reppinhighz
hey guys
after alot of research, i realized i cannot get a laptop that suits all of my requirements. basically i have to cross the 1000-1200 threshold in order to get something decent such as the lenovo y580 (gtx 660m) so i figured id keep my laptop for everyday tasks and older/light gaming and simply upgrade my desktop which already runs everything smoothly and on high settings at 1280x1024.
here are the specs
core 2 duo 2.66ghz
4gb ram ddr3
gigabyte motherboard (not sure of the model, i have to check)
500gb hdd
vapor-x 5750
for my gaming requirements, the graphic card seems to be more than enough. i bought it a few months ago and honestly i just want to be able to game at a decent resolution which is basically what i wrote above. i dont think my monitor supports more than the mentioned resolution as far as i tried anyways.
how important would a processor upgrade be in this case? new processor, new board, maybe a new case etc... lets say i want to drop 300-400 for some upgrades, would it make a reasonable difference? what kind of difference could i expect? should i worry about minimum requirements becoming higher in games?
another scenario is to wait 2-3 months and be able to put in more money for an upgrade. 500-700.
let me know what would you do in my case and what kind of upgrades to consider.
thank you
AvoK95
Best advice. Sell it and buy a new one.
shant
thermaltake v4
ivy bridge i5
8 gigs of kingston ram
cheap intel motherboard
cpu heatsink
best upgrade you'll ever do! unless you want to overclock it of course
i say wait a few months
AvoK95
OK OK seriously now.
Since you just want to game at that resolution, everything seems to be fine. You can upgrade the graphics card to an HD 7770 and add 4 more gigs of RAM. An XFX PSU (Or anything decent) Thermaltake V4 or V3 case (I have one and they're just epic for the price)
You can also upgrade to an i5 since it's just better for gaming. You can grab a i5-3330 for $188 + VAT and an Asus B75 motherboard for $135+ VAT. You will have a great game rig. If you have some extra dollars to spend as well. I'd bump up to a higher PSU and an HD 7870.
reppinhighz
I have decided on some upgrades but wanted to get some opinions.
ThermalTake VL800M1W2N V3 BlacX Edition ($53)
Asus P8H61-M LE ($79)
i5 3450 @ 3.1 GHz ($192)
4GB Kingston DDR3-1333 ($20)
500GB WD5000AAKX 7200RPM SATAIII 16MB ($68)
Total is $412 without vat
Parts to use from my old desktop
Vapor-x 5750 1GB DDR5
500GB hard disk (its filled with games and their save games so id like to use it also)
460w cooler master psu
LG DVD
What do you guys think about the setup? obviously i am open to small changes +/- 20-30$. Like i said, i was not looking to spend more than $450 so with vat, the setup should be right around there
Would this make a big difference in terms of performance from my old desktop?
Thanks
AvoK95
Everything seems great. I would have picked the Gigabyte GA-H61M-S2P-B3 instead of the Asus board since it supports PCI-E 3.0, however it has no USB 3.0 ports.
You can sacrifice that 4GB stick and get a lower end i5 and get a HD 7770 which will have a lot more performance than your old 5750. If you want gaming performance, improvements, this won't do a thing without a new GPU. The 7950 is just too slow. I have used a 5770 and it ran BF3 at 15-25FPS on 1080p
reppinhighz
Im gonna go with the Gigabyte motherboard
I am looking to get the parts from pcandparts and as far as i saw, they do not have any lower end i5's and even the i5-2320 is only a few dollars cheaper.
I need the 4GB as my old desktop is running on 4GB DDR2. (original post says DDR3 but its a mistake)
As for the GPU, the thing is i am not looking to game at higher than 1280x1024 as my monitor only supports this much. My GPU seems to run everything comfortably.
I constantly check videocardbenchmarks.net and my card scored around 1900 which is around the 550TI and close to the 7750. Also i reviewed the specs of my card and the 7770 and it seems that they are very close albeit the 7770 is much newer and slightly faster.
I am running my card on stock but i have overclocked it before and managed to get the memory bandwidth up from around 74 Gb/s to somewhere in the lower 90s GB/s. In case i need the extra boost ill push its limits a bit.
Specs so far are:
ThermalTake VL800M1W2N V3 BlacX Edition ($53)
Gigabyte GA-H61M-S2P-B3 (DDR3) ($77)
i5 3450 @ 3.1 GHz ($192)
4GB Kingston DDR3-1333 ($20)
500GB WD5000AAKX 7200RPM SATAIII 16MB ($68)
Total is $410 without vat
Parts to use from my old desktop
Vapor-x 5750 1GB DDR5
500GB hard disk (its filled with games and their save games so id like to use it also)
460w cooler master psu
LG DVD
Anything else i should look out for? fans? etc...
Avo, thanks for your constant help.
AvoK95
What fans do you have ? The case comes with 1 blue LED 120mm fan.
reppinhighz
None just stock. Do i need another one?
AvoK95
I think you'll be fine for now. You can add an intake fan in the front if you want. But it's not necessary since you're not running any high end graphics stuff.
