Should i get a GTX 970 or a worse graphics card and a new cpu

yoh899

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Nov 28, 2015
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Im planning to upgrade my old PC, and im facing a dilemma.

My current specs:
Core 2 Quad Q8300
4GB Ram
Some ASUS board
GT 240
A bad 500w power supply

And im thinking if i should get a GTX 970 and a better power supply now and later get a new CPU with motherboard, ram and case.
Or get a all round PC right now and upgrade in a year or so?

Thanks
 
Solution
Then I'd probably recommend something like this, for now, and a new motherboard, RAM and CPU later. Or save, and get them all together. Your CPU is going to bottleneck any half decent GPU card you get now, but increasing the game settings may help to alleviate that somewhat, at least on titles that are not highly CPU dependent.

For your budget, this is what I'd recommend now, and then upgrade the CPU and motherboard later if and when you decide that your budget will allow for it. This will be several, many, orders of magnitude better than the performance of your GT 240.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£235.00 @ Aria PC)
Power...
I'd get an all around decent unit now, with a capable CPU and half decent GPU, and then upgrade the GPU later and maybe sell the GPU you get now, then. What is your maximum budget for any upgrades. You'll definitely want to make the PSU the priority. Nothing else matters if the PSU is crap.
 


Basically 300£ right now that's why i was thinking about a GPU and a PSU. Because i dont think i can get a good PC for that money, also ive got a HDD that i can re use (2 in fact).
 
Then I'd probably recommend something like this, for now, and a new motherboard, RAM and CPU later. Or save, and get them all together. Your CPU is going to bottleneck any half decent GPU card you get now, but increasing the game settings may help to alleviate that somewhat, at least on titles that are not highly CPU dependent.

For your budget, this is what I'd recommend now, and then upgrade the CPU and motherboard later if and when you decide that your budget will allow for it. This will be several, many, orders of magnitude better than the performance of your GT 240.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£235.00 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: XFX TS 550W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (£55.56 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £290.56
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-28 21:40 GMT+0000


Aside from any bottleneck restrictions from your CPU, that should allow you medium to high, and in most cases, ultra, settings on just about any current titles at 1080p.
 
Solution


Exactly what i was looking for! Thank you very much!
I guess soon i'll be welcome to the PC MasterRace!
And i think it should be good for Fallout 4 and Just Cause 3 which is what i'll be mainly playing!
Once again Thank You very much!
 
No problem. When you are ready to upgrade the remainder of the system, I'd probably recommend something like this as a minimal investment that should provide much better performance on the processing side of things.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£138.14 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 Anniversary ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£67.34 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£34.98 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £240.46
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-28 22:06 GMT+0000
 
Actually i was thinking about upgrading to Skylake because i want this to last me quite some time, Also what case would you recommend because im not sure if the one i have will even work with a new mobo?
 
What is your current case model number, or if it was an OEM prebuilt system, the model number of that? For Skylake, that can go both ways. I have many conversations going on this, but the gist of it is that unless you plan on running M.2 or PCIe storage devices, dual graphics cards or are firm on wanting the DDR4 memory that doesn't really offer all that much benefit with the new CPU architecture, the performance gains are not there enough to justify the cost.

Skylake i5 and i7 processors are benchmarking out at almost the identical results of comparably clocked Haswell refresh units, except in Handbrake, which means that unless you're encoding very large video files or compressing/decompressing large files or are using compression on your OS drive, you're probably not going to see any gains. It does however offer more PCI lanes for the things I already mentioned and the onboard graphics are a bit better, but that's a moot point if you're using a discreet graphics card. DDR4 is good, so that you won't have to buy new memory again the next time you upgrade though, but I'd suspect that going with an entry level i5 gives you two or three years, if not more, and then you always have the option of upgrading to an i7 or E3 Xeon at some future point so there's upgrade paths both ways.

For Skylake, I'd be looking at something like this if gaming is the main concern.


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£205.99 @ Ebuyer)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H5 Universal 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler (£39.99 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£110.87 @ More Computers)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£73.98 @ Novatech)
Total: £430.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-28 22:55 GMT+0000


But honestly, this would give you as good or better performance, plus offer better performance in any applications or games that utilize more than 4 cores:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1241 V3 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£231.59 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H5 Universal 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler (£39.99 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Asus H97-PRO ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£89.09 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.98 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £420.65
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-28 23:00 GMT+0000


And you probably don't even need the CPU cooler with the Xeon, but I always like to include something better than the stock cooler. Under gaming loads the stock cooler can be pretty loud.









 
To be honest my friend i have no idea what this case even is, it looks like a generic case that comes with a power supply and it has no name or anything on it, also its super crappy made out of plastic and stuff. It was given to me with the computer a while back by my older brother.

As in for the builds i've never seen anyone recommend a Xeon for gaming. And i just want the Skylake for future-proofness and possibly utilizing the M.2 or PCIe slots for a faster boot drive.

So what case would you recommend for both of these builds? Any good cheap steals?
 
I use Xeon's in gaming builds all the time. The architecture is IDENTICAL to the standar i7's, at least on the E3 Xeon's, minus the integrated graphics and adding the fact that they have support for ECC RAM. There is no difference, and they work exactly the same as a comparably clocked i7 from the same family, they even use the exact same chipset drivers. They also actually HAVE the integrated graphics on chip, but it's disabled.

What kind of budget are you looking at for the case and what are your needs/preferences? A lot of good cases these days don't come with optical drive bays since most people have moved to using flash drives, but there are still plenty that do have them. Just one consideration among many when it comes to a case.