Upgrades for current rig...

[Craftsman]

I've had this PC for while now and I'm looking to see if there is any one thing I could do, that would give me a significant performance boost while gaming. With games like Skyrim, Rage, SW:ToR coming up I want to enjoy them with great settings. I was thinking a SSD but I'm not sure. Current setup:

Core i5 760
ATI HD 5870
Gigabyte MB
4gb DDR3 G.Skill Ripjaw
Samsung HDD 1tb
Corsair 550W PSU
Win 7
24" LCD - 1920x1080 Gaming resolutions

It plays games great now but sometimes I feel like its just not performing as it should... I've checked my drivers, speeds, settings, etc... something just seems to be missing...

Thanks guys/gals!

 

[apark301]

off the bat, you want more ram for sure (bump it up to 8gigs, ram is relatively cheap right now). also, wouldn't hurt to upgrade your graphics card since a 5870 is a bit dated for modern games. i would suggest a 6950 or 6970 (leaning towards the 6970 to future proof your computer a bit more).

i do not think a SSD will change your gaming performance, unless your samsung HDD is really old. unless you will be using it for something else, rather pool that money into a better graphics card.

also, if you can, please put more specifics into your mobo and HDD. thanks!

 

[AbdullahG]

Your current setup isn't half-bad. You can OC your current CPU (though I believe it's a dual-core, but it will still perform very well) to get a performance boost. Just keep the current GPU of yours until it really begins to show it's age (the Radeon HD 7000 series isn't far from now, so waiting wouldn't hurt to wait).

 

[AbdullahG]

off the bat, you want more ram for sure (bump it up to 8gigs, ram is relatively cheap right now). also, wouldn't hurt to upgrade your graphics card since a 5870 is a bit dated for modern games. i would suggest a 6950 or 6970 (leaning towards the 6970 to future proof your computer a bit more).

i do not think a SSD will change your gaming performance, unless your samsung HDD is really old. unless you will be using it for something else, rather pool that money into a better graphics card.

also, if you can, please put more specifics into your mobo and HDD. thanks!

A 6950 or 6970 are great choices, so if he decides to upgrade his GPU, that would be great, but not completely necessary (some people still play high-end games with cards from the GTX 200 series). Having 8GB of RAM for gaming is overkill. You will not see a performance boost in gaming. Though it's cheap ATM, there's no need to spend money on something that's a want more than a need.

 

[holdingholder]

Besides getting a few more gigs of ram you need absolutely nothing more in that pc right now. Despite what apark301 said, the 5870 is a more powerful card than a 6950(not by much but still a little more powerful) and should be good for a good amount of time still.

 

[Craftsman]

Thanks, as I mentioned it runs good it just doesn't seem to have that ZIP as I feel it should, not sure how to explain. Oh that Samsung is the Spinpoint, F3, F2... something like it. It was a recommended HDD here on Tom's.

Would I see a decent OVERALL performance bump from a SDD?

 

[AbdullahG]

Thanks, as I mentioned it runs good it just doesn't seem to have that ZIP as I feel it should, not sure how to explain. Oh that Samsung is the Spinpoint, F3, F2... something like it. It was a recommended HDD here on Tom's.

Would I see a decent OVERALL performance bump from a SDD?

No.

 

[Craftsman]

Question, in what way does a SSD benefit if I wouldn't see an overall "not just gaming" PC performance boost? Is it merely for the highest of end PC's doing data/video editing, etc?

 

[apark301]

think of any program that needs to read a ton of data, as fast as possible. i've seen SSDs used heavily for data mining/storage/analysis but that is probably not what you are interested in. from a gaming perspective, you will see your computer boot-up time, file searching, and web browsing speed up (but chopping a couple of seconds here and there for the price of the SSD is probably not worthwhile). the largest benefit is going to be your windows bootup time.

so i play some SC2 and HON, and saw both games on my caviar black vs intel 510. the SSD shaved off loading times by maybe 1-2 seconds, and same with pre-loading data for a match. but in terms of gameplay, there is no difference between running it off the caviar black vs the 510.

 

[Craftsman]

Ok, that sums it up pretty good. Thanks everyone for the replies!

 

[Craftsman]

Best answer selected by Craftsman.