Upgrade to GTX 760 or GTX 970

gaurav0110

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Apr 2, 2011
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Hi All,

I know these are stupid questions but I am really confused right now. Before the query, my gaming rig details:

EVGA GeForce GTX 460 1024MB GPU
Asus P5Q-VM Motherboard (G45 Chipset)
Intel Core™2 Quad Processor Q9550 (12M Cache, 2.83 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB) CPU
Dell E228WFP 22 inch Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor (max resolution 1680 * 1050)
Cooler Master HAF 912 Advanced Chasis (Cabinet)
Cooler Master N620 CPU Heatsink with 2*120 mm blue LED fan
Corsair TX 750W PSU
6 GB Kingston 800MHz DDR2 RAM (2*2GB, 2*1GB)
500 GB + 250 GB 7200 RPM Western Digital SATA HDD
Cooler Master 1*200 mm Red LED, 1*200 mm, 1*120 mm Case fan

I have not upgraded my rig as I have been in UK for last 2 years and my rig back in India 🙁
Now, I am going back so time to upgrade.

Ques 1: will Q9550 still be good for High settings in latest games like Metro Redux, Watch dogs, Bioshock Infinite etc. As upgrading would mean mobo+CPU+ram :O

Ques 2: I know my GTX 460 is not good now; should I upgrade to GTX 760 (EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 Superclocked ACX 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card) for £165 or GTX 970 for £290.

Please note that my monitor is max 1680 * 1050 and I don't plan to upgrade as of now.
Any suggestions would really help.
 
Current games will all benefit from a good GPU upgrade so it's the most cost effective way to go.
Consider looking into overclocking the current CPU, the faster it can be made to run, the better the system will perform overall.
There's no need to go for a GTX970 at that rez, besides, it'll only be held back significantly by the current CPU, even if it's overclocked. Only consider it as a long term purchase, something you'll transfer into a CPU/MB/RAM upgraded system next year, otherwise I suggest you look a little lower.
I'm a little reluctant to recommend a 2Gb card these days and the 4Gb GTX760/770 look overpriced compared with the 3Gb AMD R9 280/280X.
So:
1: It's not exactly slow, but overclocking will bring benefits, but even if you are lucky and obtain a good OC, it's still an older part, don't expect it to perform like one of those flashy Haswell upstarts.

2: For reasons detailed above, I'll recommend the R9 280, good ones can be found for under £170 but if you want to go Nvidia I'd opt for a 2Gb GTX760, the 4Gb GTX760 is too expensive for its performance and the 4Gb GTX770 is far too close to the vastly superior GTX970 to make it even worth considering.
 
Thanks unknownofprob & abhishekmpelite for your comments.
Thanks coozie7 for helping me; After reading your post, I started thinking about when would I need to upgrade my mobo\CPU\Ram. I think I will upgrade only when they stop letting me play on high settings. Do you think my CPU will give up next year? If so, then as you suggested I will go with GTX 970 else will stick with GTX 760 for next 2 years and later upgrade everything.

Also, on a different note; do you guys suggest buying a 128\256 GB SSD; will that improve gaming performance significantly?
 


I fine 128GB for a SSD is not enough space for me (even with only important files) and many, go 256GB. Then have a separate HDD for backups.
 
newer games need more disc space unless you are using some repacked versions.you can see that call of duty ghost is somewhat 30 gb or more and some others got 35gb or more. so it is better to get a 256gb
 
Thanks for the suggestion guys. But still the real question was:

1. Will updating to 256 GB SSD really give me significant difference in gaming experience?
2. I think I will upgrade my mobo\cpu\ram only when they stop letting me play on high settings. Do you think my CPU will give up next year? If so, then as you guys suggested I will go with GTX 970 else will stick with GTX 760 for next 2 years and later upgrade everything.
 
"Will updating to 256 GB SSD really give me significant difference in gaming experience?"

Loading times (loading game maps ect./ application load times)/boot times yes.

CPU, the time when it gives it is the time when you do a task it cant handle, I can't estimate that.

 
unknownofprob, Task for the CPU would be playing latest games in high settings. My question is when do you think my CPU will stop letting me play games in high settings. If its going to be only a year then I need to get GTX 970 now and upgrade my mobo\cpu\ram in next 6-8 months.
 
Okk... Let me put the question this way then...

Will GTX 760 (EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 Superclocked ACX 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card) be able to play latest games in high settings at full HD for the next 2 years? If no, then its a no brainer and I will go with GTX 970; otherwise I will stick to GTX 760.
 
Maybe I can give you some insight to as I have recently upgraded my rig. I had an AMD FX6300 with a GTX 760. I could run battlefield on Ultra but with no MSAA and would get some spikes when I was close to large explosions. I do play with vsync which uses the CPU a bit more. I decided to upgrade to a GTX 970 and a core i5-4690K. I now play everything on ultra with 4xMSAA @ 1920x1200. I noticed that the gameplay is significantly smoother and experience no spikes whatsoever. You could argue that I upgraded my chip as well but games these days use more GPU than CPU, especially BF4.
 
Once again Hi all to the intelligent people out there :)

I have decided to buy a Asus GTX 970 with 256 GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD. Also, I think my current config (Asus P5Q-VM Motherboard,
Intel Core™2 Quad Processor Q9550 2.83 GHz 1333 MHz FSB CPU and 6 GB Kingston 800MHz DDR2 RAM) will not allow me to play Battlefield 4, Shadow of Mordor, Far Cry 4 and Assassin's creed unity with ultra settings on 1680 * 1050 resolution (my monitor Dell E228WFP 22 inch Widescreen Flat Panel max resolution 1680 * 1050). Please let me know if I can without upgrading.

Considering the answer to my question is no, I need to upgrade my mobo, cpu and RAM. This is where I need help. I have not followed the Intel processors since I bought my quad core and when I go to research now, words like Haswell, Broadwell, Skylake, Skymount, LGA 1155, LGA 2011, DDR4 come up which are so confusing. I am going to use this system mostly and only for the gaming as described above. I am not aware of how overclocking works. Please suggest a good mobo, good CPU (i5 or i7, not sure), and RAM that I would need.

Please consider that I would like to stick with Intel processors, will not upgrade for the next 4 years, probably will not overclock untill its a cake walk.

By the way, just bought Assassin's Creed Ezio and Star Wars Yoda deluxe action figures and am really excited to upgrade my gaming setup :)
 
Okay well you won't be able to play those games on your current rig.

When it comes to upgrading, you want to upgrade whenever a new component is released, for me it was the I5-4690K, the reason for the i5 is because games do not utilize hyper-threading on the i7 and there is some good headroom for me to overclock on that CPU. Currently with my gigabyte gtx 970 and that i5 I am running bf4 on ultra @ 1920 x 1200 with no lag even with 64 players. I haven't overclocked anything yet.

I did also get the Intel 9 Series motherboard, Z97, because that will allow me to upgrade to a broadwell chip (5th gen) if I really had to but I doubt it will be. When it comes to DDR4 and socket 2011, I have noticed that the speed of that memory is not being properly utilized by the processors yet. The new i7 processors are exceptional don't get me wrong but for pure gaming, its not needed.
 
Thanks for the answers Africa_PC. So, you are suggesting that I should be buying i5 4690K and not look at i7 4790K for now. Please note that I am looking at an upgrade for next 4 years, would you say that Games will not start utilizing hyper-threading in future.

Also, you mentioned 5th Gen is Broadwell, I thought the next gen is Skylake, isn't that right? And I also read that Skylake will use a new socket different than LGA 1150. Any idea on when would those come out? Would it be worth to wait for the new socket.

Please suggest a good mobo to support the expensive CPU and GPU. Do consider that I will not be using SLI, so single PCI should be good for me.