Good time to upgrade?

alanucc

Hi all,

I'll be looking to play a few of the new games coming out over the next few months, and I'm wondering if it's a good time to do a little upgrade! I'm thinking I need a new cpu, cooler, ram, graphics and mobo.

If I have a budget of €500, what could I get? Would I see a major gain on new games? I'll be playing at 1920x1080.
Will my existing case and psu be up to the job if I upgrade?

Thanks in advance!


Current PC:

Processor: Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 4.0GHz with Arctic Freezer extreme cooler
RAM: 4gb
HD: 80gb Intel SSD with 1TB regular HD
Graphics: Sapphire Radeon HD4870 1gb
Case: Coolermaster Centurion 534
PSU: This
Monitor: Hannspree 25" hp257hpb

Tea_Bag

your current spec looks good to go for a while, which is good cause AMD and Intel have new CPUs around the corner so worth waiting for if you can manage with what you have.

if you're looking for an upgrade, id suggest getting a new expensive gpu now that you can carry over to the new build, and also save a little more with the extra time you have to get a great setup.


Edit: I don't know your PSU so I can't comment on if its worth keeping, but I think your best bet would be to sell the entire rig (keep the SSD) and add it to your 450 and you can make a great sandy bridge i5 or an AMD quad with an AM3+ board and upgrade to bull dozer when it comes out. you should get a good bit of money for that rig with its OC, but I can't help you on the actual price. this option is only for if you have the upgrade itch now and don't want to wait a few months.

alanucc

Tea_Bag wrote: »

your current spec looks good to go for a while, which is good cause AMD and Intel have new CPUs around the corner so worth waiting for if you can manage with what you have.

if you're looking for an upgrade, id suggest getting a new expensive gpu now that you can carry over to the new build, and also save a little more with the extra time you have to get a great setup.


Edit: I don't know your PSU so I can't comment on if its worth keeping, but I think your best bet would be to sell the entire rig (keep the SSD) and add it to your 450 and you can make a great sandy bridge i5 or an AMD quad with an AM3+ board and upgrade to bull dozer when it comes out. you should get a good bit of money for that rig with its OC, but I can't help you on the actual price. this option is only for if you have the upgrade itch now and don't want to wait a few months.

Thanks for the advice, yea the upgrade itch really sucks. I think I'll hang on and upgrade the lot if the next big thing is on its way. Is ivy bridge out early-ish next year? Will a new wave of graphics cards be coming along at the same time?

Solitaire

They might be, as AMD are already well into testing their 28nm silicon for their next GPUs. No idea what nVidia are up to, but they're rarely far behind

Fluffy88

The Radeon 7000 series was said to be going into production around now, so they might be out by the end of this year. But with delays and all that it will probably be closer to early next year.

ShadowHearth

This is still very solid machine.

I really doubt you have much problem with any games which were released lately.

If you want some improvement I would suggest just a gpu upgrade. Your psu still should be grand if it manages 4870.

Get something like 6870 or higher amd you should be okay for awile. Good thing is that you will be able to use that gpu in new built later whe you decide to upgrade.

Vicxas

Looks like a solid build for now, Id say wait for the Ivy Bridge and just upgrade your GPU.

Moon54

Yep, decent enough PC. That 4870 is still decent for gaming, although at full HD resolution for newer games it'd suffer a bit.

I was in a similar situation a while ago with my aging 4850, I opted for an interim step of getting a cheap 5850 for about €120 on pixmania,
which then was moved to my new build.

Another way would be to go for something up-to-date like the 6950 or similar for ~€200 and then move that to a new build later.

alanucc

Just giving this a little bump. I've held off on upgrading since I last posted, but I'm looking around again at what's available. So same questions again as per the OP. If I jump this time, I would have a budget of about €800.

Tij da feen

Item|Price
MSI Z77A-G43, Intel Z77, ATX, DDR3|€91.58
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€215.17
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€33.65
Sapphire HD 7850 2GB GDDR5 PCI-Express|€227.54
Thermalright HR-02 Macho|€33.89
Super-Flower Amazon 80Plus 450W|€41.15
BitFenix Shinobi Midi-Tower USB 3.0 black, ohne Netzteil|€55.04
Seagate Barracuda 7200 1000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€80.35
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€797.36


You can then save the SSD from the current rig and put it into this one. Then sell the old rig on, it should still fetch a bit.

Craig B

Just one thing about the above build, go for the 550w PSU as you have some more overclocking headroom, just a little tip.