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Geek Culture / I want to upgrade my pc, need some suggestions.

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TodeGamer
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Posted: 28th Dec 2015 12:10
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I want to upgrade my pc but I really don't know what to choose either GTX 970 or Core i7.

Here is the specs:




Should I choose GTX 970 or Core i7? I'm not expert in computer hardware though.
I love to make games
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budokaiman
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Posted: 28th Dec 2015 15:41
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Well, if you want to get an i7, you'll need to get a new motherboard as well since you have an AMD socket motherboard. The processor is 3 years old, so even if you were to upgrade to a newer AMD cpu you'd still need a new motherboard (5800k is FM2 socket, newer AMD are AM3+). You're probably better off upgrading your GPU now, then getting anew Mobo/CPU later.
"Giraffe is soft, Gorilla is hard." - Phaelax
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Phaelax
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Posted: 28th Dec 2015 16:32
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GPU. If you're going to spend that kind of money for a 970 I'm guessing it's for gaming. You won't see any improvement by getting an i7 and using your existing 7660.

"I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended." - Linus Torvalds
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budokaiman
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Posted: 28th Dec 2015 17:08
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Quote: " You won't see any improvement by getting an i7 and using your existing 7660."

That is not exactly true, it depends on the game. Some games, like borderlands series don't require a beefy GPU, but a slow CPU can greatly impact framerate.
"Giraffe is soft, Gorilla is hard." - Phaelax
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Phaelax
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Posted: 28th Dec 2015 18:58
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But he's already got a 3.8GHz. Unless Borderlands is doing some kind of on the fly software rendering, I don't see an i7 making a difference.

"I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended." - Linus Torvalds
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Seditious
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Posted: 28th Dec 2015 19:04
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I think an i7 would be overkill for most users. A high-end i3 or i5 should be much cheaper whilst still giving you adequate performance. Depending on the power of the CPU (I'm not familiar with the one you have, and the clock speed alone doesn't really tell us how powerful it is) it's probably worth putting more money towards a better GPU, since that's where 99% of the time you'll be needing more juice when playing games. Have a look at the charts here for price/performance statistics. Also you may want to see where your CPU falls on these charts as well.

I'd also recommend you get an SSD to use as your OS drive (and maybe install a couple of games on for faster loading), since it should provide a big overall boost to your computer's responsiveness. More for the OS, but any games loaded from there should load quicker too. You'd probably be able to make do with 64GB unless you want to install many games on there.
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budokaiman
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Posted: 28th Dec 2015 20:05
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Quote: "But he's already got a 3.8GHz. Unless Borderlands is doing some kind of on the fly software rendering, I don't see an i7 making a difference."

Pure clock speed isn't the only factor to go by though. I'm not saying that an i7 is necessary or will make a huge difference in the overall scheme of it, but simply saying that upgrading the CPU will make no difference whatsoever is an incorrect assumption.
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Phaelax
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Posted: 29th Dec 2015 05:09 Edited at: 29th Dec 2015 05:20
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I'll rephrase, no real humanly observable difference.

Youch! Looked at the benchmarks for that A10-5800k CPU. Scored less than half my i7-3770k! Ok so maybe some observable difference.
But I still think a new gpu will give him the bigger boost in gaming performance.

Just for comparative purposes, his CPU was listed with a score of 4637 vs a 3770k of 9589. Big difference but I believe his will still handle games. When you look at the score of his 7660D gpu, i think it's clear where his biggest drawback is at the moment.
7660D - 796
GTX660 - 4121


Depending on costs, I'd might consider getting a new motherboard with an i5 and an 8-series nvidia card. Lasted graphics cards are always overpriced in my opinion.

"I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended." - Linus Torvalds
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Dar13
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Posted: 29th Dec 2015 22:08
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I would recommend a GPU upgrade at first with a follow-up upgrade to the CPU at a later point. Switching to Intel from AMD isn't cheap due to needing a motherboard and you'll see infinitely greater increases in performance from a GPU upgrade as jumping from a 7660 equivalent (which I believe is provided by the APU rather than a standalone card) to a 970 is easily 3+ times improvement (the raw hardware suggests a minimum of about ~6x improvement).
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budokaiman
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Posted: 29th Dec 2015 22:20
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One more thing that you haven't mentioned is your PSU. I'm assuming you bought a pre-built PC, so you'll need to check your wattage to make sure your PSU can handle the hardware upgrades.
"Giraffe is soft, Gorilla is hard." - Phaelax
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CJB
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Posted: 4th Jan 2016 17:07
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I strongly recommend going for an SSD for your operating system and primary apps if you haven't already. That and some additional RAM (7.4Gb is an unusual figure).

An SSD will make a huge difference in general performance. You're looking at speeding up the startup of windows and applications by something like 10x (if you're lucky!) compared to a traditional mechanical HD.



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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 5th Jan 2016 05:38
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Whoopsies thought I had posted in this thread but never did!

I highly recommend upgrading the GPU and HD first, definitely get an SSD if you can. Then, further down the road you can upgrade the processor. But you will see huge increases in performance just by going to an SSD, and a better GPU!

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