Upgrading My PC

zombygeek

Honorable
Nov 27, 2012
5
0
10,510
One year ago I purchased a computer meant for gaming. I'll admit that I thought I knew a lot more than I did and I ended up paying the price. I got a lot less bang for what I paid for than what I probably could have gotten. Anyway. With Christmas coming up I'm expecting to get a little cash to spend and I think it's time for an upgrade. I guess it was a good deal though. $700 pc for around $500 if you weren't looking for speed, but power.

I have an AMD HD Radeon 6670 in my PC right now. I was curious as to whether I should buy another and crossfire, or just go a head a buy a new one altogether. Which ever will get me the most performance for the least amount of money I can spend. If I buy a new one, I was thinking about going nVidia, because they have some sweet looking Ambient Occlusion stuff that AMD doesn't. Also, my res is 1920x1080.

My processors is an AMD Phenom II x6 1055T 2.8 OCed to 3.33, (probably not 100% correctly, but is stable, no crashes ever.) I was stupid and thought, "6 cores! Nothing can stop me now!". Well, Instead of a racing horse I got a pack mule. But I suppose that's still cool. It's still fun to experiment with 3D physics in Blender without waiting 2 years for it to process.
Anyway, to the point, would this processor bottle neck a crossfire setup, or should I consider switching out the processor for something like a x4 3.5 - 4.0. Or maybe even go dual-core and get an even higher clock? I'd imagine that would run around the same price?

My psu is only a 500w. So that would needed to be upgraded if I were to crossfire.

Ram is at 8gigs, that's plenty.

Not sure what my mobo is exactly. I know it's an ASRock with only 2 pci-e slots :/. There'd be no room for a fancy-schmancy sound card for me. If I were to get a sound card, what would you recommend? My set up is 5.1 with optical.

I'm mostly just looking to max out Skyrim and also have SMIM installed along with some texture pack mods and maybe even an ENB?
 

zombygeek

Honorable
Nov 27, 2012
5
0
10,510
Case is well ventilated. I even have a small extra fan on top where my case has a grid opening just to keep it extra cool, but my temps are fine without it.

PSU is 500w.

Budget is $100-200. Not sure what I want to get exactly.
 
"My psu is only a 500w." If it's a quality power supply then you should be fine with any choice. If it is a junk PSU then you may hit stability problems. If you post brand/model people can say if it's junk.

An HD6670 is rated at 65W. Adding a second 6670 would not tax your power supply. However I would not do that. Google microstutter.

If you can spend $170 the HD7850 1GB card is only 130w or so, would run fine on the 500w pus and will be a stunning improvement over the HD6670.

Here is a list of GPUs with relative performance (last page or article). http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html