Thread: Upgrade Help

  1. #1
    Blademaster
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    Upgrade Help

    I'm looking to upgrade a few things in my current PC without buying a whole new rig. My brother built this PC for me about four years ago, but sadly he is no longer with us and I'm not so good with these things.

    What's currently inside:

    Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB Hard Drive - 7200, 16MB, SATA-300, OEM
    Power Supply: ThermalTake / PurePower W0100RU / 500-Watt / ATX 2.0 / 120mm Fan / 20/24-Pin / SATA-Ready / PCI-E Ready
    Motherboard: EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard CPU Bundle - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 Processor 2.66GHz OEM
    Video Card: XFX GeForce 9800 GTX + Video Card - 512MB DDR3, PCI Express 2.0, SLI Ready, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV, VGA Support
    RAM: 8 gigs

    Honestly, it does what I need it to with no issue at all. I can run WoW on ultra without my FPS dropping below 30. I have a birthday coming up in a few days, and figured this would be a good time to upgrade a little bit. I'm only looking to replace one or two things. Any help is GREATLY appreciated. Thank you!

  2. #2
    Well without building a whole new rig, the best upgrade for you would be a video card. You have an older card. Some generations behind.

    Also if you do decide to eventually get a new mb and cpu, i'd go for the i5 3570k and socket 1155. Much faster than that q6700 even though they both have 4cores.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by c0rnel View Post
    Well without building a whole new rig, the best upgrade for you would be a video card. You have an older card. Some generations behind.

    Also if you do decide to eventually get a new mb and cpu, i'd go for the i5 3570k and socket 1155. Much faster than that q6700 even though they both have 4cores.
    Thank you so much for your reply. Could you recommend a few video cards that would work in my rig?

  4. #4
    Most cards will work but I recommend, depending on your budget a Nvidia GTX 660 ti. If that's too much a 560 ti/570 work too.

    Also if you plan on upgrading to a new motherboard and cpu wait until around April-ish for the Haswell intel chips.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by c0rnel View Post
    Most cards will work but I recommend, depending on your budget a Nvidia GTX 660 ti. If that's too much a 560 ti/570 work too.

    Also if you plan on upgrading to a new motherboard and cpu wait until around April-ish for the Haswell intel chips.
    Agreed with c0rnel. CPU shouldn't really be a consideration as you are close to the top end of that socket so to upgrade CPU you will upgrade mobo and then you would definitely want to upgrade GPU since the 9800 would be a serious bottleneck.

    If you want to carry over your GPU to your new build I would encourage a 670 if you are serious into gaming as it uses 256bit RAM instead of 192bit that the 660 series uses which just allows the VRAM of the card to work better.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by c0rnel View Post
    Most cards will work but I recommend, depending on your budget a Nvidia GTX 660 ti. If that's too much a 560 ti/570 work too.

    Also if you plan on upgrading to a new motherboard and cpu wait until around April-ish for the Haswell intel chips.
    As far as ive read Haswell is not going to be the performance release you think it is. Seemingly it is more similar to an A-10 from amd meaning its not going to be as swift as a ivy w/ a gpu but it will probably work nicely for budget builds. Yea everything I find on haswell says mobile device and all in one RND all over it. Low power consumption strong on die gpu, its not going to be performance segment at all.
    Last edited by Milkshake86; 2012-11-14 at 03:27 AM.

  7. #7
    Blademaster
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    Quote Originally Posted by c0rnel View Post
    Most cards will work but I recommend, depending on your budget a Nvidia GTX 660 ti. If that's too much a 560 ti/570 work too.

    Also if you plan on upgrading to a new motherboard and cpu wait until around April-ish for the Haswell intel chips.
    I think I'm going to go with the Nvidia GTX 660 ti for now. When I search around for it on Newegg / Tigerdirect I seem to get A LOT of results. Again, I'm not so good with these things. Any chance you can link something specific? Thanks again for the replies and your time.

  8. #8
    I am Murloc! Xuvial's Avatar
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    Intel Q6700 + GTX660 Ti, talk about super unbalanced i.e. your CPU is going to bottleneck performance like squeezing a hippo into a pickle jar :P

    But I suppose it's being recommended to you for futureproofing purposes, which is good. At least you can be assured your GPU is going to be awesome when you make your next CPU+Mobo+RAM upgrade (which I hope is soon)

    Quote Originally Posted by Comeiro View Post
    I think I'm going to go with the Nvidia GTX 660 ti for now. When I search around for it on Newegg / Tigerdirect I seem to get A LOT of results. Again, I'm not so good with these things. Any chance you can link something specific? Thanks again for the replies and your time.
    Of course, there are TONS of variants of each card so I can imagine deciding which one to get would be a bit harrowing :P

    Here are the 660 Ti models you should go for, take whichever, both are excellent:
    Asus GTX660 Ti Direct CUII
    Gigabyte GTX660 Ti Windforce

    You can find the same models on TigerDirect if you want, same prices. I personally own the Asus one and it overclocks like a beast while still running dead silent, I suspect the Gigabyte one will be similar.
    Last edited by Xuvial; 2012-11-14 at 08:34 AM.
    WoW Character: Wintel - Frostmourne (OCE)
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  9. #9
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    Just ordered the Asus! Xuvial - thank you for finishing the process for me. I appreciate everyone's help. I'll be back when I upgrade the rest!

  10. #10
    What assurance does the 660 ti have for future proofing? If you were future proofing you wouldnt pick up a strangled memory bus 660 Ti. It may perform nicely but for the price and add ontop that it will have issues with the future monitors, with the korean market effecting western sales were slowly but surely seeing 2560x1440 monitors going down in price, and w/ higher resolutions on the way 660 Ti is just not future proofed at all.

  11. #11
    I am Murloc! Xuvial's Avatar
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    Oh please strangled memory bus or not, benchmarks are what matter, and in benches the 660 Ti holds a very solid ground.

    In Black Ops 2 bench it scored higher framerates than a 7970 (nVidia favored etc etc, but there you go).
    WoW Character: Wintel - Frostmourne (OCE)
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  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Milkshake86 View Post
    What assurance does the 660 ti have for future proofing? If you were future proofing you wouldnt pick up a strangled memory bus 660 Ti. It may perform nicely but for the price and add ontop that it will have issues with the future monitors, with the korean market effecting western sales were slowly but surely seeing 2560x1440 monitors going down in price, and w/ higher resolutions on the way 660 Ti is just not future proofed at all.
    not like gaming on 1440p will become the norm anytime soon (within 5 years would be really really soon already), card runs like a charm and really why do people have an issue with that membus? (it gets the job done more then fine)

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Milkshake86 View Post
    What assurance does the 660 ti have for future proofing? If you were future proofing you wouldnt pick up a strangled memory bus 660 Ti. It may perform nicely but for the price and add ontop that it will have issues with the future monitors, with the korean market effecting western sales were slowly but surely seeing 2560x1440 monitors going down in price, and w/ higher resolutions on the way 660 Ti is just not future proofed at all.
    I think they're talking about short term 'future proofing', aka 1 generation. The OP is probably going to get a new CPU in 1-2 years.

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