Need to upgrade! Please Help!!!!

[koralo]

Hey there! So, to start off, let me just say that I dont know much about computers. My current gaming PC was build by a friend of mine. I did the research, picked out the parts I felt best fit my gaming needs, he filled in the blanks, I ordered all my parts and he helped my put it all together. This was about 4 years ago now, and its definitely time for an upgrade.

Games I play:

• WoW
• CoD: Ghosts
• Diablo3
• Will be playing EoS Online among other upcoming games

I understand I dont need a high end system to play these, but I do feel like its lagging behind a bit these days, especially with CoD: Ghosts.

About my current setup:

Case: Cooler Master Elite 430
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX460
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 Quad-Core Processor 955 3.2GHz
Motherboard: ASUS M4A87TD EVO AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD
Memory: Hyperx Blu Khx1600C9D3B1K2/8Gx Ddr3-1600 8Gb(2X4Gb) Cl9 Memory Kit
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200 1TB
Power Supply: 500W Thermaltake power supply
And I'm not sure what kind of cooling fan I have over my CPU, although Im not sure if that's relavent at all. Im not sure how much of this information is at all relavent, so I included as much as I could think of just to be safe.

What Im looking for:

Im basically just looking for somthing that can play most games on the highest resolution posible. I dont was movies/shows on my comp cause it sits right next to my tv anyways.... so don't really care about that at all. I want to get good framerates. Right now in World of Warcraft I max out at 60fps. Thats the absolute maximum Ive ever seen it, which I thought was just due to the game until other players informed me that they were achieving much faster framerates.
I dont have a lot of money to spare, but of course I want good quality hardware. If needs be I could buy piece by piece so long as I dont need one component for the other to function properly. I was thinking of girst going with a new video card, but I wasnt sure if I could just pop one in without first upgrading power supply, memory, processor, etc. for it to work properly.
I was thinking of the EVGA GTX-650, is that a decent card?

Im on a budget. I would like to keep everything under $400. What are the best video cards out there for $200-$300? As far as all the other components go, are they really necessary? Or can I just pop in the new graphics card and be ready to rock?

Thank you so much for your help guys!!!

 

[lehtv]

What is your monitor's highest (= native) resolution?

 

[koralo]

1360x768. Im using a 32" HDTV as my monitor.

 

[lehtv]

Have you checked what framerates you get in Ghosts?

Tom's Hardware did tests at 1280x720 on low quality, and a GTX 650 Ti got 60 fps minimum, 90 fps average. Your resolution has 10% more pixels to render, and your video card is only about 20% slower than the 650 Ti. I'd expect about 45 fps minimums, 65 fps averages with your card and resolution on low quality.

Tom's also tested 1680x1050 on low quality and high quality, and it seems high quality is nearly twice as demanding to run. If you want to run Ghosts on high/ultra quality at 1366x768 at smooth 60 fps, you need to upgrade your graphics card to something almost twice as powerful as the GTX 460. Asus GTX 660 DCII $180 AP ($170 AR) fits the bill nicely. Or from AMD's side, MSI R7 270 Gaming $180.

I think your CPU can handle the upgrade OK, and I don't think your PSU needs upgrading. It's not the best unit but it's powerful enough for one midrange GPU and should hold its own if you don't push it too hard. So for now, I think this is all you need to spend (unless you want an SSD). I would suggest aiming to upgrade the TV/monitor to 1080p and the CPU to an Intel i5 within a year or two.

 

[mfenn]

Right now in World of Warcraft I max out at 60fps. Thats the absolute maximum Ive ever seen it, which I thought was just due to the game until other players informed me that they were achieving much faster framerates.

It sounds like you have vSync enabled, which is a good thing. There's no real point in getting 100 FPS when your monitor can only display 60. vSync caps the framerate at the monitor's refresh rate so that you don't get any tearing artifacts, use less power, and don't spin up your GPU fan as much.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Agree w/ Lehtv a GTX 660 fits the bill nicely.

The AMD 955 is probably a black edition and can overclock fairly easily with a couple simple bios tweaks. There are many guides for extreme tuning but a simple fsb of 210 and multi of 17 should give you a nice gain without straining a stock cooler or requiring increased voltages.

 

[sm625]

You AMD chip is getting long in the tooth:

An i3-4340 would put you near the top of that chart. A newer i5 would go over the top.

 

[lehtv]

That chart uses a Geforce Titan which is exactly twice as fast as a GTX 660. With that exact resolution and settings, you could expect a GTX 660 to get roughly the same framerates with all of those processors, since the best processor in that chart gets nearly twice the framerate compare to the worst.

Of course, the OP's resolution is only 60% of 1680x1050 which will shift it towards being more CPU dependent, but it will still get better framerates than what you see the X4 965 here getting with Titan.