, correct?

 

[amtseung]

I fixed it. I now have 8GB of ram in my PC. My GTX 1050 won't be bottle necked as much anymore, correct?

Not quite. With 8GB of ram in your PC, your CPU won't be as bottlenecked, and in turn your 1050 won't be nearly as bottlenecked. Close though. 😉