SSD or full upgrade

[Spydermag68]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Programming, some DVD burning, some gaming, internet.

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread
$1000+/-

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
USA

5. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc.
Looking at Intel i7-4770. Need help with the different CPU plain, k or s.

6. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
5850 GPU, I mostly play newer games on my PS3/4.
blu-ray, ATX PS it is a 850 Gold about a year old.

7. IF YOU plan on over-clocking or run the system at default speeds.
Nope.

8. What resolution, not monitor size, will you be using?
1080p

9. WHEN do you plan to build it?
3 months. I might buy a few pieces here and there and wait to buy cpu/mb/memory at once.


My current rig is AMD 965, gigabyte MB, 4 gigs memory, 5850 GPU, regular 1TB HD.

I cannot decide if I should just get a new 1TB SSD or go all out with a new computer. I looked at bench marks from the AnandTech main site and a full i7-4770k rebuild would about twice as fast as my current rig on all levels. The new build would also have an SSD as the main drive.

 

[NewYorksFinest]

If you arent overclocking, dont buy a 4770K. Buy a 4770 or 4771, non-overclockable.

 

[Ken g6]

First, don't get a 1TB SSD! Consider a ~120GB or ~250GB SSD for your OS and programs. Keep a spinning drive around for things like storing big videos and backing up the SSD.

If you aren't overclocking and you have your own graphics card, [thread=2367204]consider[/thread] a Xeon E3-1230 V3.

If you're really burning DVDs, you may not want to bother with hyper-threading, though: MPEG2 encoding can only use a couple of cores. You can run multiple MPEG2 encodings sometimes, but it's probably still not worth the cost for hyper-threading. Some compilers may take advantage of lots of cores; myself I tend to compile single-threaded to avoid any chance of makefile race conditions. Most gaming doesn't yet take advantage of more than 4 cores.

If you're burning h.264 files onto DVD, like I do, then HT looks more interesting. I think most Blu-Ray players can play them back. (If you encode them right. And I don't know for sure - I have a sample size of one.)

 

[Linkdrive]

When working with a budget, and considering the price-to-capacity ratio of SSDs, a SSD should be one of the last things you should consider for a gaming computer. A SSD is basically pointless when it comes to games, and even more so when playing multiplayer games (since you'll still need to wait for everyone else to load). However, they make great drives for operating systems and productivity programs.

Personally, I prefer a ~256GB SSD for Windows & productivity programs with a 2TB HDD for games and storage. That said, first find a build you are comfortable with that doesn't include a SSD, then once you are done, look at how much wiggle room you have with your budget then grab a SSD based on that if possible.

 

[mfenn]

Compiling big projects or encoding a lot of movies would see nice performance increases from a new CPU, but if that's not the pain point, then why bother? So, I guess my question is, what is your computer doing more slowly than you'd like?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If you want an SSD either way, then get an SSD. If the machine is still too slow for your tastes, use the SSD in a new build.

Otherwise, what mfenn said.

 

[bononos]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Programming, some DVD burning, some gaming, internet.
........
I cannot decide if I should just get a new 1TB SSD or go all out with a new computer. I looked at bench marks from the AnandTech main site and a full i7-4770k rebuild would about twice as fast as my current rig on all levels. The new build would also have an SSD as the main drive.

The 1Tb ssd upgrade would be a waste. Compiling isn't a harddisk bound task so you'd be better putting your dollars elsewhere. And 1Tb is at the top end of ssd capacity so you're paying alot more for cutting edge tech instead of better performance.