Upgrading My Computer

[Queen Bee]

I've seen a few people post here about this already, but I think they knew what they were doing a bit better than I do (read: not at all). My specs are as follows:

 

OS: Win7 64bit

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K @ 3.40 GHz

Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series

RAM: 8gigs (I don't know more than that)

 

I was told to start with upgrading my power supply, which is currently a Solytech 600w. I saw a 750w power supply at Best Buy for 90$ USD, so I'm tempted to get that.

 

Beyond that, I don't know where to go from here. I should probably get a new video card after the power supply, but after a few minutes of shopping online I've come to the conclusion that I have no idea what I'm doing. I can't make any sense of the numbers, and without a basis for comparison I'm flying blind. I know I want to eventually upgrade my CPU from an i5 to an i7, but I don't know much more than that.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[ttaga]

Budget?

What do you use your pc for mostly?

 

EDIT: Also, your i5 is a very solid cpu so personally I wouldn't really make the jump to an i7 a priority.

[Queen Bee]

Budget? What's a budget?

 

In all seriousness, I'm taking this one step at a time. Power supply, then probably video card, then probably CPU. If I spread it out over the next year and save up, I'll be able to afford it. Also, I'm not entirely sure what price range decent upgrades would cost. What's normal for a better video card, etc?

 

I use my PC for gaming, mostly. Also watching movies and TV on various websites.

[Guest mercury11]

The 750 should be fine for that card. I'm running a 3 way SLI with a 1000 watt power supply. The i7 is going to help a lot in the performance department, but depending on how old your motherboard is, I would replace that as well.

[Queen Bee]

The 750 should be fine for that card. I'm running a 3 way SLI with a 1000 watt power supply. The i7 is going to help a lot in the performance department, but depending on how old your motherboard is, I would replace that as well.

 

The motherboard is only two years old, it came with the computer. I bought the whole thing from ibuypower, they make gaming computers. It's a Gigabyte, but I don't know anything other than that.

 

As for a new video card, what do you recommend? I want something better than what I have, but I'm not sure where to go from here.

[Guest mercury11]

I would find a video card that suites you, but for example I picked up an Nvidia 660 ti for $259 when it first came out, but you can pick one up for around $150. And it's a decently fast card. You want something good but not too extreme either.

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

Power supply as your first upgrade is a wise move. The higher, the better, because more time between having to purchase a new upgrade.

 

Cheapest thing to upgrade's gonna be the RAM. Srsly, 16gb of RAM is pretty easy to pull off, and I would DEFINITELY recommend that for running Skyrim. Your OS, CPU are just fine for the forseeable future

 

When it comes to upgrading your GPU, have this. Handy little chart for comparing Nvidia to AMD, if it becomes necessary to switch manufacturer for some reason.

 

There' not much else I can recommend without having more details of what hardware you have.

[Halstrom]

The important question is what is it not doing that you want it to do?

Upgrading a power supply isn't going to make it faster and possibly not necessary depending on what you want to upgrade.

You might be better starting with a new case and build a new PC as your budget permits.

[Queen Bee]

Power supply as your first upgrade is a wise move. The higher, the better, because more time between having to purchase a new upgrade.

 

Cheapest thing to upgrade's gonna be the RAM. Srsly, 16gb of RAM is pretty easy to pull off, and I would DEFINITELY recommend that for running Skyrim. Your OS, CPU are just fine for the forseeable future

 

When it comes to upgrading your GPU, have this. Handy little chart for comparing Nvidia to AMD, if it becomes necessary to switch manufacturer for some reason.

 

There' not much else I can recommend without having more details of what hardware you have.

 

Well, I was told not to switch to Nvidia because I have an AMD motherboard and CPU, and I need them to be compatible. I don't know if I have the slots for 16gb of RAM. How would I check?

 

The important question is what is it not doing that you want it to do?

Upgrading a power supply isn't going to make it faster and possibly not necessary depending on what you want to upgrade.

You might be better starting with a new case and build a new PC as your budget permits.

 

I can't run the high texture stuff in Skyrim (or most games, for that matter) without putting serious strain on my frame rate. I'd love to be able to make Skyrim look like some of the better screenshots/videos out there, and with smoother frame rates. I'm not a graphics whore, but I do like a pretty game. Speed and quality is what I'm looking for.

 

Due to my budget, I'd really like to avoid buying a new PC, especially since the one I have is only two years old.

[AgendaDysphoria]

Upgrading the power supply s definitely a good idea, though you may want to consider whether you'll overclock/SLI/Crossfire as they'll add on some extra wattage.

 

An i5 should be good enough for gaming since most games don't use more than 4 cores, if you're planning to do heavy video editing or the like an i7 would help indeed.

 

8 gigs of RAM should be good enough for pretty much every game, but 16 gigs would once again help for tasks such as video editing.

 

If you do plan on getting another GPU you should try to ensure it has at least 3 gigs of VRAM. You may also consider getting a card you can do Crossfire with so you don't have to throw out your old card.

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

http://www.crucial.com/

 

This should help you figure out the RAM issue

[ttaga]

NVIDIA and AMD gpu's are compatible with both AMD or INTEL platforms. For me 16 gigs of ram for gaming is overkill ( always with budget in mind ).

Your i5 is very good for gaming.

For graphics yes 3gb of vram is awesome but also 2gb are more than enough. Right now r9270x and gtx 770 are great sub 250$ cards for smooth 1080p gaming

[Queen Bee]

Upgrading the power supply s definitely a good idea, though you may want to consider whether you'll overclock/SLI/Crossfire as they'll add on some extra wattage.

 

An i5 should be good enough for gaming since most games don't use more than 4 cores, if you're planning to do heavy video editing or the like an i7 would help indeed.

 

8 gigs of RAM should be good enough for pretty much every game, but 16 gigs would once again help for tasks such as video editing.

 

If you do plan on getting another GPU you should try to ensure it has at least 3 gigs of VRAM. You may also consider getting a card you can do Crossfire with so you don't have to throw out your old card.

 

I'm getting mildly confused. It feels like you're saying my rig is fine the way it is, but I know I'm running into frame rate issues and things don't look nearly as good as they could. What do I need to do to get the kind of performance I want?

 

http://www.crucial.com/

 

This should help you figure out the RAM issue

 

Thanks for that, it's helpful. SSDs are tempting, but the one listed is half the capacity of the HD I have now.

[Queen Bee]

NVIDIA and AMD gpu's are compatible with both AMD or INTEL platforms. For me 16 gigs of ram for gaming is overkill ( always with budget in mind ).

Your i5 is very good for gaming.

For graphics yes 3gb of vram is awesome but also 2gb are more than enough. Right now r9270x and gtx 770 are great sub 250$ cards for smooth 1080p gaming

 

Thanks, I'll probably go with that.

[Guest mercury11]

From what I've read, you can use an Nvidia card on an older AMD board, but can't run SLI. The newer AMD boards are now compatible with both AMD and nvidia.

[ttaga]

Well, Queen is using an I5 so I really don't understand why we're even talking about AMD platforms.

[Guest mercury11]

Because of cost/performance with ssd, I personally went with two 500gb raptors in raid 0. It was a much better investment. But the drives are noisy, which is their only downfall.

[Halstrom]

Well I'm no expert in specifics but basically it comes down to

Memory upgrade is cheapest thing, 8Gb's not bad, 16gig should be plenty for Skyrim, you need to open your case and see how many memory slots you have, if there are spares, usually you only have 2 slots with 2x 4gb cards, just swap them to 2x 8Gb cards, you can't mix sizes or types either and may have to make sure the type of memory is compatible with your mother board DDR3/DDR4/DDR5 etc, won't require a power supply upgrade but you will probably only get some more speed, may not help with graphics a lot.

Graphics card, yep, you can't use Nvidia with a Radeon mother board, stick with Radeon, may require a power supply upgrade the more powerful card you pick, usually if it needs 2 slots of physical space it's going to need a good power supply with a direct power lead from the power supply to the graphics card.

Solid State Hard Drive SSD, add one of these and install your games onto it, any game operations that refer to the hard drive, loading the game & new areas etc, will be at least 5x faster probably 10x. Just install it into the rack & plug it in.

Motherboard upgrade is not going to do much by itself and I would only do so if you really want to switch to Intel/Nvidia, best done buying the motherboard, CPU and memory as a set. Requires some screwing around with windows installation etc, if you go this far might as well start with a new case, hard drive, Windows 8.1 and powersupply, so basically build a new PC and sell/give away the old PC.

I've always been a Intel/Nvidia Fan myself, Nvidia vs Radeon are rivals like Intel vs AMD, it appears you have a hybrid, usually Mother boards are Intel/Nvidia or AMD/Radeon but unless you are talking high end stuff then the differences to most users are minimal, the cost of swapping outweighs any gain, though some games do work better on one or the other.

You may get enough improvement from just going up a couple of notches in upgrading your Graphics card GPU with no power supply required. But if you want to run modern games at highest settings you need high end stuff.

[AgendaDysphoria]

I'm getting mildly confused. It feels like you're saying my rig is fine the way it is, but I know I'm running into frame rate issues and things don't look nearly as good as they could. What do I need to do to get the kind of performance I want?

 

I'd say a GPU upgrade would be the most beneficial, most of your other specs seem fine. I second ttaga on the R9 270x and the GTX 770. You should ensure your PSU can supply enough power for whatever card you decide to get, here's a PSU calculator: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

[shedidwhat]

as you are spreading out your upgrades and not getting all at once here are a few things to watch for.

 

PCi E video cards are backward compatable (im using PCI-E 3 vid card in a PCI-E 2 mobo) so future upgrades are safe

 

new CPU's will "usually" require a new mobo (the perfect CPU for you this year may not have compatable Mobo's next year,

so its best to get CPU and Mobo at the same time)

 

memory meh.. they have been ddr3 240 pin for many years and will "probably" stay ddr3 240 pin for a few more years.

just have to watch the voltage

 

power supply - double check the power cables pin count for mobo and vid card (PCI-E power cables)

make sure the PS you get has 6+2 pin for the video cards power ( for future compatability.)

 

Video cards are getting bigger/longer  ( gigitty ) make sure you have room before buying (length and height)

 

....................................

I just bought 2 Radeon R9 280 3gb vid cards, but could only use 1 as my 850W PS only had 6 pin out for vid power,

so had to buy new PS..

vid cards are tad long and power cables attach on top of vid card so now a new case is on its way.

mobo was not made for this size vid card even though its a ASUS ROG Rampage 2 extreme so vid cards are very close to each other and

airflow is not great but can't upgrade mobo because there are no intel i-7 LGA1366 compatable mobo's any more

(but thats what I get for buying a 900$ CPU, they did not sell many so they droped the LGA1366 socket type)

and I dont want to spend another 700$ for CPU-mobo upgrade this month.

..................................

but if my upgrading problems can help anyone not have these problems then all is good

 

for your full system specs, a easy litttle program is Speccy (from the ppl that make CCleaner) it will tell you all you need to know

and its free http://www.piriform.com/speccy

 

[chevyowner]

Just to try and clear a few thing up for other people.

 

The CPU from post 1 is an Intel I5, and thus will use a motherboard made for Intel processors.

I have no idea where this AMD motherboard talk is coming from.

 

You CAN use an NVIDIA video card with a AMD CPU.

I used to have an AMD 1100T and I used (NVIDIA) GTX 460 with it.

 

The only way the OP could not add more ram is IF the motherboard only has 1 slot for ram and thus has an 8gb stick in that slot.

If there are 2x4Gb sticks 16GB can be achieved by change the 4GB sticks to 8GB, but the current 8GB should be fine.

 

OFF-TOPIC

I keep seeing rumors that DDR4 is planed for late this year early next but I won't believe it until it there is confirm-able proof.