€200 Upgrade

Gbear

Current Spec:
Processor: Intel i5 750 @2.67GHz

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

RAM: Corsair 4GB DDR3 1333MHz

Graphics: Radeon ATI HD 5770 1GB

Power supply: OCZ MOD-X stream pro 700W

Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD4

HDDs: WD Velociraptor 10k rpm 160GB
2x WD 2.5 TB

Monitor: Toshiba Regza 32" 1080p

Anti Virus: Microsoft Security Essentials

I've been getting alot of BSODs lately and I suspect it's the RAM so, after consulting with the Computers & Technology forum, I've decided to upgrade it and while I'm at it I might look at a new graphics card.

These are what I was looking at:
8GB-Kit G-Skill RipJaws PC3-12800U CL9

SAPPHIRE HD 7750 1GB

My budget is about 200€

A few questions:
How do I know if it's compatible with my motherboard (spec here)?

Is that graphics card a significant enough improvement on my current one to warrant an upgrade?
It's about €100 on Hardwareversand so that does leave me €50 to play with.
I don't actually know what "Sapphire" means. Do they take stock ATI cards and overclock them?

The monitor I'm using is a HDTV. Does the fact that it has a resolution of 1080p make getting a powerful graphics card pointless?
Can I run games at a higher resolution than 1080p?
I have other monitors available, possibly of higher resolution, but I like having the big TV.


Edit:
Forgot to mention what I do with the computer - its a gaming PC first and foremost.
The most demanding game i'd play would be Crysis 2 or 3 when it comes out.
Generally, FPS and strategy games.

Monotype

That's not a very good upgrade for the graphics card. Big improvement in power efficiency but not really any improvement in performance.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/538?vs=535

Getting a more powerful graphics card isn't pointless at all as there's always more demands on cards with newer games and 1920x1080 is still a very popular and starting to reach its peak now. If your monitor is limited to that resolution, you can't run higher... unless you use more than one monitor.

Anyway, for the card, you're either going to have to spend more or you might be better off waiting until Christmas and get a GTX 660 or equivalent when they come out.
Since you said it was a gaming machine, a graphics card will be the most important - I'd look at a 6870 at least to get a substantial upgrade (€140-150) but a 7850 would be a significant gap from your previous card (~€220).

Other upgrades I'd consider in the meantime would be an SSD which would give you better response times that the velociraptors, although they're probably speedy enough with game load times, I'd imagine?
Have you got a good heatsink that you could overclock the CPU a bit?
The PSU isn't fantastic but it's not abysmal either to be rushing for a replacement, but I'd look into a better one if I was doing some heavy upgrades.

In my opinion, you should take a look at CPU overclocking and you should overclock your 5770 as well to cover you until there are a better selection of midrange cards for your needs.

Gbear

Thanks.

Monotype wrote: »

Anyway, for the card, you're either going to have to spend more or you might be better off waiting until Christmas and get a GTX 660 or equivalent when they come out.
Since you said it was a gaming machine, a graphics card will be the most important - I'd look at a 6870 at least to get a substantial upgrade (€140-150) but a 7850 would be a significant gap from your previous card (~€220).

I don't really mind spending a little more over the budget tbh. So long as I get good value for money and it'll last me for a good while - I'd rather get it sorted asap rather than waiting around, even if it means spending a little extra.
Perhaps how I should phrase the question is, what's the cheapest card I can get that would be a significant improvement?
The 7850? Because I could probably push for €250-€300 including the RAM.
If i'd stand to save a significant amount, then yeah, I'd be happy to wait if the prices are set to drop off a cliff, but it seems like with computer components there's always a price drop around the corner so I may as well take the plunge now.

Monotype wrote: »

Other upgrades I'd consider in the meantime would be an SSD which would give you better response times that the velociraptors, although they're probably speedy enough with game load times, I'd imagine?
Have you got a good heatsink that you could overclock the CPU a bit?
The PSU isn't fantastic but it's not abysmal either to be rushing for a replacement, but I'd look into a better one if I was doing some heavy upgrades.

I run high performance games on the velociraptor and ones that don't matter as much (older games generally) on the big generic media drive I have.
I have actually been looking at SSDs - something like a Samsung 830 64GB, but for the moment it's not in my budget.
My plan was to maybe see what Windows 8 is like and then get that and an SSD for the OS and high graphics quality games.
Presumably SSD prices will drop as will in the 6months to a year until I cross that bridge.

I only have the stock heat sinks from that came with the GPU and CPU.

Monotype wrote: »

In my opinion, you should take a look at CPU overclocking and you should overclock your 5770 as well to cover you until there are a better selection of midrange cards for your needs.

I've dabbled in overclocking a bit using the ATI software package but I haven't really noticed any difference and I don't really know much about it in general. Ideally, I'd like someone who knows about it to do it for me - the card being overclocked out of the box or something.

Regardless of the graphics, I need the new RAM now (if the BSOD problems are indeed RAM related) so I'll be getting that, hopefully in the next week or 2. Is the RAM I mentioned above suitable?

Procrastastudy

Have you run Memtest to see if it is actually the RAM. Speed of RAM doesn't really matter I think the €35 gskill stuff is the one most go for.

Overclocking a ATI gfx card is easy. Download MSI Kombuster then right click hit "catalyst control" then "Performance" overclock the Core leaving the memory alone. When it crashes or Kombuster starts giving you high Temps >85C stop . Hit "defaults" then do the same with the memory. Those are your two limits. Crank both back up to just under your limits and run a few games for stability testing. Job done.

You can go further into it with the likes of Trixx or Afterburner but the above method gives you 80% of the extra performance you are going to get for 20% of the effort.

Depending on the type of i5-750 you have there those things can be a beast ref overclocking.

Monotype

GCDLawstudent mentioned in another thread that the price of the 7000 were being dropped. I had missed an article posted about this, but unfortunately the 7850 isn't included in this. Their 7870 cards got dropped so they'll be close the 7850s now and hopefully AMD will drop those in the near future. They're probably getting good money for them now as it's the only card in that region from this generation and there's an enormous gap down to the 7770.

If you're buying just memory at the moment, you'd probably be better off going with memoryc. They'd be a little dearer than hardwareversand but free shipping.

Gbear

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

Have you run Memtest to see if it is actually the RAM. Speed of RAM doesn't really matter I think the €35 gskill stuff is the one most go for.

Yeah. It's come up with errors some times and not others. I've tried both sticks and each stick independently.

Either way, RAM is cheap so I'm happy enough to get an upgrade now. If BSOD still occurs then I've probably ruled out the RAM itself and I've still got shiny new RAM that'll probably do me for 3-4 years.

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

Overclocking a ATI gfx card is easy. Download MSI Kombuster then right click hit "catalyst control" then "Performance" overclock the Core leaving the memory alone. When it crashes or Kombuster starts giving you high Temps >85C stop . Hit "defaults" then do the same with the memory. Those are your two limits. Crank both back up to just under your limits and run a few games for stability testing. Job done.

You can go further into it with the likes of Trixx or Afterburner but the above method gives you 80% of the extra performance you are going to get for 20% of the effort.

Is that better than ATI's Catalyst software?
I did an automatic overclock using Catalyst and the clock speed went up a little bit. Didn't notice any difference so I just turned it off rather than messing with things man was not meant to mess with.:p

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

Depending on the type of i5-750 you have there those things can be a beast ref overclocking.

I don't actually know. What I said above in the spec was all the information I could find about (edit: the cpu) in my computer.
Used DXDiag and had a look in control panel as well.

Gbear

Monotype wrote: »

If you're buying just memory at the moment, you'd probably be better off going with memoryc. They'd be a little dearer than hardwareversand but free shipping.

As for compatabilty - is it not really an issue? Once it support the right clock speed and number of channels and is the same voltage is that it?

Monotype

Gbear wrote: »

Is that better than ATI's Catalyst software?
I did an automatic overclock using Catalyst and the clock speed went up a little bit. Didn't notice any difference so I just turned it off rather than messing with things man was not meant to mess with.:p

I don't actually know. What I said above in the spec was all the information I could find about in my computer.
Used DXDiag and had a look in control panel as well.

You'd notice the GPU overclock if a game is on the edge of playability and you're noticing lag before you overclock. But if you're playing a game that getting 55 frames per second, you probably won't see the difference at 60 frames.

The CPU should overclock well with good cooling.

Gbear wrote: »

As for compatabilty - is it not really an issue? Once it support the right clock speed and number of channels and is the same voltage is that it?

RAM usually isn't a huge issue with compatibility in comparison to before. If you get faster RAM than you need, it will usually underclock it anyway. It's a good idea to match voltage but not always essential either. If you are worried just have a look at the spec sheets (sometimes out of date with new brand labels) or do an internet search to see if anyone had any problems with your choice of RAM.

QVL:
http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_ga-p55a-ud4.pdf

Remember that these are the ones tested not the complete list of compatible modules.

Gbear

Monotype wrote: »

GCDLawstudent mentioned in another thread that the price of the 7000 were being dropped. I had missed an article posted about this, but unfortunately the 7850 isn't included in this. Their 7870 cards got dropped so they'll be close the 7850s now and hopefully AMD will drop those in the near future. They're probably getting good money for them now as it's the only card in that region from this generation and there's an enormous gap down to the 7770.

So should I just keep an eye on the 7870 for the next couple of weeks then?
At the moment it looks like it's about €300 odd. A bit much.
If it drops to around €250 then I'd be happy enough to go for it.

There are different versions of these cards - sapphire, msi etc..

Is there any rule of thumb with which is the best? What do they actually do?

Procrastastudy

There are reference designs (fan at the back and a big box). Then there are non-reference that have better cooling. Without trawling though reviews for hours a good rule of thumb is to go with the cheapest non-reference board.

Gbear

GCDLawstudent wrote: »

There are reference designs (fan at the back and a big box). Then there are non-reference that have better cooling. Without trawling though reviews for hours a good rule of thumb is to go with the cheapest non-reference board.

You've lost me. What are reference designs versus non reference?

Procrastastudy

http://www.overclock.net/t/705075/how-to-tell-an-ati-5xxx-reference-card-from-non-reference

Gbear

My computer has completely started taking the piss so I'd fancy making this upgrade asap.

Most of the websites I've tried still have the hd 7870 at about €300-€325, even though it seems to have come down in price in the US.

It's £207 (or about €265) for this one on Amazon:
Sapphire HD7870

It suggests it's eligible for free delivery to Ireland, and I think they've scrapped WEEE haven't they? Either way I checked and it says Amazon ship electronics to Ireland on their website.

The RAM I was looking at:
G-Skill 8GB 1333 Mhz is a bit more expensive than other websites but if it's free shipping then it seems like it would only be a question of a few quid either way.

Does this seem reasonable?

Procrastastudy

If you could hold on a couple of weeks I would. The 660ti is coming out and may be a game changer.

Monotype

That RAM is not free delivery as it's not sold by amazon - it's a third party seller.

You can buy RAM for cheap with real free delivery from memoryc.
http://www.memoryc.com/computermemory/ddr3ram.html

Gbear

Monotype wrote: »

That RAM is not free delivery as it's not sold by amazon - it's a third party seller.

You can buy RAM for cheap with real free delivery from memoryc.
http://www.memoryc.com/computermemory/ddr3ram.html

I think I meant to link this one:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/G-Skill-Ripjaws-DDR3-1333-Dual/dp/B002X578GE/ref=pd_sim_sbs_computers_2

Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery.

I'd rather forgo having to register and all that lark. We buy a fair amount of stuff from amazon. I like limiting the amount of places on the web I've credit card details registered to.

Monotype

OK, fair enough. That should be free delivery. Just for the record, memoryc are an extremely reliable company, based in Kildare and they've been quick to sort out any problems in the past. If you can afford it, 1600MHz might be better for overclocking and squeezing a little bit more performance out, although I have my suspicions that many 1333MHz RAM modules are much the same as 1600MHz.