What do I need to upgrade to run the new Doom decent?

[zanemoseley]

My rig is about 3.5 years old. I haven't done much gaming in a couple years but want to play the new Doom game, medium settings would be nice. Here's what I have.

OS: Windows 10
M/B: ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3
CPU: i2500k
HSF: Hyper 212+
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 8gb 1333 DDR3
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD6870 1GB
SSD Samsung 830 128gb
ODD : LiteOn DVD Burner
PSU: Antec EarthWatts 500W
Case: Antec Sonata Quiet Mid Tower
HDD WD Caviar Black 7200RPM SATA III

 

[biostud]

Overclock cpu + Gtx 970 or R9 290 or better videocards.

If you want the newest technology then a gtx 1070 when it launches in june.

 

[Tannerblast]

Yeah anything 970 or above would be super good.

 

[zanemoseley]

Would doubling my RAM be of much use?

 

[Regs]

I would recommend getting the 1070 GTX for 350-400 dollars in June. It would make no sense buying the current generation at their price/performance and power draw.

 

[Regs]

Would doubling my RAM be of much use?

No. vRam will always be faster than system ram for video games. You want a 4GB+ video card that has fast computational power.

8GB is plenty, unless you're running a lot of idle programs in the background of your computer. 16GB above is only useful for people who work a lot with video/graphic production (large media files) or programs that naturally work from the CPU that require large files to be open and accessible all at once. Video games are rendered and drawn on the screen on-the-fly.

 

[Tweak155]

If you want to run the game on your SSD, you will likely need a larger one. Game download is 52gb or something near there... half your available space.

 

[CuriousMike]

Budget?
Assuming ~ $200 -
If you are running at 1080p and are happy with medium quality settings and 40-60 fps, and you want to buy soon, you could consider an AMD 380 or a Nvidia 960.

The 380 will come with 4GB of vram, the 960 you'd want to make sure you got the 4gb version.

 

[zanemoseley]

Can anyone tell me if Steam has an option now to install games on different HDD's? Seems like it didn't use to. Assuming the game wouldn't fit on the SSD I could run it on my 1TB but I Steam is currently set up to install on the SSD.

 

[zanemoseley]

I have no problem waiting for the 1070, plus when it comes out the 970's may drop in price quite a bit. My budget would be whatever it take to run the game decent. I don't wanna spend $200 just to find it doesn't run well still.

 

[JimKiler]

Can anyone tell me if Steam has an option now to install games on different HDD's? Seems like it didn't use to. Assuming the game wouldn't fit on the SSD I could run it on my 1TB but I Steam is currently set up to install on the SSD.

Yes you can pick which drive to install the game on. I use it all the time.

 

[s44]

Budget?
Assuming ~ $200 -

I'd buy a 970 now from people who are unloading before the 1070 arrives.

 

[Midwayman]

I have no problem waiting for the 1070, plus when it comes out the 970's may drop in price quite a bit. My budget would be whatever it take to run the game decent. I don't wanna spend $200 just to find it doesn't run well still.

If you're cool with waiting you might want to wait for polaris in june. Its likely to have way better price/performance. The 1070 really is a 1060ti level card.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Yes you can pick which drive to install the game on. I use it all the time.

There are even some tools out there which will let you move a steam game from one drive to another very easily.

 

[zanemoseley]

I read up a bit on the AMD Polaris, sounds like it will be a good mid range card. I'll definitely wait to see how June pans out before buying anything.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Honestly, the 6870 is the only thing thats gonna hold you back .. and its not because its not fast enough, its only because it doesnt have enough memory to hold the textures. 6870 chokes on Fallout 4, GTA 5, and lots of other current gen games even if it has enough memory bandwidth and core performance to handle things.

I've got a Radeon 290 in one machine and a Geforce 960 in the other .. the Radeon can handle just about everything I try with 3x1080p eyefinity pretty well, and the 960 has never had any issues with 1080p .. though for new games might not handle everything maxed out/turned up.

 

[zanemoseley]

Well it's good to hear my system isn't total crap after this long. I remember back in the day 3.5 years was a long time for pc's and you would be screwed with any new games.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

 

[DigDog]

if you can top 4ghz with the cpu, a 970 is all you need.

 

[Carfax83]

No. vRam will always be faster than system ram for video games. You want a 4GB+ video card that has fast computational power.

8GB is plenty, unless you're running a lot of idle programs in the background of your computer. 16GB above is only useful for people who work a lot with video/graphic production (large media files) or programs that naturally work from the CPU that require large files to be open and accessible all at once. Video games are rendered and drawn on the screen on-the-fly.

Ugh... People keep repeating the same falsities over and over.

To the OP yes, doubling your RAM would be beneficial. Contrary to what Regs says, 16GB is useful for more than just video/graphic production work and can certainly improve your gaming experience..

On my machine which has 32GB, Doom will use over 7GB of RAM between the exe. and caching the textures, models, animations etcetera needed for the game. So 16GB of RAM would certainly be useful for avoiding pagefile usage.

Also, RAM capacity effects performance by improving frame time variance, as you can see in the graphs below. But I would also advise you to get rid of that slow DDR3 1333, and move up to at least DDR3 1600, but preferably DDR3 2133 and above. With an overclock on your CPU, your system's performance would increase dramatically:

 

[nerp]

Try it on your existing hardware. You might be surprised. The game runs super nicely on my right and I'm at the lower end of midrange.

 

[Regs]

Carfax, no one gives a shit about time frame variance. You sound like you're grasping at straws to prove a point. No one even knows what the hell those graphs even mean and I hope you did not spend all day looking for them on google.

If you have slow ram, yeah, it will hurt your CPU. If you don't have enough ram on your video card, it will borrow your system, and if you don't have enough system ram, it will page your HDD.

 

[Midwayman]

But I would also advise you to get rid of that slow DDR3 1333, and move up to at least DDR3 1600, but preferably DDR3 2133 and above. With an overclock on your CPU, your system's performance would increase dramatically

I thought SB had a pretty big downturn on ROI above 1600?

 

[Midwayman]

Carfax, no one gives a shit about time frame variance. You sound like you're grasping at straws to prove a point. No one even knows what the hell those graphs even mean and I hope you did not spend all day looking for them on google.

You should care if you like smooth gameplay. All those little annoying glitches and pauses in game play is what frametime variance is all about. I mean if your getting 40fps you have bigger problems, but once you get to a smooth rate it matters.

 

[ImpulsE69]

With that cooler and board, you should be able to easily take your 2500k to 4.0 or 4.2 -- It should have default auto overclock (turbo) settings in the bios and you can choose what speed you want and it will automatically set the voltages, etc. Mind you these are NOT the best settings because they default on the higher power side, but it will at least let you test how it works if you are unfamiliar with overclocking and should be pretty stable w/o screwing anything up.

You should also know though that I believe this board has that on board video, and if the cmos needs reset, you have to switch your monitor to the onboard to start over. (I have the ASRock Fatality Gen 3 and they are pretty similar).

 

[Carfax83]

Carfax, no one gives a shit about time frame variance. You sound like you're grasping at straws to prove a point. No one even knows what the hell those graphs even mean and I hope you did not spend all day looking for them on google.

And here I thought this was a forum for PC hardware enthusiasts and gamers

If you have slow ram, yeah, it will hurt your CPU. If you don't have enough ram on your video card, it will borrow your system, and if you don't have enough system ram, it will page your HDD.

That's kind of an oversimplification. The GPU should never, ever use system RAM as a frame buffer. If it did that, performance would plummet like a rock.

However system RAM holds plenty of other data that VRAM does not have, but is needed for a frame to be completed; ie animations, game code, mesh data, models etcetera...

And if the CPU has to grab this from storage, then your framerate is going to plummet. If your CPU requests it but since you're using the second slowest speed of DDR3, then it might just hold up the entire frame and cause a massive frametime spike which will manifest as stutter on screen.

One of the most impressive things about Doom, is the amount of animations in play in every frame. That goes a way in explaining why the game uses such a large amount of RAM, about 7.5GB from my experience.

8GB should be fine, but 16GB will prevent any unnecessary HDD access which will result in a much better experience.. On the other hand, DDR3 1333 is slow as hell and will likely be a major source of frametime spikes.