As it's coming towards the end of my time at Uni, i'm looking into upgrading my flagging PC rig. I've upgraded the CPU & storage recently, so I shouldn't need more storage upgrades... Current specs: - i5-4590 (Haswell @ 3.3GHz) - 8Gb DDR3 RAM (1600MHz afaik..) - EVGA 750Ti SC (2gb) - Gigabyte Z97m Gaming 5 - 4Tb WD Green (Steam & Storage) - 480Gb Crucial BX200 SSD (OS & Programs) - 240Gb Vertex R2+ SSD (Some Games) Now, obviously the GPU is first port of call.. But if I were to get a RX480/1060, would the CPU be holding it back? I was debating getting a Ryzen cpu, but then would need to get a new mobo/ram as well. Usage is mostly Gaming, but also Photo Editing and using Rekordbox for my DJing (not intensive at all).. Where would you recommend upgrading?
CPU is absolutely fine for all forms of gaming. Change the GPU to one of the great deals there are on the RX 480 and leave the rest.
You may be able to overclock the turbo on that chip. I know with Sandy and Ivy you could. Intel called it "limited overclocking". They may have ditched it with Haswell though. The only thing that concerns me is the seemingly lame clock speed, that may hinder you some. I would get the GPU first and see what you can do clock wise though. Or maybe try and track down a 4670k or 4790k.
Yeah, you can get a 480 for just over £150 these days and that would see you right. No need to do any more than that, really.
As above, buy a new GPU that pairs with whatever monitor you're using (RX480/1060 for 1080p, 1070 for 1440p etc) and put whatever other cash you have in a pot and save for the next proper, full build upgrade. Incremental upgrades make short-term financial sense, but ultimately you're always going to be playing performance catch-up. I went from a GTX 670, i5 2500K, 1080p monitor and slowly upgraded to a 6700, GTX 1080 and 4K monitor... but in reality I haven't gained much - where my 670 was struggling with new games at 1080p, my 1080 is struggling at 4K. Sure everything looks better with "moar pixels", but I still have to compromise on settings to keep everything playable in some games. I'm half tempted to sell everything, take a break from gaming and PC's, see how things pan out with R5 and Vega and then build a new machine from scratch, all at once that I know I won't have to mess around with or spend more money on for a good 3-4 years... Like I did with that venerable 2500K and GTX 670.
Thanks for the quick replies everyone! I realised after posting that the 3.3GHz is stock speeds, but it has a "turbo" of 3.7GHz.. Not sure if that's just 1 core or all 4, but that should help keep the rig running longer before I do a full build! Now to just look about for those deals
That's 1 core. It is locked at 3.5ghz on all cores. Which for gaming will suck. I remember having a locked I5 Sandy and it too was locked to 3.5ghz. Going to 4.5ghz makes a massive difference. Get a GPU first is probably the best bet, then run a couple of benchmarks that hit the CPU and GPU to see how it stacks up. Oh, and of course benchmark any games you can.
