Upgrading some Advice Please

PirateShampoo

Its come time to Upgrade my PC, i built it roughly 5 years ago and while its still running games with no issues i think its time to future proof it for another few years and ive no idea whats good anymore with Hardware.

Its primary goal is gaming, here is what its running currently.

I5-3570k
HD 7970 3G D5 Boost
z77 extreme4 Motherboard
16GB of RAM
650w

All advice welcome.

K.O.Kiki

Upgrade the GPU - only bugbear here is that midrange GPUs got hit with supply issues right now (e.g. the €200 RX580/GTX1060 are selling closer to €300).
Used GTX 970 / 980 / 980 Ti is an alternative here.

Consider an i7 or Xeon CPU
https://ark.intel.com/Search/FeatureFilter?productType=processors&SocketsSupported=LGA1155&ThreadCountMin=8&ClockSpeedMhzMin=3400&BornOnDate=Q2%2712

Reinstall Windows to a 240Gb+ SSD drive.

PirateShampoo

Yeah i was reading something about that being due to Crypto Currency miners.

TerrorFirmer

There's nothing really too wrong with that PC, the 7970 is still a decent card and you'd need a GTX1060 6GB or RX580 8GB to really get a worthwhile upgrade especially if you plan keeping it as long as you did the 7970 - you have waited this long, I would wait it out and see what the lower end VEGA cards bring to the market.

Also, upgrade the 3570K to a 3770K, shouldn't cost you more than €70 or so with the resale of the 3570K factored in and in some games like Fallout 4, Battlefield 1, Battlegrounds etc you will see significant gains in minimum/average framerates.

That said if you overclock the 3570K to 4.5Ghz or thereabouts it'll still be perfectly fine too.

Right now, the best thing you could do if you want to upgrade is up to 3770K, add a 250GB SSD, and get a 2nd hand GTX970. When you factor in the sale cost of the 3570K and a 7970, the actual spend would be around €200 or so.

Samuel T. Cogley

Find another 7970 and away you go. Keep an eye out for a cheap 3770K as already suggested.

A 970 would be a much more power efficient option, but winter is coming and who needs heaters when you've AMD cards in Xfire.

PirateShampoo

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

Find another 7970 and away you go. Keep an eye out for a cheap 3770K as already suggested.

A 970 would be a much more power efficient option, but winter is coming and who needs heaters when you've AMD cards in Xfire.

Yeah i was thinking about the Xfire route. Would the 650w power be ok??

Oh ive already got the SSD cards.

Digital Solitude

Crossfire has never been a good idea from what I recall. Even SLI is fairly lackluster and its way ahead of crossfire.

Unless you're already on a high end card and need more power. you're better off in a single card setup

Samuel T. Cogley

I've run Xfire and SLI set-ups, generally the scaling has been okay but it will always be hit and miss. 650w (just about) would be okay but it will depend if it's a 'good' 650 or a poor one. I like offering alternatives but really a 970 is the way to go. 7970 should sell reasonably well.

Digital Solitude

Fair enough, never done it myself in fairness I'm echoing others from here.

Samuel T. Cogley

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Fair enough, never done it myself in fairness I'm echoing others from here.

You're bang on the money in fairness, I should probably have prefaced my initial post with 'an alternative would be...'. You know yourself some games scale really well, other scale worse than 0% with micro stutter (more SLI) and all that jazz. You can always switch off one of the cards though.

TerrorFirmer

Yeah, Sli/Crossfire is a disaster. It's worse now than it was a few years ago and even then it was patchy at best.

A single card upgrade is definitely the only real option. Crossfire would only be worth considering if you got another 7970 for free, but even then I'd still recommend a single card upgrade.