[mr.WHO]

Hello - after 4 years of good service my PC demands an upgrade when playing Planetside 2 beta:

Power:  Be-quiet Straight Power E5-700W OEM
Procesor: Intel Core2 Duo E7200,  2,53GHz  (S775) BOX
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R
RAM:  OCZ Technology 2x 2GB DDR2 1066MHz Reaper EPP CL5 Heatpipe
Graphic card: GeForce GTX 260 Gigabyte 896MB  (PCI-E)
Hard Drive: Seagate 320 GB Barracuda  7200.11  (16Mb, Sarial ATA II)
6x (****load of fans) Revoltec Dark Blue 120 mm OEM
(one more fan) CoolerMaster Centurion 590 Black bulk

Personally I consider two things:
- (priority) graphic card replacement - current one is waaay to lound (in unpleasant way) under stress (and I read that it's normal for that model).
- if I'll have some cash left - adding SDD drive like Intel SSD 330 Series 120 GB or 180 GB

My estimated cash is between 500 and 700 EUR.

Please tell me what component in my PC is a bottleneck and what I can replace add in cheap way to get optimum gain for games.

Thanks.

[SpardaSon21]

My semi-educated eye says you need a new CPU as two 2.53 Ghz cores won't cut it, and your video card is pretty bad by modern standards, too.  Another 2-4 Gb of RAM would serve you really well, too.  An HDD upgrade is recommended but not necessary.  Someone more experienced than me can tell you exactly what you need to buy, but I'd say get a better video card, then CPU, then RAM.  Unless you like having to deal with programs spread across multiple drives, I'd stay away from an SSD.  They wear out quickly when written to, so you couldn't store things you would remove and replace like video games, especially since they're pretty small compared to the 1TB+ HDDs you can buy these days, so it would be primarily your OS.

[Mongoose]

They wear out quickly when written to, so you couldn't store things you would remove and replace like video games, especially since they're pretty small compared to the 1TB+ HDDs you can buy these days, so it would be primarily your OS.

That's actually something of a myth, according to the knowledgeable people I've seen write on the subject.  While the individual memory cells of an SSD do have a limited program/erase lifetime, which from what I've seen is around 3000 cycles for modern models, these modern drives also automatically spread out writes to keep wear level, and they even have extra inaccessible space that's used in the process of file creation and deletion.  Someone I know who's familiar with them checked their drive toolbox to calculate how long the drive would take for the memory cells to reach that limit, and he came up with a value of about 275 years of average use.  So it really shouldn't be an issue when making purchasing decisions.

(More info here, for the interested.)

[SpardaSon21]

Okay.  They're still tiny as heck compared to HDD's and if I recall correctly comparable in price, and I don't see faster load and boot speeds worth the loss of capacity.

[Klaustrophobia]

SSD's are just not worth the money.  faster load times and copy times if you frequently move large files around on/between your drives is just not worth the nearly tenfold increase in cost.  you don't really NEED more ram, 4GB is a pretty decent amount.  RAM is generally a case of you either have enough or you don't, there isn't a lot to be gained adding more if you aren't having problems by not having enough right now (such as load hitching in games or your computer choking under heavy multi-tasking).  in any case, you should for SURE upgrade your base platform to the current standards before you flush money away on more DDR2.  you're kinda at the point where the easiest thing to do would be an almost all-new build.  you can re-use the case and drives if you so choose, maybe even the PSU.  700w sounds pretty substantial, but the actual quality might be ****.  i've never heard of the brand, and the 'OEM' in the name is worrying.  however, if you really want to do this incrementally, about the only performance component you can upgrade now and carry on with future upgrades is the vid card.  a new CPU without changing your MOBO you won't be able to carry forward, same with RAM.  if you DO want to upgrade that, you'll need all three at once. 

[Bob-san]

I'd probably grab an EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW LE and save the rest of your money for your next upgrade. I've personally been looking at a Xeon E3-1230 V2 (Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz [3.7GHz turbo] quad-core with HyperThreading) which retails around $240 here. About $150-200 worth of motherboard (Z77) and RAM (a 2x4GB kit) and I'd personally be calling it a day.

You may want to look at a larger hard drive too, depending on your space requirements. You can get 3TB drives for $150. And I realize I'm quoting everything in USDs: you should be able to find them for the same prices in Euros.

[Klaustrophobia]

i wouldn't recommend a 3TB drive.  compatibility is wonky and hit-and-miss above 2TB.  by the time you actually NEED 3TB, it will probably work right.  not to mention it will be cheaper.

[Nuke]

1tb is overkill for me, i may have 400 gigs of data that i care about total. a good formula is to take the amount of space you need for the stuff you currently have, and double it. and then add about a quarter of that for the os (for each if you dual boot). which with 400gb of data that is exactly 1gb. then you look at hard drives and try to find a sweet spot in the gb to price ratio that is close to where you want it. sometimes drives of a certain capacity are more expensive than of another capacity, when you look at the current price per gb they need to be. and going up or down in size slightly saves you some cash.

i personally would rather go for a really fast but not all that big drive for your os, like an ssd or a 10k rpm drive. and then a big bulk storage drive for data. but what i ultimately end up doing is just get one drive, and partition it about 20/80 with the os partition being the 20 and the data partition being the 80, and then put in one of my older drives as a backup drive. reguardless do pay attention to write speed, cache size and random access times. to make sure that $5 off isnt coming out of your specs.

and for 500-700 euros you could get a pretty good machine. i built this machine last year for 800 usd (~625 euros). and its way better than the specs you list. thats an i5, 8gb ram, and a geforce 560. mind you that was a year ago. you should be able to get an i7, 12 gigs and a much nicer video card with that money (im just assuming, i havent actually loooked into it because im not planning to build a computer this year). just build a new comp. thats my 2 cents.

[Fury]

I got new computer parts last Tuesday and those included Intel 330 180GB SSD. 180GB capacity is enough for OS, apps and some most commonly played games. If C:\Games is your main games install folder and you want to move a game to HDD, it's as easy as moving the game's folder to D:\Games and then using mklink command to create a junction point from C:\Games\TheGame to D:\Games\TheGame. Since it's junction point, as far as anything's concerned, it's still installed in C:\Games\TheGame but all data is actually in D:\Games\TheGame.

Price of the 330 series is affordable for an SSD, and being Intel I expect it to last. So far the 330 has been well worth the price premium over an HDD.


You should look for Core 2 Quad CPU's such as Q9650 and Q9660, the problem is actually finding those today since socket 775 was phased out long time ago. If you're out of luck, then you need to replace motherboard and RAM too. And yeah. new video card is a no-brainer. I'd look into Geforce 6 series and Radeon 7 series. I think GeForce 660 (non-Ti) should have some retail availability later this year, which could be a good buy. 660 Ti is a bit too expensive considering how short lifetime video cards tend to have. I'd say Radeon 7850 is about most expensive you should get, because you end up replacing it too probably sooner than any other component. But you should probably aim for a GPU that has 1-2 GB video RAM, the closer to 2GB the better, but over 2GB is overkill right now.

GeForce 560 (both Ti and non-Ti) would offer very good performance for the price right about now and be on the ball with your budget. Or Radeon 6870 if you can still find them.

You'd probably have best luck looking for used parts in auction websites or something.

I'd suggest bumping RAM to 8GB if you can afford it. Extra RAM becomes useful as a cache if you have 64-bit Vista or 7. Don't bother if you're running XP or 32-bit Vista/7.

[Nuke]

i know there are some games on my d drive i havent installed since the 90s. they run no matter how many times i thump the os partition. newer games wont work like this so i just do the default instal for those. didnt know about mklink, im going to start using that now. especially now that operating systems are getting really anal about where you put things.

[BloodEagle]

you don't really NEED more ram, 4GB is a pretty decent amount.  RAM is generally a case of you either have enough or you don't, there isn't a lot to be gained adding more if you aren't having problems by not having enough right now (such as load hitching in games or your computer choking under heavy multi-tasking).

I'd seriously advise bumping up to 8GB (I'm running 4GB) for Windows 7, esp. if you want this to be a gaming computer.  I visibly notice areas in games that I wouldn't if I had gone for the extra ram.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Hello - after 4 years of good service my PC demands an upgrade when playing Planetside 2 beta:

Power:  Be-quiet Straight Power E5-700W OEM
Procesor: Intel Core2 Duo E7200,  2,53GHz  (S775) BOX
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R
RAM:  OCZ Technology 2x 2GB DDR2 1066MHz Reaper EPP CL5 Heatpipe
Graphic card: GeForce GTX 260 Gigabyte 896MB  (PCI-E)
Hard Drive: Seagate 320 GB Barracuda  7200.11  (16Mb, Sarial ATA II)
6x (****load of fans) Revoltec Dark Blue 120 mm OEM
(one more fan) CoolerMaster Centurion 590 Black bulk

Personally I consider two things:
- (priority) graphic card replacement - current one is waaay to lound (in unpleasant way) under stress (and I read that it's normal for that model).
- if I'll have some cash left - adding SDD drive like Intel SSD 330 Series 120 GB or 180 GB

My estimated cash is between 500 and 700 EUR.

Please tell me what component in my PC is a bottleneck and what I can replace add in cheap way to get optimum gain for games.

Thanks.

For that much money, and due to the fact that your CPU is getting to the point where it should probably be replaced, you'd really be better off building a whole new system. A couple of months ago I put together one a bit like this:

Intel i5-2500K
Biostar TZ77B Motherboard
8GB G.skill DDR3 2133 MHz RAM
Radeon HD6850
120GB OCZ Agility III SSHD
1TB WD Caviar Black HDD
Corsair H60 water cooler

Plus the case and fans of course, for about $860 (about 675 EUR at current rates IIRC).

[Nuke]

the more i think about it the upgrade mentality is way more costly than a new computer. i remember back when a modest computer cost $2000 or more. back then it made sense to upgrade, dropping a hundred bucks on something could give you a huge performance boost. nowadays you can build an entire computer for a few hundred bucks, and those $100+ upgrades stop making sense. only time they do is when you have a $3000+ performance rig, and even then its kinda iffy. but if your into that kind of thing you are probibly the kind of person who will spend $500 bucks to get another 5 fps in *insert high performance game title here*. so yea my formula from now on is a modest (~$800) rig every 2-3 years.

[zookeeper]

Although you could upgrade your cpu and add some more memory, it'd probably be a relatively expensive thing to do. The higher-tier s775 cpu's are quite costly unless you can find a really good deal on a used one, and DDR2 (especially if you want more 1066Mhz sticks rather than dropping down to 800Mhz) is really expensive too compared to DDR3 (again, unless you can find a particularly good deal).

I have a s775 Q9450 myself and it's really nice, but I only have it because I got a very good deal on the whole cpu+mobo+ram combo. If I needed to build a new machine right now (and had the cash), I'd probably go for whatever is the cheapest s1155 quad-core cpu and 8gb of 1600Mhz DDR3. And you'd definitely be able to find a very good mobo for something like 70-90EUR.

[Mongoose]

the more i think about it the upgrade mentality is way more costly than a new computer. i remember back when a modest computer cost $2000 or more. back then it made sense to upgrade, dropping a hundred bucks on something could give you a huge performance boost. nowadays you can build an entire computer for a few hundred bucks, and those $100+ upgrades stop making sense. only time they do is when you have a $3000+ performance rig, and even then its kinda iffy. but if your into that kind of thing you are probibly the kind of person who will spend $500 bucks to get another 5 fps in *insert high performance game title here*. so yea my formula from now on is a modest (~$800) rig every 2-3 years.

Yeah, it's kind of astonishing just how competent a lower-end PC is now when compared to its equivalent five or six years ago.  You can get so much more bang for your buck.

[Nuke]

i tried the whole performance rig thing with my previous rig. it turned out to be a maintenance hog. frequent breakdowns, expensive fixes. constant tweaking. also its performance increase was somewhat disappointing. it performed well, but not as well as i expected. you figure its 3x more expensive is should get 3x as much performance. not so, you might get 25% to 50% better performance. but its nothing spectacular and certainly nothing you cant live without. it just felt like a big ripoff. you buy 800 bucks worth of stuff. like a shoddy chinese made mobo and a third rate brand of ram. you dont expect it to last 3 months but it ends up running for years.

[mr.WHO]

Analyzing the feedback from this topic (and similar topic in 3 other pages) I'm leaning towards waiting 2 months and double my estimate funds to ~1000EUR - Planetside 2 will be release aroung 31st December so there is no rush.
This way I could replace MOBO, CPU, GPU, add SSD and possibly additional 4 Gig RAM.

I wonder if christmas season will affect prices? I don't want to buy second-handed stuff as it would be investment for 2-3 years so I'd rather have guarantee than super price.

[Bob-san]

Graphics cards will probably become more expensive as Christmas comes closer. Look towards less common hardware when you upgrade. As I said, a Xeon E3-1230 V2 is probably the sweetest spot for an overall system. It's priced like a 3570K and performs closer to a 3770K. You also save about 100-200 EUR because you don't need a higher-end cooler, higher-end motherboard, or the additional cost for the 3770K itself. That money would be better spent on a better graphics card.

Also note that essentially no new systems run DDR2 anymore. You'll need to replace your current RAM with an 8GB or even 16GB DDR3 kit--which is fine since it's affordable now. ($30-40 for 2x4GB, $60-80 for 4x4GB, $70-90 for 2x8GB.)

[LHN91]

If you're looking for 3 years of longevity, it makes even more sense to just build a new box and relegate the current one to secondary/HTPC or something similar. It makes more sense to get at the very least a solid, more easily upgradeable platform to go from than the LGA775 and DDR2.

[Klaustrophobia]

  I visibly notice areas in games that I wouldn't if I had gone for the extra ram.

...... wut? 


that aside, i currently have 12 GB installed.  I ran for a while with just 4, because my 2x2 pair has a lower latency and i wanted to see what effect that had.  when i went to the full 12, there was no noticeable difference.  even in synthetic benchmarks, the score rise was just BARELY over what i would consider to be normal fluctuation.  and granted i've never used a monitoring type program to check during actual gameplay, nor do i play a lot of the newer games, but when bringing up the task manager with the game running, i don't recall ever seeing any game break 2GB, and that includes crysis.  i don't know how games use Vram vs. system ram, but even crysis 2 maxed out with DX11 and high-res textures didn't fill the 2GB available on my vid card.  the highest it went was around 1800 MB.