Reccomendation

[bonachea]

I used to really know some stuff about computers, but no i've fallen behind.

My setup is as follow:
16GB Cheap corsair RAM
Radeon HD7700
Intel 2500K
Random HDD
Asrock extreme3 gen3 mobo

My question is:
I notice when a game lags at all and i like having high settings (pretty sure this fits a lot of peoples ideal). I play some FPS's and MMO's and would like to upgrade something to upgrade FPS. What would you recommend upgrading?

edit ** what really started making me think i should upgrade is that even in LoL i was getting sub 60fps which to me is crazy

My research shows that it would not benefit me to upgrade motherboard or CPU at this time, would my best bet just getting a new video card? I know my cpu and mobo does not support PCI 3.0, would I see any benefit by upgrading all three (PC MOBO and Video Card) or just upgrade my video card and hope for the best (would this improve drastically over the HD7700? Thank you for any input.

 

[mfenn]

The GPU and HDD are definitely the weak points of this machine. The CPU and motherboard are fine. There is no need to upgrade for PCIe 3.0 because there is next to no benefit from doing so.

What's your budget?

 

[bonachea]

Modest budget, want to make it best it can be without going overboard. Want to go Nvidia too, have had bad luck with Radeon. Also, maybe a SSD?

 

[Danno21]

As mfenn said, your GPU and HDD are your weak points. I am running an i5 2500k @4.6Ghz and it is kicking butt still.

You could get a GTX 760 for $230-250 and a 120GB Kingston SV300S37A/120G SSD for $66 on Amazon. Those would be huge upgrades.

I bought the same SSD for my boyfriend's new build and it boots into Windows 7 in about 10 seconds.

 

[Cerb]

CPU: taking time to add a nice cooler, and trying to get a little more speed wouldn't hurt, if you're up for it. SBs tended to be good OCers. Up to 4.2 tended to be typical at modest voltages, and 4.5+ was often doable without going crazy.

GPU: definitely the biggest issue. A GTX 650 Ti, 750 Ti (just released), or GTX 760 would both make good upgrades, the 760 much more so.

HDD: some MMOs and RTSes can be limited by disk, but most games aren't. SSDs have just gotten cheap enough that we can't help but say, "go buy one!" The Crucial M500 240GB is currently $0.52/GB at NCIX. Don't expect much in games, save for cold load times, though.

 

[bonachea]

Thanks for the input! I will get the SSD and Video card as you guys say. I have OC'd my CPU to 4.0Ghz just by messing with the multiplier and have only had a few games crash, maybe ill tweak voltage to make it more stable if i run into more problems. Thanks again.

 

[mfenn]

Modest budget, want to make it best it can be without going overboard. Want to go Nvidia too, have had bad luck with Radeon. Also, maybe a SSD?

A hard number works best for budget. "Modest" to some people is $500, to others it's $100.

 

[bonachea]

probably around 500 for a vid card and ssd would work for me for sure.

 

[mfenn]

For $500 I would do:

Seagate 600 240GB $120 AP - ridiculous deal
Gigabyte GTX 770 $330
Total: $450 AP

 

[Cerb]

The SSD deal ends within hours (7 hours, probably), so do it now, and save $10. Then, fiddle with your BIOS settings. You can probably get a stable OC somewhere between 3.6 and 4.0GHz, without crazy voltage.

 

[bonachea]

So I purchased the EVGA gtx770 sc acx and the 240gb ssd. My concern is my PSU.......rosewill rp600vs-sl. I bought a EVGA 600B just incase. Do you guys concur that my PSU wont cut it since the 770 requires 42A on a 12v rail

 

[VirtualLarry]

Rosewill PSUs (except for the Capstone and maybe Fortress) are decidedly mediocre. I think that you did well picking up a new PSU for your 770.

 

[mfenn]

I'd add the Hive to that list, but overall I agree with Larry. Any of their lower-end "unbranded" PSUs are usually pretty poor.