Looking to upgrade, help needed!

[Krothar]

This is my current computer build, I've had it a little over 3 years and its served me fairly well thus far, however it is starting to get old, and struggles a little with newer games, Watch Dogs 2 really was the "highlight" point.

Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case
Corsair 750 Watt Builder Series CX 750 Modular Power Supply
Samsung 24x SH-224DB DVD-RW SATA OEM
Kingston 60GB SSDNow V300 SATA3 2.5" 7MM solid state drive
Seagate 2TB Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 7200RPM Hard Drive
GeForce GTX 770 1111MHz 2GB PCI-E 3.0 HDMI SuperClocked
CNPS10X Performa Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler
Z87-K, Intel Core i5-4670K
8GB Vengeance

I'm basically wondering if I could straight upgrade my Graphics Card and get away with it (Hoping at least a 1060) or would my CPU/Motherboard also need replacing?

Thanks in advance!

[Lathais]

This is my current computer build, I've had it a little over 3 years and its served me fairly well thus far, however it is starting to get old, and struggles a little with newer games, Watch Dogs 2 really was the "highlight" point.

Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case
Corsair 750 Watt Builder Series CX 750 Modular Power Supply
Samsung 24x SH-224DB DVD-RW SATA OEM
Kingston 60GB SSDNow V300 SATA3 2.5" 7MM solid state drive
Seagate 2TB Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 7200RPM Hard Drive
GeForce GTX 770 1111MHz 2GB PCI-E 3.0 HDMI SuperClocked
CNPS10X Performa Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler
Z87-K, Intel Core i5-4670K
8GB Vengeance

I'm basically wondering if I could straight upgrade my Graphics Card and get away with it (Hoping at least a 1060) or would my CPU/Motherboard also need replacing?

Thanks in advance!

Just GPU would be fine. No major advancements in CPUs for quite some time. So much so that even people with 2500ks are not really upgrading as, for gaming at least, you don't see much in the way of performance increases.

[Krothar]

Thats great news! Means I can afford to do it sooner haha

[PhantasmagoriaX]

the other thing you should consider is buying a little bit more ram.

[Lathais]

the other thing you should consider is buying a little bit more ram.

Why? Unless you are doing a massive amount of multi-tasking, 8GB is still really more than enough. I understand when doing a completely new build getting 16GB, because you are doing a whole new build anyway and it may be that more than 8GB becomes needed in the future, so you already have it. In reality though, I don't see 8GB not being enough anytime in the near future. You really only need more RAM if you are running out of RAM, and even then, maybe not due to the way some programs use RAM. Some programs will use more RAM if you have it just in case or they will leave things in RAM that they loaded once and not get rid of it until they need room for something else. This can make it look like you are using more RAM than you really are.

[Sturmbringe]

Why? Unless you are doing a massive amount of multi-tasking, 8GB is still really more than enough. I understand when doing a completely new build getting 16GB, because you are doing a whole new build anyway and it may be that more than 8GB becomes needed in the future, so you already have it. In reality though, I don't see 8GB not being enough anytime in the near future. You really only need more RAM if you are running out of RAM, and even then, maybe not due to the way some programs use RAM. Some programs will use more RAM if you have it just in case or they will leave things in RAM that they loaded once and not get rid of it until they need room for something else. This can make it look like you are using more RAM than you really are.

Two things.

1. 16GB RAM allows one to switch off Virtual Memory thus improving performance.

2. Once you switch off Virtual Memory, one finds that one needs more than 8 GB in certain games such as GTAV and other high-end new titles.

P.S.: Do not even try to argue with me that switching off VM does not increase performance.

[Lathais]

Two things.

1. 16GB RAM allows one to switch off Virtual Memory thus improving performance.

2. Once you switch off Virtual Memory, one finds that one needs more than 8 GB in certain games such as GTAV and other high-end new titles.

P.S.: Do not even try to argue with me that switching off VM does not increase performance.

Oh, no argument there that turning off virtual memory will increase performance, if it is being used. However, even turning VM off, playing the game with 8GB RAM, and unless I have been playing for hours and hours on end, the game is only using 4-6 GB on my system. The longer you play, the more it uses, because of what I was describing. Yeah, if you have more RAM, it will eventually use it, because it loads things in to RAM and then just leaves them there. The longer you play, the more stuff builds up stored in RAM. If you had less RAM, it would dump the stuff it doesn't need instead of leaving it sit there. Going from 8GB to 16GB will not make a difference in the performance of the game though. Hell, the game makers themselves say recommended 8GB, and we all know they pad these numbers.

So:

1. You can turn VM off no matter how much RAM you have. There is not requirement to have 16GB or more. You can have 4 and turn it off if you want.

2. Once you switch off Virtual Memory, one finds that games will make use of the RAM, but it does not really need it. It's just saving stuff there so it doesn't have to load it again if you do happen to need it again. If you had less RAM, it would just dump stuff more often and then have to reload it.

[chazus]

Dunno if you play it, but I was playing D3 last night and the 64bit client uses a LOT Of ram. I have 16gb, and D3 was using 6.5gb. If that's normal (which it may not be with the new client), I wouldn't say 8gb is 'fine' anymore,even for just games.

[Lathais]

Dunno if you play it, but I was playing D3 last night and the 64bit client uses a LOT Of ram. I have 16gb, and D3 was using 6.5gb. If that's normal (which it may not be with the new client), I wouldn't say 8gb is 'fine' anymore,even for just games.

1) 6.5 GB is still less than 8GB.

2) That's how much it was using, but how much of that did it really need to be using and how much was it using just because you had it available? If you had less RAM, would it have just dumped more stuff more often and had to pre-cache more stuff more often and have no noticeable affect on performance. Because that has been my experience. My friend and I have nearly identical systems, but he has 16GB RAM and I have 8GB. We run things pretty identically, difference being, his system uses more RAM, simply because it has more RAM to use. No affect on performance though. We use identical settings and get identical FPS results in multiple games.

[Sorshen]

CPU/MB are fine. As other said, you could get an extra 8gb of ram. A GTX 1060 would future-proof your system.
If you're really out to spend some money, you could look for a nice 144hz/gsync monitor.

[moremana]

You should never disable your pagefile (VM) Yes you can do it, but you shouldn't and no it does not speed up your system, it has far more uses than just storing files your working on.

This theory has been debunked many times already.