I've gotten that itch for new hardware and I was hoping the great people here at TL might help me settle on an upgrade. There are three components I'm interested in upgrading, but it's been awhile since I was in the loop for hardware, so I'm very much interested in your opinions. Please let me know what you think I should upgrade and why, or if you think I should wait for lower prices / better products.
Upgrade budget: $175 - 225 (MAX $250)
Misc. Items to Consider: Prefer AMD/ATI products. This will be my only upgrade for 6 mo. to a year. 1920x1080 is my resolution.
Here is my current rig:
ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 DDR3 AMD Motherboard
3.2 GHz 955 BE Phenom X4 O.C. @ 3.6 GHz (about to try again for 4.0 stable)
8 GB DDR3 RAM 9-9-9-24 (4 x 2 GB) 140 GB Raptor HDD (RPM 10,000) 1 TB Western Digital Storage HDD (RPM 7,200)
The games I'm most interested in getting extra performance for:
Starcraft 2 Diablo 3 Brink Crysis Fallout 3 and Vegas Dragon Age 2 Total War Empire / Shogun 2 Source Games Adobe Premier (a minor consideration)
I'm a tad picky about my FPS and willingly sacrifice visual quality to maintain a minimum 60 FPS. I don't care what anyone says, I can easily tell the difference between 60 and 80 FPS even on a 60 VHz monitor, particularly in first-person shooters (unless V-SYNC is on obviously, which I never use). Please, keep this preference in mind when considering what to upgrade.
I'm pretty happy with my 4890. I get 60 minimum (70-85 avg) FPS on SC2 on custom-medium settings @ 1920x1080. From what I've read, a new GPU won't help my FPS much for SC2 because I believe I'm CPU limited. Agree?
Again, I'm pretty satisfied with my 955 BE @ 3.6 GHz, but I do feel it is my limiting factor for SC2 and the Total War series. I am about to re-attempt to O.C. my 955 to 4.0 stable by reducing the HT clock setting, so there is that to consider.
Honestly I don't know much about SSDs except that they are blazing fast and not much more per GB than Raptors. This seems like the upgrade that would give me the most noticeable and most commonly utilized improvement, but I have no real tangible sense for the difference because I've never used an SSD before.
Here is a list of the products I'm currently looking at for upgrades:
In my opinion, I would upgrade to a 120gig SSD, like the OCZ Vertex 2. There is simply not enough of a performance gain if you decide to upgrade your GPU or CPU. In another six months, you can upgrade to a Sandry Bridge CPU or see what Bulldozer CPUs are like.
SSD for overall PC performance; however wont help with FPS tho. You would also need to reformat to make the best use of it. (load the OS off of it and such) The load times will be great, and everythign will feel very snappy. I have 2 60 GB vertex 2 SSDs. (purchased at different times)
use the raptor for games(maybe a couple on the SSD, the ones you play most), and the 1 TB WD for storage of movies, pictures, music, etc.
If your only looking for better fps, then youll need a new GPU.
I guarantee you wont notice much of a difference if you upgrade to that CPU.(gaming, fps,etc) in fact you'll prob get less fps because of the lower clock speed, but you could OC.
SSDs generally only increase performance in games that swap out tons of models quickly (model swapping is a technique to save on polygons) or that have to generate live terrain. While a game like Crysis does make use of model swapping, it is much more limited on the GPU. If you were to play a game with massive maps that load all the terrain at once and then uses really extensive model swapping, like Arma2, then you would see a large benefit from an SSD drive.
The Phenom II x4 BE- series of processors already are the best of what the AM3 platform can offer for gamers, so upgrading your processor would also mean a platform change to Intel at this point. As LGA 1155 boards have been recalled, that would leave you with LGA 1366 or LGA 1156 - boards which do not offer significant performance increases when considering the price. Thusly, a CPU upgrade makes the least sense for you right now.
Considering that you are picky about FPS in games like Crysis, a GPU upgrade makes the most sense out of the bunch. However, you should also realize that the 4890 is still quite a potent card and that it will likely not be worth it to upgrade right now. It beats a GTX 285, which makes it a perfectly fine card for the Fallout/Source/DA:2/Starcraft 2 engines. You will get much better value if you wait for a year or so before you upgrade. That being said, if you were to upgrade your GPU, I'd suggest a HD 6950 1GB card, such as this card by Sapphire, which is in your budget after the rebate. The HD 6870 is a fantastic card, but the 6950 1GB offers strictly better performance for very similar temperatures/power draw. Considering that performance is extremely important for you (maintaining 60 FPS in any modern shooter is hard on any single GPU, even a GTX 580), the 6950 1GB is the better buy. You should also realize that you will only see a significant performance increase in Crysis, as the rest of the games you mentioned are quite light on the GPU.
EDIT: Voted for "None, wait for lower prices", even though you should be waiting for new products, not new prices.
As said above, you can't upgrade your CPU much without a platform change which would be expensive and not really worth it at this point. Better to wait for Sandy Bridge/Bulldozer. GPU upgrade probably best one you can do now that'll impact FPS although your existing card is already pretty decent.
+1 to waiting a few months as others have said going from a x4 to x6 phenom actually hurts your fps because of lower clocks and sc2 not recognising the extra cores.
SSD wont improve your fps at all just how quickly you load games.
SSD is the only worthwhile upgrade with your current hardware and budget, it will reduce load times but not directly improve the performance of most games.
I don't think an upgrade is gonna do much good to your system. CPU upgrade is non-sense since a 6 core CPU with lower core clock speed will not out-perform your current CPU. SSD upgrade only improve your load time but not on the performance of the actual games.
If you must upgrade, the most logical is your GPU. I have a similar system with you, slighly better with GTX460 and 965BE. I can run SC2 on Ultra no problem. A GPU upgrade will most likely gains you 10-15% performance or even more on the games you listed.
Most obvious upgrade point is the GPU, since it is 2 generations behind now. However if you're happy with its performance then getting an SSD and perhaps a better CPU cooler will be the most noticeable.
On February 15 2011 03:23 BlueCow wrote: GPU for sure dude, everything else is fine and SSD is more of a luxury than anything else, upping your GPU would give you a shitton more benefit
He's exaggerating a bit. Sure, it will help; but "upping your GPU would give you a shitton more benefit" it would not.
I think your comp is pretty good as is. Your CPU is good for gaming as it has a high clock speed and most games won't use 6 cores.
Your GPU is quite solid as well the 4890 is a beast of a card. This could be upgrades if you want to use DX11 however, for ~200 you wont get a performance increase. Basically if you upgraded your gcard you would get one that uses less power and has DX11 thats it.
I think you would see the best perfomance increase by getting a SSD. However, you wont get an increase in fps from a SSD. What it would do is help with load times for anything that is on the drive.
I personally think you should put the money in a 3 year CD and get a new comp then lol.
On February 15 2011 03:23 BlueCow wrote: GPU for sure dude, everything else is fine and SSD is more of a luxury than anything else, upping your GPU would give you a shitton more benefit
He's exaggerating a bit. Sure, it will help; but "upping your GPU would give you a shitton more benefit" it would not.
the difference in performance benefit between upping the hdd to ssd and upping the gpu is pretty huge, seeing as ssd isn't all that big of a boost, so i don't see how thats not a true statement.
about saving for later, when it comes to computer parts, you can find yourself in a perpetual waiting-for-price-drops/next-big-thing stage pretty easy. The best way to decide if you need to upgrade is, can you play everything you want to play right now at the settings you want to play it at? if the answer is yes, then you can afford to wait, if the answers no, then upgrade!
Well if you want fps the choice is clearly getting a GPU.
That CPU you have is already one of the best AMD has so if you want CPU upgrade you would need to jump to Intel's Sandy Bridge which would require a new motherboard and dealing with the trouble that the P67/H67 chipsets have currently with their SATA ports.
A SSD would increase general performance in your computer such as loading your games faster but I wouldn't say it is worth the cost (I own a 120gb Vertex 2). If you want to see the difference heres a video:
So yea GPU is best. In your budget range (and if you must have AMD) an hd 6870 would be your best pick. Here's a chart for SCII comparing fps for the 4890 vs 5870 (which is almost exactly the same performance as the 6870): Link. Is +20fps worth it? Your call.
Obviously you can wait for Bulldozer but do remember that it uses the AM3+ socket so you will need a new mobo. 3rd gen SSD's are also coming out soon but I don't expect the increase in read/write/access speeds to be anything shocking. And of course the 28nm GPU's for AMD/Nvidia are coming around the end of this year but honestly waiting for new GPUs is kinda pointless as they come so often that it doesn't matter which one you buy, a newer and better one is going to be released fairly quickly.
People really need to provide context when they provide links. While I like the Techspot link (for extreme CPU scaling conditions), remember that they use an intense 4v4 replay to benchmark. This means that Techspot's overskews the effects of CPU-scaling (while underemphasizing GPU-scaling) when it comes to smaller 2v2 or ladder games. Notice at either medium or Ultra, several cards are basically within 1fps of each other. At medium in particular, you see a GTX260 at 75 vs. the GTX480 at 77.
My point is we need to be very specific on what he is looking for when it comes to the benchmarks. So with that said, regarding SC2 performance at least, upgrading the GPU allows the OP to raise the image quality while maintaining as high an FPS as possible.
Barring some NB overclocking, he isn't going to get much more IPC on the Phenom II. His CPU will also begin capping his performance as the # of units increase, regardless of the resolution and quality. He can OC more than 4Gh of course, but getting an extra 200Mhz or so isn't that helpful when the PhII's IPC is not comparable to the Lynnfield or Sandybridge.
A newer GPU would allow him to potentially go to high/ultra while maintaining his current FPS. My discussion, again, is only with SC2. In traditional FPS games, which are GPU-heavy to begin with, he will want to have a better GPU so he isn't forced to lower quality/resolution to maintain 60fps - from a GPU-standpoint anyway. You also have physics, server/map size, and other factors to consider (CPU-related).
In that sense, I personally think the GPU upgrade is the most important at this point. I agree he should wait on the CPU side, since BD/Sandybridge is still TBD. An SSD improves daily OS experience and game-loading...but the OP did not say he was unhappy with his current HDDs.
The $219 6870 or the $249 560 Ti, then, represent the ideal upgrade options. Keep in mind, the 560 Ti benefits greatly from OCing as well. I'd recommend the MSI ro Gigabyte models if you go that route.
for your budget, you're not gonna be getting any noticeable performance gains. $300 on sandy bridge mobo/CPU (if you can even get a mobo right now), sure, but then you're GPU bound. upgrade GPU to like a 6850/6870 or something, sure...but then you're CPU bound. like someone else said, save up.
EPT
(Won't be coming out for a long time, just sayin')
