Advice on upgrading my rig

So with Xmas looming i want to upgrade my beloved rig, but unsure which bit. The rig i have runs most things well and i don't want to throw alot of money at it for very little benifit.

my rig:

Mobo ASUS M5A97 R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) Motherboard http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...m5a97r2.0.html
8Gb RAM
AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 3.50Ghz O/C to 4.2Ghz (coolermaster hyper evo cooler)
Nvidia GTX 760 O/C to.......something or other (don't have it hand but its a good overclock)

I got about $400 (£350ish) to spend, any ideas?

thoughts were: mobo http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...-g0eay0vz.html
or maybe RAM??

Dunno, thanks for your help

Do you have a fast SSD?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AOD_TooterFish

Do you have a fast SSD?

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Ye i have:

120Gb Sandisk Extream SSD (OS etc)
1Tb Hybrid (games, high demand software-sony vegas/After Effects Etc)
500Gb old sata thing for music/music/pics

Since most games are console ports, a good place to start to decide what to upgrade is what are the consoles running? specifically next gen consoles, (which are a large step up from the older generation) large chart with links for specifics

Looks good to me though, unless something is acting up, I dont see much improvement to be made.

Dont bother with more RAM. Anything more than 8GB is useless for gaming.

My Fx8320 is OCed to 5.0Ghz so it is possible that your motherboard is holding back from reaching close to what I have. I have an ASUS Crosshair IV ROG, so that motherboard you chose should do even better than mine. Although I remember reading a review that showed the the newest of the 990fx motherboards is the ASUS Sabretooth R2.0 actually beat out the crosshair v z in overclocking.

GPU looks good, maybe wait till microsoft releases directx12 and see what AMD and Nvidia come out with.

You could also do watercooling!!! Better cooling and quieter.

Oops forgot to ask.

What power supply do you have? especially for AMD FX processors love power so you will need a descent amount of juice. I am running a 650watt Seasonic PSU just for comparison.

Also if your going to change out your motherboard, check that the windows version you bought is not an OEM copy otherwise you will have to buy another copy of windows.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AOD_ModJPB

... Also if your going to change out your motherboard, check that the windows version you bought is not an OEM copy otherwise you will have to buy another copy of windows.

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I've known people to call tech support and say their mobo had to be replaced and got around it, as long as the CPU is the same, as CPU and MOBO serial #'s are what the OS uses to lock itself to a computer.

"Dont bother with more RAM. Anything more than 8GB is useless for gaming." - This comment makes no sense to me. Have you ever wanted to run other applications while you game on max graphics settings? Or have you ever wanted to run more than one game at time? Or have you thought about the games of tomorrow?

Anyways...RAM is very very very important. Get more!

Also you mentioned "1Tb Hybrid" drive - I was wondering what is a hybrid drive? Like spinning media + solid state in one box?

Your CPU is pretty solid, OC'd it should play most games (and with games starting to use more cores effectively, it should be fine).

Regarding your GPU, I went from a 670 (pretty much a 760) to a 970 and essentially doubled in frames per second. Its an extremely powerful card that is also amazing at overclocking, so if you were to throw down on a big component, that would be it.

Also what kind of monitor do you have? Having a good monitor makes everything soo much more enjoyable.

Thanks for your suggestions guys, to answer a few of the questions:

I have 750W PSU
I looked into water cooling and the charts suggested i would get an increase in cooling, but not enough for the price ATM. My CPU runs at roughly 52Deg under max load (prime95)
Yes it is the Mobo i'm leaning towards upgrading as that is the lowest denominator holding back my CPU oc. I couldn't squeeze anymore than 4.2Ghz. It broke my comp every time i tried.
Ye my RAM really never reaches max. To Skinnym, Playing two games at once? When i play Arma3/PS2 etc i shut all non essential software down.
Was looking at the Gtx 970 looks good but doubles frames?
I have a 23" led Full HD monitor so i'm sweet with that (keyboard/mouse/headset all razer/cyborg gaming stuff so i don't really need to touch that)

Thanks again

More Ram memory is not a good thing unless you NEED it. When more ram is added it reduces the overclockabilty (if that is a real word) of the system and makes it less responsive. When more RAM is added, the motherboard starts to increase the timings causing it to be slightly less responsive, while also needing more voltage/current to handle the load of the extra chips which lowers your overclock headroom. Unless you are playing 2games at the same time...?... or editing photos and videos using adobe software, then 8gb is plenty. Anything more than you need actually slows down your computer.

I have planetside running at max settings (64bit), ventrilo, internet explorer, steam, and some random stuff in the taskbar on windows7 (64bit) and still have 2 to 3GB of ram unused. Also if you are running Windows8.1 you will even have more free memory since it combines like files (probably one of the only great features of 8.1 over 7)

Goodluck

Save the money until you can move to intel.

At the moment, spending extra will only net you a small performance boost that will likely not be noticeable. (the largest upgrade you can do at the moment is moving to a GTX 970 (won't double your frame rates, but it will be a very noticeable performance boost), other than that, save up for a new motherboard and a Core i5-4690K

Moving to intel at this point will give you the largest overall general computing performance boost, especially with CPU bound apps and games.

Intel really that much better. It's impossible to Google search and find a reliable answer. Looking at the specs they are slightly better but double the price?

Regarding the 970, maybe not double the performance but its a 180% (1.8x) increase in pretty much all benchmarks over the 760 (and I can attest to those numbers).

I made the jump from a AMD 6300 @ 4ghz to a 2500k at 4.5ghz and trust me, the jump is massive. CPU will pretty much help with frame rate dips, and take away any bottleneck you'd get. I personally managed to snag a 2500k + z77 motherboard for $200 on Ebay and haven't run into any issues for other a month. Buying off Ebay can be risky but it can also give you a crazy good deal. Your 8 core AMD won't be as big of a difference, but given big name games are just starting to use 4 cores, having a strong i5 will prove to be very reliable.

THere's a bit of mis-information or misguided information here.

Fist thing, what do you use your PC for? Just gaming or do you render or do high intensity graphical work?

Just gaming option.
Most games only user 1-2 cores so the better the single threaded performance the better.
Obviously the better the GPU the faste games run. If your primary game is Ps2 stick with AMD for the mantle support within Ps2, for the extra fps.
CPUs- Intel has better single core performance than AMD. Go for intel.
Upgrading your mobo with upgrading anything else will see almost no performance increases, unless it allows you to add a second GPU.
RAM- Over 8GB for gaming is a waste, unless you run really high intensity renders with lighting ect and TBH if you were doing that you'd have more than 8GB already.
HHDs- Seem fine. SSD+Secondary mass storage drives. I hope windows is on the SSD.
Windows- I haven't seen an OEM version of windows on a PC with over 8 cores yet. It's probably not OEM.

Personal choice.
I'd go for a CPU upgrade. Looking towards intel, maybe second hand stuff. You GPU can always be upgraded, maybe if you sell your FX chip ad 760. 7970s and 280x can be had for £150(ebay) and £190 (scan.co.uk) respectively.
So you're looking at an I5, possibly K CPU for overclocking. Count the monies, see where you sand, possibly sell FX and 760 for a GPU upgrade.


Also your motherboard isn't holding back your CPU. Your gonna hit a thermal wall soon with a 212 on a FX chip. 4.5-4.8 is about the max on air for that generation of chips.

So far, all of the new AAA games are using upwards of 8 cores.

Here is a recording of me playing far cry 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ5Y...yer_detailpage
mainly to show that the initial release and core 3 being maxed out for many users, was due to the DRM, and when disabled, the performance greatly improved.
(I am using a phenom II x6 1075t )

Due to the nature of the "next gen" consoles, they are using desktop PC stye hardware in terms of the way that games are coded, and thus you can pretty much be sure that they will use at least as many threads as they use on the console.

wow, thanks for all your replies guys/gals. I got info to take away and sort my stuff out now. A wealth of knowledge hidden in AOD !!!