Desktop Computers

J

Jais

Trakanon Raider
1,895
532
lanx_sl said:
first, why do you want to upgrade, you never really stated a reason other than playing games, your pc will play modern games in low res with low textures just fine.
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Thanks for the responses so far.

I had a Radeon HD 4850 for some time and the on board fan died and I started getting crashes caused by crazy high gpu temps (talking 212F). I'd been toying with the idea of upgrading for sometime and all those crashes really pushed upgrading to the forefront. I'm usually one to spend a great deal of time researching stuff before I buy it but the other day I said "fuck it", went to Best Buy and bought the GeForce GT 740 and 4 additional gigs of ram (like $180 total). It certainly fixed my issue but now I'm toying with the idea of not just scraping by on game performance. I mainly play Planetside 2 these days, if that helps.
 
J

Jais

Trakanon Raider
1,895
532
lanx_sl said:
honestly you could just go and spend 200bucks on a vid card and you'd be ready to go. (you "might" need a better power supply)
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What would my options be in that price range for a graphics card? Think my port is a PCI-E 2.0 x16 or some such. Upgrading power supply seems cheap enough if needs be.
 
Lanx

Lanx

<Prior Amod>
61,012
134,452
the radeon r9 280 is pretty much a good bang for the buck. to put it relationally for you, think of the r9 280 as a radeon HD 9850, they range like 190 to 220, you could also just get a 270, they have more "deals" and it could be as drastic as a 50$ difference. (it'd be like a 4750)

you "might" have to upgrade your ps, as stated i don't know if you'll have the powerpins necessary, most modern vid cards use either a 8pin and 6pin power connection or 2 6pins, usually on a 450w ps, i wouldn't bet money you'd have an 8pin nor would i kinda really wanna put a card in there (since 450w is really kinda budget, even back then)

a good ps, like a corsair in the 650+ range would run you a good 90bucks. (maybe spend an extra 10 or 20bucks and a 800w would last you years, if you don't go crazy and want super sli video card shit)

just to give you and estimate of what you're looking at.
 
Quaid

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,558
7,866
Just so you know, Planetside 2 is going to be murder on that CPU, and it's probably gonna bottleneck a R9 280 gpu. I'm no expert, but I don't think you'll get all your money's worth if you only upgrade your GPU. If you upgrade to a low end i5 CPU you'll probably be good to go in that department for ~5 years. There's no way your x4 810 will last that long.

Maybe someone with more knowledge can chime in.
 
ShakyJake

ShakyJake

<Donor>
7,660
19,311
Yeah, the AMD Phenom II 810 is going to be a bottleneck for any new video card. I had a Phenom II 965 and paired it up with a new (at the time) Radeon 6870. I was playing RIFT and got a marginal boost in performance over the 4850 I had been running. However, upgrading to an Intel i5-2500k made an incredible difference. It was like night and day.

I say keep your RAM but get a new CPU, mobo, and video card. Power supply too.
 
Quaid

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,558
7,866
ShakyJake_sl said:
Yeah, the AMD Phenom II 810 is going to be a bottleneck for any new video card. I had a Phenom II 965 and paired it up with a new (at the time) Radeon 6870. I was playing RIFT and got a marginal boost in performance over the 4850 I had been running. However, upgrading to an Intel i5-2500k made an incredible difference. It was like night and day.

I say keep your RAM but get a new CPU, mobo, and video card. Power supply too.
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If he's having heat problems his case/air flow is probably garbage, too.
 
J

Jais

Trakanon Raider
1,895
532
Quaid_sl said:
If he's having heat problems his case/air flow is probably garbage, too.
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My heat issues were certainly due to my gpu fan no longer working. New gpu has cured that issue, now I've got a taste of the good life I'm wondering how far I can upgrade current computer.
 
Quaid

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,558
7,866
Jais_sl said:
My heat issues were certainly due to my gpu fan no longer working. New gpu has cured that issue, now I've got a taste of the good life I'm wondering how far I can upgrade current computer.
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What monitor are you using?
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
5 generations is about right before they have to switch up numbering systems. historically speaking. AMD tends to do the same. Both companies should really just go with some sort of numbering system that is year-based. Just be like car manufacturers. "Oh, here is my 2014 Nvidia GTX". Of course then you'd probably just end up with some sort of crazy arbitrary letter-based identification system for the various models within each generation, 2014 GT, 2014 GTX, 2014 TI, 2014 GLS, etc. It would still be confusing as hell probably.
 
Jysin

Jysin

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
6,278
4,035
I think this was expected. Not many games will ever utilize that many cores effectively (not anytime soon, anyway). The raw clock speed is having a greater effect, so the good old quad processor 4790k at a base clock of 4GHz is performing better than these new E chips (hex at 3.3 / 3.5GHz and octo at a measly 3GHz).

It doesn't seem like DDR4 is adding anything either.

Massive editing and video conversion seems to be the only place you would actually see real world gains with these new chips. As a gamer, you are better off investing that money into a better graphics card.
 
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