Build Advice hows my pc spec, would you upgrade any thing, if not now when?

Hi

I put together a decent spec PC in the past and every thing is fine but Id like to get a plain together for the short term and the long term about my system and best route to stay current and then able to play tommorows games etc.

this is my system
P8Z68- VPRO Sandy Bridge
16Gb DDR 3 dual channel
CPU Core i7 2600K,overclocked to high by the system board so at 3.6.3.8ghz.
Graphics: NVidia GTX 660 Ti


If you had the above system, would you keep it? for like next 12 to 24 months?

What is the current £1.5k comparable build spec today?
Do we know if at around release time of star citizen if there will be a whole new monster new intel chips etc


Also, how far out of date is my kit today, I have not stayed up to date with every thing.


also just to tip my hat to corsair, the h70 or h80 I have is still going strong after a good bit of use with a hot processor.

 

Not much point unless power consumption is important to you. I'm thinking my 2500k might last me all the way through to skylake which is suggested to have DDR4 and SATA express support.

 

No weak points in the system really, Maybe an SSD for OS and main games?

star citizen is going to eat our rigs alive, most people have problems just with the hanger never mind going out of it.

Best thing to do is save your pennies now and wait till star citizen is in at least stable beta where you can get a good idea of what it will take to run the bloody thing.

so for now my call will be just get a nice SSD, save the big upgrade/new system for later.

 

I can tell you right now with 99% certainty that your system will be able to play SC maxed out if you just drop as much cash as you can afford on a GPU at or just before it is released.

The 2600K is a beast and will plough through anything. Hell if you buy an AMD card with Mantle you'll be even more secure on that front. Why not push it further to 4.4 or so though? May as well - you have an H80.

Its unlikely to use anything over 8GB of RAM, let alone 16 (and yes, I'm well aware Chris mentioned 16 in an interview recently but hardware isn't his strong point)

Motherboard is great!

So, OC that chip, and save every penny you can til just before the games release, then dump it on a GPU.

(remember you'll also need to save for Oculus and a joystick though, if you want to go down that road)

 

Parge, are you sure? everyone seems to be having real problems running just the hanger mode well.

Also 8GB RAM as a MINIMUM requirement shows whats to come :/
His system will not run star citizen maxed imo, or even close with the 660ti even tho its a great card (but we can only speculate till you can go out the hanger and have decent sized fights.)

 

Elite Dangerous is where it's at.
Just bop a GTX 760 in there and you are fine for a while.

 

GTX 760 isnt worth the upgrade at all. Very small performance impact.

 

Buy a nice SSD (or two, one for OS, one for games) and sit on the rest. Unless you're heading to 780/780Ti/R9290 territory with the GPU.
Maybe search for the last stock of a Maximus V board and have some fun with that 2600K with a few upgraded features, but it's not really necessary.

 

It's fine IMO. My choice would be -

1. Find another 660ti and go SLI if the board you have supports it.
2. Ignore 1 and get a GTX 780 or Radeon R 290.

Your rig is fine. The GPU though isn't high end so I would change that and put in an SSD as the others have said. That's just me though. Not only am I a core whore but I'm also a graphics whore

 

Yeah, absolutely sure.

CR has said on a number of occasions how terribly unoptimised the hanger module is. A 2600k with a nice OC is easily beastly enough on the CPU side, even more so if he goes AMD on the GPU side.

They've said 8GB as a minimum on the specs sheet but all of my years being a PC hardware fan tells me that thats pretty much BS. He's got 16GB of RAM, so no issue anyway.

Again, the GPU is the only thing that is going to hold that system back, so I can't see what makes you think his system won't run SC maxed (assuming a change of GPU)

Also CR don't no nuffink bout hardwhere

 

I'd go SSD and GPU upgrade either another 660 TI for SLI or sell that 660 and go up to a 780/290

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

The hanger runs perfect on my non overclocked i7 920 with a GTX770. 2560x1440p.

At the end of the day SC will take a powerful machine to max it out and high FPS at high res. Expect to drop at least £2000 on cards if you want to do it justice at 4k... and that's assuming hardware exists to keep the FPS high at 4k.

But...

I'm sure it'll be playable with less that a triple SLI monster, you may just have to accept that you'll have to choose where the compromises in effects bling, resolution and/or FPS sit.

 

Just depends on what your gaming at.

1080 will require nothing more than your equivalent card for crysis 3 today at similar settings.

8gb of ram will be 2-4 come launch unless they wish to remove anyone without a 64bit OS.

Hanger module is not optimised.

Dfm will see how the hardware goes. I expect it to be playable on most modern rigs today unless you must max it out.

ESO looks awesome and it runs maxed out on pretty basic hardware.

 

Right now, the only weak link is the GPU. Recommendations of a GTX770 are pretty solid, and would be what I would buy. That would last you 12-18 months easy, during which you can save up to totally replace the system with something shiny and new.

As for SC, by the time it releases I'm expecting to have 8xx series NVIDIA cards, or even 9xx series, along with at least one more refresh of Intel's CPUs/chipsets. DDR4 may be here as well by that point. However I would only recommend buying a SC system at launch, when we know exactly how it will perform.

 

I would not really go nvidia if SC is your main priority as AMD are working with SC for better optimization on there cards and also SC are developing the game with mantle.

If you got the money R9 290 and an SSD i think is the best option.

^ He does not have a clue does he! haahha

 

Well I'm going to stick my neck out and say that the 2600k could be more than good enough for years to come. It's actually a better CPU to have for gaming now than it was when OP bought it. Just lately there have been an influx of games calling for 8 cores/threads. Surely the 2600k can absolutely chew up anything and spit it out, especially with the overclock headroom it has.

So I say keep it. Not just for now, but for another two years as I think it will easily sail through that with no bother at all.

I wouldn't buy anything with 2gb vram. Not when the consoles have 8gb to play with. It's a known fact we always end up with the console leftovers so 2gb is cutting it close. Why pay £250 for a card that's going to be replaced in 12-18 months when you can spend £50 more and it last another year on top of that?

If I were in the market for a GPU now I would want 3gb vram as the absolute minimum.

Edit. And if Mantle does what it promises to in two years time you may not even need anything more than a Celeron as your CPU..... Food for thought...

 

Its a real shame that Crossfire and SLI does not carry over the VRAM :/ you think they would of worked on that massive issue by now

 

Yet as we've already seen with BF4, Mantle isn't exactly the be-all and end-all. Mantle is also not tied to AMD's GCN hardware, and could actually work on NVIDIA cards as well. We've also seen the results of previous "Made for" schemes by AMD and NVIDIA, which ending up meaning nothing. Chris Roberts' own machine apparently runs Titans, so they're not exactly sticking all the horses behind AMD.

Regardless, if you're buying a GPU for SC, wait until it launches in 2015 and buy the best card that fits at the time.

Definitely overstating the impact Mantle is going to have there. The idea that Mantle is suddenly going to let us run the latest games with a Celeron strapped to a high end GPU is ludicrous.

As for the VRAM, it depends on resolution. If you're at 2560x1440 or larger, then yes, 3GB of VRAM or more is good. Going 1080p or lower and 2GB is fine. I don't think the new consoles are going to change much either - yes, they have 8GB of unified RAM, but there's a whole chunk of that reserved for the OS (up to 3.5GB), then the general use the RAM gets in shuttling data around. They're not using the whole 8GB for GPU work that's for sure - probably more like 2-3GB most of the time.

 

I heard they were, but then I don't believe everything I read.

I'm not particularly worried. My lady hasn't gamed once on her 670 SLI rig yet, only when her daughter comes and my 7990 is 3gb which I think is safe..

 

PS4 has 7.5gb ram for games to use 0.5gb for os, Xbox One has 4.5gb ram for games 3.5gb ram is reserved for OS acording to the developers of those consoles.

Vram has not really gone anyplace, Nor will it at 1080 resolution. People have been spouting the 3gb min vram for years but without any real facts to back it up.

the 680 4gb was slower than the 680 2gb in certain titles for example. ( Bit techs own mag reviewed the 2)

Id wait for maxwell no matter what, 20nm could bring alot to the table more than anything either side has done in a long time.

In the £250 bracket older cards will always offer better value. Before the AMD mining craze a 7970 was sub £200 brand new and it will blow away the newer cards made by either company in the £250 price area.

Once maxwell hits this gen cards like the 780 and 290 should both see similar price reductions

As for lasting 3 years thats over optimistic as most cards wont last 6months at max settings. Just depends how low your willing to reduce the settings. If High is your minimum then 2 years is about the lifetime of the current top end cards in single card config.

Considering the way Cfx and SLI work how would you put the ram together? Most games are configured for Aternative frame rendering for Sli and CFX as this is what gives most performance gains. Split frame rendering is less common due to it been about 50% slower.