Upgrading my PC

[Thunderaan]

Hey guys I went out this week and bought a Geforce Gtx 970 strix, and a crucial mx100 256GB ssd. I didn't really care for the performance increase from the 750ti to the 970 oddly, but the SSD being a huge jump. I am just curious about what to upgrade if I take back my video card and go back to my old one.

Specs-

Cpu- Fx-8350
GPU- 750ti/970
RAM-Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB 1866
PSU- Corsair cx600
SSD- Crucial mx100 256gb
HD- PNY 1tb

 

[dark_lord69]

If you take the 970 back... and don't want to get another, different video card.
You best upgrade options would be a Core i5 (4460) CPU and motherboard with appropriate socket type.

Otherwise a different GPU would be your best upgrade option.
Not sure why you didn't see a significant benefit from the 970 GPU.
You could try the R9 290X it's similar in performance and cost.
Is it possible that you put that new video card in a PCIe slot that doesn't have all x16 lanes?
It's a long explanation but with PCIe slots, the correct size doesn't mean it will run at full speed. I have a slot that is x16 in size but the speed is rated at only x4 so it would not be fast enough for a video card. Also, did you install the latest drivers. You should have seen a speed increase but it may not be noticeable if you are using a 60Hz monitor and have V-Sync turned on.

Otherwise just hold off on anymore upgrades.
Also, knowing what I know about computers, there is not currently any upgrade that can come close to the speed increase you get when you move from a spinning HDD to a SSD drive.

I don't recommend upgrades if you are not getting low frame rates in games. Newer games with high requirements should push you to buy new hardware but if the games you play are getting the same frame rate with the new video card as you did with the old one then don't upgrade yet.

 

[nikoli707]

if your going to return the 970, you can get an r9-280 for about half the price. also throw a noctua/phanteks on that fx 8 core and overclock the piss out of it.

 

[Thunderaan]

if your going to return the 970, you can get an r9-280 for about half the price. also throw a noctua/phanteks on that fx 8 core and overclock the piss out of it.

I think I am going to return it and get a 760, and sell my 750ti to a friend. What exactly is the Noctua/phanteks? Fans/heatsinks? Should I goto liquid cooling and overlock? will i get boosts in fps, and also what speeds could it hit, i have it @ 4.4 atm.

 

[nikoli707]

if your going to return the 970, you can get an r9-280 for about half the price. also throw a noctua/phanteks on that fx 8 core and overclock the piss out of it.

I think I am going to return it and get a 760, and sell my 750ti to a friend. What exactly is the Noctua/phanteks? Fans/heatsinks? Should I goto liquid cooling and overlock? will i get boosts in fps, and also what speeds could it hit, i have it @ 4.4 atm.

what cooler do you have right now? 4.4ghz is a decent overclock but the closer you can get to 5.0ghz the better as you will elminate the cpu bottleneck you may be getting in certain games.

the chart below shows bf4 and the performance scaling of the fx 8 core and how far behind a simple i5 it is. i personally dont like the water coolers like the h100i. the 140mm air coolers from noctua and phanteks are almost as good as the h100i but quieter, cheaper, and less of a headache. check if you can fit such a large air cooler in your case though.

 

[pxio]

what games do you play? CS:GO/Minecraft/League of Legends?

 

[Thunderaan]

if your going to return the 970, you can get an r9-280 for about half the price. also throw a noctua/phanteks on that fx 8 core and overclock the piss out of it.

I think I am going to return it and get a 760, and sell my 750ti to a friend. What exactly is the Noctua/phanteks? Fans/heatsinks? Should I goto liquid cooling and overlock? will i get boosts in fps, and also what speeds could it hit, i have it @ 4.4 atm.

what cooler do you have right now? 4.4ghz is a decent overclock but the closer you can get to 5.0ghz the better as you will elminate the cpu bottleneck you may be getting in certain games.

I have out of box cooling, and its not overclocked, it came @ 4.0, 4.2 turbo, and hits 4.4 randomly lol. But my motherboard is only a M5A97 LE R2.0, people i talk to say not to OC with this, and only 600w aswell?

 

[Thunderaan]

what games do you play? CS:GO/Minecraft/League of Legends?

I play WoW, CSGO, Arma 2/3.

 

[nikoli707]

those games are not too terribly demanding so i can see how a 750ti to 970 wouldn't be much to feel. the stock amd cooler and 4.4ghz sounds dangerous to me, over 65c is not a great idea with the fx 8 core. yes your le r2.0 isn't the best board to be going too far past 4.4ghz so maybe you dont want to get much better cooling. but at least get a cooler master hyper 212 evo to keep your temps down.