Upgrade suggestions?

[harshbarj]

My primary gaming rig is starting to show it's age and I just can't decide on an upgrade path. I built this about 4 years ago and only upgraded the ram from 4gb to the current 8gb.

My current system specs.
Intel Core I5-750 (2.66ghz true quad core)
Gigabyte p55a-ud3 (socket 1156) (rev 1.0 board) (pci-e 2.0)
XFX HD5770 1gb pci-e 2.1
2x WD 320gb sata hard drives, 7200rpm.
8gb ddr3 1600 (PC3 12800)

A big problem I have with the system honestly is with games like minecraft. Once I play the larger mod packs, the game lags badly to almost unplayable levels. Even vanilla minecraft gets rather laggy.

Games like boarderlands 2 and such are fine even at 1080.

I have a limited budget, as I did when I built this rig. So the less I have to swap out the better.

 

[DSF]

Can you be more specific about your budget? Limited means different things to different people.

 

[harshbarj]

I really did not want to list an amount as that could keep people from posting something close to what I could come up with (but over an amount I posted).

I just don't want crazy $800+ suggestions.

 

[gmaster456]

Perhaps there is another issue. I have an older rig sitting here with a Phenom X4 9750, 8gb of RAM and a HD4650 1gb that can play vanilla minecraft on max settings just fine. Large texture packs I can imagine you having some issues but you should have no problem playing vanilla minecraft whatsoever.

Are you wanting a new rig or just an upgrade? Because you can keep a lot of what you have aside from the MOBO, CPU and GPU.

 

[coolpurplefan]

My guess is the video card.

 

[mfenn]

I really did not want to list an amount as that could keep people from posting something close to what I could come up with (but over an amount I posted).

I just don't want crazy $800+ suggestions.

See, this is the exact problem that DSF wants to avoid. To many people, $800 wouldn't be crazy. We have no frame of reference for you to know what you consider reasonable or unreasonable. Just post your budget, you are under no obligation to buy anything that is over it.

EDIT: That said, I agree with gmaster that your machine should be able to handle vanilla Minecraft with no issues, so there's probably something else at work here. Open the Task Manager to the Performance tab while you're playing and look at the CPU graphs. Are any or all of the cores maxed out?

 

[harshbarj]

See, this is the exact problem that DSF wants to avoid. To many people, $800 wouldn't be crazy. We have no frame of reference for you to know what you consider reasonable or unreasonable. Just post your budget, you are under no obligation to buy anything that is over it.

EDIT: That said, I agree with gmaster that your machine should be able to handle vanilla Minecraft with no issues, so there's probably something else at work here. Open the Task Manager to the Performance tab while you're playing and look at the CPU graphs. Are any or all of the cores maxed out?

$800 is more than I paid for the whole system back in 2010, so a simple upgrade should not come close to that as I plan on recycling the case, psu, ram, hdd, dvd. I figured the mobo and cpu would likely be replaced, and the GPU at some point. Even at $200 for both the mobo and CPU would be $400 tops and would get a nice system (one config I have been eyeing is $375 for both CPU+Mobo and would boost multi-core CPU performance by about 30%, but single core performance would drop by about 2%)

My cpu sits around 30-40% usage with core 1 being most used at around 50-55% while playing. My GPU always sits at 100% with virtually any game running, so I think it's just not accurately reporting usage. This is a new install of windows 7 home prem 64-bit. I formatted because of the lagg issue, and this did nothing to fix it.

 

[gmaster456]

$800 is more than I paid for the whole system back in 2010, so a simple upgrade should not come close to that as I plan on recycling the case, psu, ram, hdd, dvd. I figured the mobo and cpu would likely be replaced, and the GPU at some point. Even at $200 for both the mobo and CPU would be $400 tops and would get a nice system (one config I have been eyeing is $375 for both CPU+Mobo and would boost multi-core CPU performance by about 30%, but single core performance would drop by about 2%)

My cpu sits around 30-40% usage with core 1 being most used at around 50-55% while playing. My GPU always sits at 100% with virtually any game running, so I think it's just not accurately reporting usage. This is a new install of windows 7 home prem 64-bit. I formatted because of the lagg issue, and this did nothing to fix it.

Are you using 64 bit java?

 

[harshbarj]

Are you using 64 bit java?

Yep. I switched to that when I upgraded the ram from 4gb to 8gb. That was on the old install this new install is only 64-bit, no 32-bit java even installed..

 

[frozentundra123456]

$800 is more than I paid for the whole system back in 2010, so a simple upgrade should not come close to that as I plan on recycling the case, psu, ram, hdd, dvd. I figured the mobo and cpu would likely be replaced, and the GPU at some point. Even at $200 for both the mobo and CPU would be $400 tops and would get a nice system (one config I have been eyeing is $375 for both CPU+Mobo and would boost multi-core CPU performance by about 30%, but single core performance would drop by about 2%)

My cpu sits around 30-40% usage with core 1 being most used at around 50-55% while playing. My GPU always sits at 100% with virtually any game running, so I think it's just not accurately reporting usage. This is a new install of windows 7 home prem 64-bit. I formatted because of the lagg issue, and this did nothing to fix it.

What are you using to monitor gpu usage? I use MSI afterburner. I have a feeling that the gpu usage monitoring is accurate, and that you are in fact gpu limited. HD5770 was a low/mid range card when it came out several years ago. My first step would be to upgrade the video card to see if performance becomes acceptable. If not then you need to try to overclock your cpu or do a cpu upgrade as well. You should be able to get a video card in the 200.00 to 250.00 range that would be a huge upgrade to that 5770. I am sort of out of the loop on video cards right now, but something like a GTX 660 (around 200.00) or AMD R9 280 in the 250.00 range sounds good.

 

[riversend]

Or go with this R9 270X at $170AR, and if you order today it has another 10% off with a promo code, not too shabby and should more than double your performance against the 5770.

I went from a 5770 to a GTX 660 about 18 months ago and it was a nice boost, but the 270X will be even better, and a nice price if you order today.

And you can still sell off the 5770 and get a few bucks to offset.

 

[mfenn]

If you're not maxing out any of your cores, and the memory usage isn't out of control, then upgrading your CPU won't do any good. I agree that you should look into a GPU upgrade, the R9 270X that riversend pointed out would be my pick as well.