PC upgrade advice

[Mark Okuda]

Hello,

I'm looking to upgrade parts of my PC and I'm looking for some advice and maybe some questions answered if possible.

There is no room in upgrading the CPU or MOBO, so I'm focusing on things that i can upgrade.

What I would like to accomplish is to play WoW, SW:TOR, BF3, and Skyrim while trying to keep it from being choppy. I liek tor un settings on high.

Current setup:

Intel core 2 Duo 2.4ghx oc to 2.63 on an ASUS P5N-E sli mobo with 2x 1GB Kingston DDR2 800MHz ram
GPU: GeForce GTX 260
Antec 900 Case
Win XP SP3
WD SATA 1TB HDD

Now I already plan to upgrade to Windows 7 which means a clean install so I would like advice on SSD's and will they improve gameplay or to just stick with the 1TB HDD and noticing while reading up on SSD's they use SATA 3 and they are also 2.5 and how would they fit in a 3.5 HDD cage that the Antec 900 has.

Specs on my MOBO says Supported max memory is 8GB of DDR2 800mhz ram I have dual channel architecture and there are four ram slots so i'm up for advice on Ram.

I'm pretty settled on the GeForce GTX 560 Ti for upgrading the GPU.

So I have priced currently win 7 at $100, 560ti at $270 and possible ram in the range of $50. wiggle room for the SSD if the boost in performance is worth it.

Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Xuvial]

Your proposed upgrades will make a difference, but you already know that your CPU will become even more of a significant bottleneck since almost all of your games are very demanding on the CPU and a C2Duo is going to struggle.

[Mark Okuda]

so would this help with the bottleneck - Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66GHz it is the same socket type, LGA775, as my current CPU.

[Xuvial]

The difference isn't a noticeable one, Q8400 is still an old generation CPU.

[worsthitmanNa]

An ssd will improve load times but no it does nothing for fps. Even if it did give 1-2 fps putting that money into a graphics card would be a far better option.

[Mizzeeh]

Your proposed upgrades will make a difference, but you already know that your CPU will become even more of a significant bottleneck since almost all of your games are very demanding on the CPU and a C2Duo is going to struggle.

BF3 barely touches your CPU and Skyrim's not that bad on it. Regardless, he is correct, that GPU will do very little for you in those games with your current CPU.

Edit: I'd just save some money and buy a full set in a couple of months. And you definitely don't want W7 until you're sure you're upgrading your RAM.

[OhpUldum]

Hello,

I'm looking to upgrade parts of my PC and I'm looking for some advice and maybe some questions answered if possible.

There is no room in upgrading the CPU or MOBO, so I'm focusing on things that i can upgrade.

What I would like to accomplish is to play WoW, SW:TOR, BF3, and Skyrim while trying to keep it from being choppy. I liek tor un settings on high.

You want to be able to play on high settings yet you rule out changing the motherboard / cpu which would make the largest difference at this point for those games.

[worsthitmanNa]

No Bf3 runs on dual cores skyrim is a different story thou toms hardware maxed out bf3 on an i3(dual core). the difference between an i3 and and i7 was 5fps with a 200$ difference. That dual core is fine for both tbh keep your current ram save that $50 for when you upgrade to a ddr3 motherboard. Or at the very least get 3gb no higher. Try to get around $450 saved up get an i5 2400k and 4-8gb of ddr3 when you can.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rk,3074-9.html Dual core do bottleneck but by 20 fps. At lower resolutions the bottleneck would be smaller. What res are you playing at?

[vesseblah]

No Bf3 runs on dual cores skyrim is a different story thou toms hardware maxed out bf3 on an i3(dual core).

Nice try but irrelevant. OP is using C2D from about five years ago, which is totally different from Sandy Bridge dualcores mentioned in the THG page you linked. C2D dualcore runs at about half speed compared to i3-2100.

[worsthitmanNa]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-MHchLBnJY e4300 playing battlefield 3 wish he would have posted res thou. Plus depending on the resolution the op playing at we might be able to get him a gpu and a cpu upgrade tbh he just need to tell us.