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Upgrade or Replace?
Truvidien88
Member UncommonPosts: 462
in Hardware
Greetings!
Been debating on rather if I would need to replace my computer or not lately. So far it hasn't been giving me a problem with the games that I play.. I'm able to hit high/max depends on what it is. I'm afraid with newer titles coming out (Mostly MMO's) games will become more demanding and I've had my current setup for over like 4 years now. So, I'm wondering if I could just throw it a higher graphics card and go with it or should I just replace the whole thing?
I'm running a AMD Fx Six Core 6300 paired with a Radeon HD 7870. If I do replace the graphics card wondering how bad I'll be bottlenecked. If anyone could shed some light on this I'd be thankful.
Thanks!
Been debating on rather if I would need to replace my computer or not lately. So far it hasn't been giving me a problem with the games that I play.. I'm able to hit high/max depends on what it is. I'm afraid with newer titles coming out (Mostly MMO's) games will become more demanding and I've had my current setup for over like 4 years now. So, I'm wondering if I could just throw it a higher graphics card and go with it or should I just replace the whole thing?
I'm running a AMD Fx Six Core 6300 paired with a Radeon HD 7870. If I do replace the graphics card wondering how bad I'll be bottlenecked. If anyone could shed some light on this I'd be thankful.
Thanks!
Comments
Usually though the games graphics are done in a way to support a lot of players on the screen, so even when the GPU is allowed to go all out.. its not as impressive as a single player game.
There are exceptions of course.
Once the above happens THEN it is time to tap the fund and go with a new system i would think, barring some major piece of hardware dying anyhow.
Sensible upgrade would be +200$ GPU.
Sensible upgrade for entire rig +700$.
Rule of thumb - buy GPU first, if it isn't enough, buy the rest.
Every month you can delay the upgrade means lower prices for the same hardware.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
A GPU will help. Sure, it will get bottlenecked occasionally, but you will still see a marked improvement. You'll need to get into the $700+ range to build something new that will be an upgrade to what you have now though.
I'd also add, if you don't have an SSD, stop and do that right now. That will be the most dramatic upgrade you can do to your computer, bar none.
Also, if you have less then 8 gig ram you might consider updating it as well. It is cheap, you might not ne able to use it in your next computer though so don't spend to much on it and get the same as you already have if you have 2 free slots.
A graphics card might be worth it if you get a really good one you can keep when you upgrade everything, I would wait another year for the rest though. But then we are talking high end, like GTX 1070+ for Nvidia or R9 295X2 for AMD. A slight upgrade ain't worth it.
A possibility is also to get a liquid cooling system for you CPU and clocking it up a bit. Corsair have a few for a nice price (I had a H70 on my AMD hexacore with good result, updated to Intel since though) and that you could re-use as well for your next build. If you havn't clocked up before you should have someone competent to help you with that since you can mess things up pretty badly if you don't know what you are doing.
Anything that cost more then a cheap ram upgrade should be something good enough for your next machine. I think you can well wait with changing the motherboard and CPU, and you might want to consider getting something with DDR4 when the time comes but I would still wait another year.
Also consider that generation to generation cpu performance has greatly decreased. Not purchasing the latest generation cpu will not provide a big performance hit.
The last few generations of amd cpus have been disappointing.
Wait till you can afford a decent upgrade and buy then.
The games where your CPU will struggle are unoptimised, Early Access games.
Others make a good point about preemptive upgrades. If you can play what you want to play, don't upgrade. Personally, I only upgrade when I can't play something. I needed the GTX 970 to play modded Skyrim. I recently needed a CPU upgrade for VR. I will need a GTX 1080 to play in 4K. If you are not hitting a roadblock like that, there is no reason to upgrade really.
Most MMOs in the works also don't look particularly demanding.
It sounds like a new GPU is something nice to have, not something needed.
I'd say it depends on your budget. You may get a better deal on the GPU in 2 years, or a new one will come around.
If the GPU upgrade is something that would throw off your budget, might not be worth it. If you have the money to spend, now is not a bad time to do so - the technology is fresh, so you will be getting decent mileage from the new cards.
Also consider what you'll actually get with the upgrade. You can probably already run all MOBAs at highest quality, 1080p. Similar story with MMOs. The GPU would let you do 2K or 4K - that would also need a new monitor if you don't have one. Upgrading to 2K or 4K shouldn't bottleneck you in terms of CPU - it will mainly stress the GPU.
If you went for something like the GTX 1070, yes your CPU would clearly be the bottleneck. But the large majority of games will not struggle with the CPU you have, hence allowing you to turn up the details or resolution.
To complicate things, MMOs and MOBAs are not great with 4K support. League of Legends has terrible UI issues. GW2 took a lot of UI tweaking to get it playable on 4K. Something to consider as well.
If a new GPU will allow me to play most newer MMO/Moba's in 4k on ultra settings I'll be all for going that route instead of a whole new rig.
@Recore Sorry not a fan of consoles. Prefer PC
@Quizzical might know the answer to that?
I have the impression it does not matter. As long as you have a decent CPU, comparable to what you have, any additional CPU upgrade should not make a difference. The demand in FPS / resolution performance is almost entirely driven by the GPU after a certain point.
Have a look here:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/i7emjogos-h01.gif
They test a very poor CPU against a top end CPU, getting exactly the same FPS on Battlefield 4.
In other words, you should see tremendous improvement in performance with upgrading only a GPU. I upgrade my parts one by one, with about 6-12 months in between each part. Works like a charm that way. As a by product, I'm always excited about some new addition to the computer.
The cases where I personally found CPU does matter was:
- Certain VR games. Upgrading a CPU increased performance dramatically. I saw little to no increase in performance on non-VR games.
- Unoptimised Early Access games - some of the games are simply poorly coded. This ussualy improves with patches. Having a better CPU can compensate for poor coding in some cases.
- Research. Part of my job is running heavy analysis on data from my home PC. The new CPU increased processing speed there.
In other words, for regular gaming, even at 4K, CPU should not matter beyond a certain threshold. I believe your current setup meets the threshold comfortably.What PSU do you have btw? That matters a lot, it must be able to run the new card or you might as well build a new computer anyways.
@laxie - Thank you for posting that link. I'm not trying to play any of those games so I'm thinking I should be alright with the same CPU but with a better GPU.
@Loke666 I currently have a 550 PSU at the moment. I don't mind buying another PSU if need be. I've gone that route of asking her if she just wanted mine but she said she's had hand me downs all her life so she's wanting to actually have a brand new computer from scratch.
Your current rig not being good enough anymore doesn't necessarily mean "game won't run". It could mean "game runs well on medium, but not high, and you want to play it on high" or "game runs at 30 frames per second at the settings you like and you want 60". But if you can get frame rates you like (say, matching the monitor refresh rate) at the settings you want in all games you play, there's not much to be gained from an upgrade.
If you run into a particular game that is a problem, you can see whether you're CPU or GPU bottlenecked in that particular game. Anti-aliasing is almost pure GPU load, so if the difference between anti-aliasing off and turned way up high makes no difference in your frame rates, you're probably looking at a CPU issue, or perhaps running out of memory. If tweaking anti-aliasing makes a huge difference in your frame rates, you're looking at a GPU bottleneck.
If you don't already have at least 8 GB of system memory, you might want to upgrade that. And if you don't already have an SSD, they're very nice to have. But other than that, I'd probably think more about finding a $1000+ budget and then replacing your computer than upgrading it unless you found a very specific bottleneck in a particular game that you want to fix. At some point, an upgrade involves replacing enough components that you might as well just get a new one and leave the old computer functional. The old computer should still be worth something.
Also, if it comes time to upgrade the CPU, that's time to replace the computer. A new CPU that is a worthwhile upgrade would necessitate a new processor socket, which means a new motherboard, which takes a different memory standard, so you'd need new memory, too. That probably also means you'd need a new OS license. Storage and the power supply would be old enough that you might as well replace them on general principle while you're replacing other things, at which point, you've replaced a majority of the computer and might as well just get a new one.
And - as Quizzical mentions above - 8Gb if you haven't already.
Beyond that doesn't sound like there is any need to bother. (Even the SSD and 8Gb would just be "nice upgrades" if you don't already have them from what you have said.)
So I did. No other reason than I wanted to, and had the money to do so. My old computer is still sitting in a closet - I'm tempted to get it out, dust it off, put on air cooled heat sinks (it was a custom water loop rig) and set it up for something or another, but I haven't done any of that.
No regrets about that. My "New" computer has been running almost 2 years now. And I continue to run everything with no issues. Ironically, that's mostly the same software I was running on the old rig with no issues, but the new rig is a lot quieter and smaller, puts off a lot less heat, and I have more desk space now.
I'm happy with it.
Ultimately, that's all that really matters.