Which component shall I upgrade to get better two monitors performance?

[jeremita]

Dear Community,

Please advice. I have two monitors now, details as follows:

The primary is: Iiyama XB327OQS (2560 x 1440, HDMI cable)
Secondary: Iiyama XB2783HSU (1920 x 1080, DVI cable)

Issue: When I have these two monitors on, I can see that overal performance of activities in browser's windows is not so smooth. I use charting websites like TradingView, trading exchanges pages, watching you tube in the same time, using google drive, etc.

Content or pages are a bit "lagging" when there are to many windows open.

I also play games, but games are quite good, don't need so much of an improvement.

Question nr 1: Will change of a GPU to 1060 6GB improve menitoned performance? (In January i have asked here about power supply, and also (link) obtained info that 1060 6GB is the good choice for my motherboard)

Question nr 2: Which component(s) would change the overal windows performance?

Question nr 3: Does it slow down system somehow if I work with two various resolutions? (myth?).

Details of my config:

Intel i5-2400 @ 3.10GHz
8.00 GB RAM
Motherboard: Asus P8 H61 PRO
Power supply: Chieftec GPS-450A
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (2 GB i believe)
Windows 10-64bit

Please advice what would be the most cost-effective improvement to my desktop system?

Cheers,
jeremita

 

[terry4536]

The graphics card is the most important component to improve on anything regarding Video or Display.

I would suggest a GTX 1060 at a minimum or a GTX 1070. I would also upgrade the power supply at the same time. A 550 - 650 watt power supply would power either. i would suggest a Seasonic Focus or EVGA G2 or G3 power supply.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Question nr 1: Will change of a GPU to 1060 6GB improve menitoned performance?

Gaming performance would improve. Rest of it - not so much.

Question nr 2: Which component(s) would change the overal windows performance?

Upgrade ram of your system. Lot of browser windows/tabs consume huge amount of ram. Upgrade to 16GB.

Question nr 3: Does it slow down system somehow if I work with two various resolutions? (myth?).

Not really.

 

[jeremita]

The graphics card is the most important component to improve on anything regarding Video or Display.

I would suggest a GTX 1060 at a minimum or a GTX 1070. I would also upgrade the power supply at the same time. A 550 - 650 watt power supply would power either. i would suggest a Seasonic Focus or EVGA G2 or G3 power supply.

Thanks.

Are you sure that power supply upgrade is necessary? In the mentioned topic (http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3613619/power-supply-upgrade-speed.html) people point the otherwise, that GTX 1060 consumes less energy than GTX760.

 

[SkyNetRising]

If you're satisfied with current gaming performance of your pc, then there's no reason to upgrade graphics card.

 

[jeremita]

Question nr 1: Will change of a GPU to 1060 6GB improve menitoned performance?

Gaming performance would improve. Rest of it - not so much.

This is a very important info! Thanks.

Question nr 2: Which component(s) would change the overal windows performance?

Upgrade ram of your system. Lot of browser windows/tabs consume huge amount of ram. Upgrade to 16GB.

The RAM upgrade makes most sense so far! Nice. Any counter-arguments?

That's why I love this forum, the debates appears very often!

 

[terry4536]

#1 Upgrading the GTX 760 to the GTX 1060 would improve the performance of the system.

#2 Upgrading the platform would improve the overall performance. That would entail upgrading the motherboard, CPU, and RAM (DDR4) (also probably the power supply).

#3 Displaying different resolutions will not have much effect (within reason). But showing much higher resolutions does require more graphics horsepower. For example when 4K first came out, I remember article about three graphics cards in SLI to handle a 4K display. Now a single GTX 1080 will do the trick for 4K for example.

 

[terry4536]

The graphics card is the most important component to improve on anything regarding Video or Display.

I would suggest a GTX 1060 at a minimum or a GTX 1070. I would also upgrade the power supply at the same time. A 550 - 650 watt power supply would power either. i would suggest a Seasonic Focus or EVGA G2 or G3 power supply.

Thanks.

Are you sure that power supply upgrade is necessary? In the mentioned topic (http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3613619/power-supply-upgrade-speed.html) people point the otherwise, that GTX 1060 consumes less energy than GTX760.

The GTX 1070 has a system requirement of 500 Watts. The GTX 1060 has a system requirement of 400 watts.

Your old power supply is 450 watts. Yes, I upgrade it would it.

 

[jeremita]

OK, based on discussion so far → I don't want my games to run better.

I want to improve my browser-windows performance across two monitors.

I don't want to overspend money, hence rather stay with motherboard, power supply.

I can change either RAM (from 8 to 16GB) or a processor or a GPU only.

Does RAM change sounds like the most cost-effective for this?

(I will monitor RAM memory % perfmormance next days).

Cheers

 

[terry4536]

Upgrading the Memory alone would increase the system resources. In other words, the components that you have will operate better (more often). But the actual performance of the system will remain the same. The CPU base and turbo frequency will remain the same. Your graphics card GPU processing frequency and clock will remain the same.

 

[terry4536]

If you open the Windows Task Manager, it will give you the CPU % and Memory % usage at any given time. Say you are playing a game, and the CPU % is 15 % and the Memory% is 50 %. If you double the memory that you have, that memory usage in the game would drop to maybe 25 - 35 % instead of 50 % (for that specific moment in time). In otherwords the demand on the system would be reduced.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Additionally to ram upgrade you may want to consider getting SSD also.

 

[jeremita]

OK, thanks a lot guys! I will observe a bit more how the Task Manager prints values.

 

[larrycumming]

this is pretty easy. open a window of task manager or hwinfo64 while you are doing your tasks and observe which has reached max.

If memory reached 85%+ usage, then add more memory

if cpu maxes out at 100% frequently then get an i7-2600

if graphics card memory maxes out then go for 1060 3/6gb

my guess is you need to adjust your windows page file settings.

1. go to advanced system settings. disable windows page file on your primary c: drive and set your windows pagefile on a disk physically different from where you installed windows system (c: drive).

2. set max and min pagefile size both to 2 times your system memory size. be sure to set min=max

another thing you can try is see if you have bitlocker enabled. they will give you a little lag if your apps are disk intensive.

*edit- do get an ssd and install your windows system on the ssd if you haven't already. that will give you the single best desktop boost.

OK, based on discussion so far → I don't want my games to run better.

I want to improve my browser-windows performance across two monitors.

I don't want to overspend money, hence rather stay with motherboard, power supply.

I can change either RAM (from 8 to 16GB) or a processor or a GPU only.

Does RAM change sounds like the most cost-effective for this?

(I will monitor RAM memory % perfmormance next days).

Cheers

 

[SkyNetRising]

2. set max and min pagefile size both to 2 times your system memory size. be sure to set min=max

Having a humongous page file will impact system performance detrimentally.

It is better to set page file to some smaller size (for example set minimum to 1GB) and allow it to grow (set max to 2x physical ram).
Then monitor page file growth. If it grows for example to 2GB, then set minimum to 2GB accordingly.

 

[jeremita]

this is pretty easy. open a window of task manager or hwinfo64 while you are doing your tasks and observe which has reached max.

(...)

2. set max and min pagefile size both to 2 times your system memory size. be sure to set min=max

(...)

*edit- do get an ssd and install your windows system on the ssd if you haven't already. that will give you the single best desktop boost.

Nice larrycumming! Thanks for this ideas, will test, will observe!

 

[jeremita]

my guess is you need to adjust your windows page file settings.

1. go to advanced system settings. disable windows page file on your primary c: drive and set your windows pagefile on a disk physically different from where you installed windows system (c: drive).

2. set max and min pagefile size both to 2 times your system memory size. be sure to set min=max

another thing you can try is see if you have bitlocker enabled. they will give you a little lag if your apps are disk intensive.

↑ this really helped with the overall performance! Nice.

I can see CPU on max 60-70% (most of the time 15-20%). RAM at 50-60% (mostly 40%), when working with many windows on 2 monitors.

I could see almost 100% only in launched CS:GO for a test.

 

[larrycumming]

Good to hear that...

In my own usage experience, 8GB is adequate for most windows 10 desktop usages of present day. Stock charting websites, youtube videos, browsing, office work, etc. generally won't use up all that memory. For video editing purposes tho, especially if you plan to edit 4K, then you will need atleast 16GB. Gaming mostly would do fine with 8GB though 16GB would give it a nice cushion.

As for graphics cards, if you play games at "medium" settings, most of the 3/4GB cards will do the job. Going higher into 2K or 4K gaming then you will definitely need 6G or more vram. Video ram has mostly to do with the amount of texture details and those are usually configurable in game.

for example a gtx 1060 3gb will get about 120-140fps on "medium" setting in pubg, which is adequately enough to power a 144hz monitor. For "high" or "ultra" settings on 144hz monitor you'll need 1070 or better.

if you watch 4K videos, upgrading to a gtx 1060 3G seems like a good choice right now considering the price and its overall flexibility for desktop and light gaming use. the older cards such as gtx 760 doesn't support hardware hevc/4k decoding.

another performance gain you can look into is getting your system to run dual channel ram, if you haven't already. that means installing 4GB x 2 or 8GB x 2 memory sticks. I use 4GBx2 on my daily desktop computer because 8GB is all it ever needs. If you already have a 8GB I'd suggest getting an identical 8GB stick and run 8GBx2. that will give another noticeable performance boost.

my guess is you need to adjust your windows page file settings.

1. go to advanced system settings. disable windows page file on your primary c: drive and set your windows pagefile on a disk physically different from where you installed windows system (c: drive).

2. set max and min pagefile size both to 2 times your system memory size. be sure to set min=max

another thing you can try is see if you have bitlocker enabled. they will give you a little lag if your apps are disk intensive.

↑ this really helped with the overall performance! Nice.

I can see CPU on max 60-70% (most of the time 15-20%). RAM at 50-60% (mostly 40%), when working with many windows on 2 monitors.

I could see almost 100% only in launched CS:GO for a test.

 

[jeremita]

Good to hear that...

In my own usage experience, 8GB is adequate for most windows 10 desktop usages of present day. Stock charting websites, youtube videos, browsing, office work, etc. generally won't use up all that memory. For video editing purposes tho, especially if you plan to edit 4K, then you will need atleast 16GB. Gaming mostly would do fine with 8GB though 16GB would give it a nice cushion.

Appreciate further explanation. Less than year ago I have increased RAM from 4 to 8 GB, that was incredible improvement.

Now, I could observe another improvement after setting page file as recommended!

As for graphics cards, if you play games at "medium" settings, most of the 3/4GB cards will do the job. Going higher into 2K or 4K gaming then you will definitely need 6G or more vram. Video ram has mostly to do with the amount of texture details and those are usually configurable in game.
for example a gtx 1060 3gb will get about 120-140fps on "medium" setting in pubg, which is adequately enough to power a 144hz monitor. For "high" or "ultra" settings on 144hz monitor you'll need 1070 or better.

if you watch 4K videos, upgrading to a gtx 1060 3G seems like a good choice right now considering the price and its overall flexibility for desktop and light gaming use. the older cards such as gtx 760 doesn't support hardware hevc/4k decoding.

Yes, most of the games that I run from time to time, runs pretty good in a medium settings.

another performance gain you can look into is getting your system to run dual channel ram, if you haven't already. that means installing 4GB x 2 or 8GB x 2 memory sticks. I use 4GBx2 on my daily desktop computer because 8GB is all it ever needs. If you already have a 8GB I'd suggest getting an identical 8GB stick and run 8GBx2. that will give another noticeable performance boost.

I have a 2x 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 right now. Asus P8 H61 PRO can handle maximum DDR3.

Once again, thanks!