Hey all, I've had my computer for a while and am recently really feeling the age of it (maybe 3 years old). I want to at the very least upgrade the graphics card, but if that won't be enough to allow me to play new gen games like BF3 and GW2 then I may have to buy a new one. Here are my specs as of now: Chassis Model: Special Deal Hot Seller - Cooler Master HAF 932 Processor: Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz (Quad Core) Factory Overclocked to 3.80GHz Motherboard: EVGA X58M (Chipset: Intel X58) System Memory: 6GB DDR3 1600MHz Corsair/Mushkin (Digital Storm Certified) (Hand Tested) Power Supply: 750W Digital Storm Certified (Dual SLI Compatible) (Silent Edition) Hard Drive Set 1: Operating System: 1x (1TB Western Digital (7200 RPM) (32MB Cache) (SATA) (Extreme Speed) Optical Drive 1: DVDąR/RW/CD-R/RW (DVD Writer 20x / CD-Writer 48x) Internet Access: High Speed Network Port (Supports High-Speed Cable / DSL / Network Connections) Video Card(s): 2x SLI Dual (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 896MB (Includes PhysX Technology) Sound Card: 7.1 24-bit / 192kHz Decoding High Definition Integrated Audio Extreme Cooling: H20: Stage 1: Asetek Liquid CPU Cooler Liquid Color: - Not Applicable, I do not have a H20: Stage 3 Cooling System Selected Chassis Airflow: Standard Factory Chassis Fans CPU Boost: Yes, Factory Overclocked i7 920 from 2.66GHz to 3.80GHz with 100% Stability & Reliability Windows OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium (64-Bit Edition) With Windows 7 Upgrade Coupon Thinking of moving up to a Geforce 560 / 570 card, or possibly waiting till Gw2 is a bit closer, since BF3 beta hasn't really impressed me. Is going from a 3.6 gig to a 4.4 really a huge deal? compared to say swapping up cards? Would swapping the card work as is? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks- Idiom.
An i7 920 at 3.8GHz is plenty powerful. All you really should do is get a new graphics card with more vram and throw in a SSD for the OS. The limiting factor in games for you is your current video cards memory capacity. There are starting to be quite a few games that push 1GB vram usage and beyond, so your 896MB is holding you back from using higher settings. Everything else is plenty good. Even those 275's are good, they have plenty of power in them. They just lack the memory capacity to fully utilize their power. GW1 ran much better with Nvidia cards, and I think I heard GW2 uses the same engine but upgraded a bit? So you should probably stick with Nvidia again. Although the new AMD graphics cards coming out probably within a month are going to dominate Nvidia for a while... Up to you what to go with. Nvidia wont have a response for AMD's new stuff until sometime early 2012. If you want things to feel fast then get a 128-256GB solid state drive for your OS and a game or two. This will make your computer feel incredibly fast. Read through the many threads here on SSDs to see in depth details on the main brands of solid state drives. Also, Samsung's new SSD (the fastest on the market) will be out in less than a month.
2x 275 in SLI your pretty good for now TBH ... wait a bit for some of the newer cards to come out SSD is enigmas thang
If the OP is your current specs then you are good, its pretty much my system. Although I bumped up to a 570 for a late xmas present.
CPU is definitely up to date for the most part. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 896MB was from a while back so it could benefit greatly from an upgrade. Up to you where you want to go with that. A SSD drive is a really good choice because mechanical drives are a major bottleneck. If you think about it, a mechanical drive is the only data processing part of your entire computer that moves at all. Plus, your 1TB drive is also an ideal secondary HDD. A RAM upgrade to a full set of 8GB or more of the exact same model RAM will set you up for some additional speed and overclocking potential. Also, you can check your Windows Experience Index for a reasonable accounting of what parts currently have you bottlenecked the most.
Most likely his WEI breaks down like this: CPU - 7.1 Memory - 6.7 Graphics - 6.5 Gaming graphics - 6.5 Primary HDD - 5.9 Now lets see how close I actually am in my guesses...
Cpu - 7.6 Ram - 7.7 Gfx - 7.2 Gaming Gfx - 7.2 HD - 5.9 Pretty close. I tried playing BF3 and it ran like complete ass... Like unplayably sluggish. Talking to an Arena.net guy at PAX he said that their test comps were running Geforce 275 gtx's so I kinda feel OK for that. It's been fine for everything else I do, but running SLI the cards tend to have heat issues, due to how tight they are mounted in the case.
How were you running BF3? Do you have AA and AF set on at decent to high levels? Id still say to put a SSD in for the OS drive and possibly get a graphics upgrade if you want to run BF3 on high level settings (AAx4 or more AFx16, highest texture quality) EDIT for Erock: I did see he was running two cards, but two cards doesnt double vram. He has two cards, with a total of 896MB of vram. All video graphics memory is mirrored to both cards
Umm offhand I wanna say it was 1920/1080, AA off? or maybe 2x not higher. BF3 supposedly needs 2 560's in SLI to run at max, but I feel like mine shouldn't be so awful..
Ya you really shouldnt be staggering much with the hardware you have Most likely you just need to clean up your computer and wipe the hard drive completely clean and reinstall Windows. Even if you want to go really cheap you could try just getting another 1TB drive (with a single 1TB platter) and short stroke it to use only a couple hundred GB's of it. Then install the OS and some programs to the short stroked drive and then your games to your 1TB drive. That should spread out disk access and keep things from interfering too much so background stuff of the OS can do its thing without bottlenecking the small reads and writes the game is trying to do. And then with a clean OS and driver installs the game will probably run much better. Going this route would only cost like $75. Or you can go all out this way and get a 128GB SSD for your OS and BF3 and store all your other junk on the 1TB secondary.
Yep I did. 2x GTX 275 to 2x Nvidia 400+, 2x Radeon 5000+, or 1x of top of the line either is an easy, cheap upgrade. My guess is the HDD is where it's bottlenecked though =/