fatbloke69 Posted April 13, 2018 Posted April 13, 2018 This is my current spec Operating System Windows 10 Home 64-bit CPU AMD FX-8350 RAM 32.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 (11-11-11-28) Motherboard ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 (Socket 942) Graphics 4096MB ATI AMD Radeon R9 380 Series (XFX Pine Group) Storage 223GB OCZ-ARC1 00 SATA Disk Device (SSD) 1397GB SAMSUNG HD154UI SATA Disk Device (SATA) 1863GB Western Digital WDC WD20 02FAEX-007BA0 SATA Disk Device (SATA) 1863GB Seagate ST2000DM 006-2DM164 SATA Disk Device (SATA) Optical Drives HL-DT-ST BD-RE BH08LS20 SATA CdRom Device But I am getting that itchy behind the fingernails feeling that means I want to Upgrade Problem is limited budget £600 ish (Applrox $800 us) So question is do I get a new CPU/Mob/ram (probably ryzen 7 1700/1700x b350 and 16GB of DD4 ram) and save till Gtx 11XX/20xx is released Or get a GTX 1080 (prices are coming down finally) and save for the CPU etc What are peoples opinions?
dharvinia Posted April 13, 2018 Posted April 13, 2018 You have a kick ass system right now, buying the latest and greatest only ends up you being the "Beta" tester for the industry. There are system performance testers available on the internet, use them and you will find that you are operating at a very high level at this point. These tests will also show you what if anything is "bottle necking" your overall system. If you really "NEED" to spend that money do the following: Find a worthy charity and donate it. Buy something nice for someone you love Buy a nice treat for yourself eg: new clothes, shoes,etc.
Fifoo Posted April 13, 2018 Posted April 13, 2018 To answer your question, you will first need to determine which element of your configuration is to change considering several points: 1. The average performance hierarchy of components such as CPUs and GPUs in which your hardware is located and relative to the current market. 2. The hardware compatibility to accept this evolution. See also if the power of your PSU will be up to your demand: will it be able to follow the extra consumption. What about connections: will they be compatible with your new hardware. 3. The price you are ready to put for a possible evolution, knowing which components will allow you to develop your equipment according to the use you make: Office, 3D design, or Games. 4. If yes for this last category, which games are you or want you to play. If it is to play Skyrim, you have everything wrong with AMD, it will be the combination Intel and NVidia that will give the best of themselves. If it's for games perfectly optimized in multi-threading, Ryzen will not get too bad, while remaining a little behind the high-end Intel. Some games will work well, some less, depending on the engine used and ad-hoc drivers optimized for them or not. And the last parameter, which is by far one of the most important: 5. Determine which component affects your performance the most by solving the bottleneck problem. See the spoiler below. I share the opinion of the person who wrote these lines - given the number of years spent in front of my PC, and it avoids me from having to retype them therefore saving time. Spoiler Apart being often answered with a simple yes or no based on the graphics card and CPU information supplied by the OP, there are other things that need to be considered when trying to locate your systems bottleneck. No matter what your system configuration is, there will always be a bottleneck. Disclaimer: I do not consider myself an expert! This post is just me listing out some of my observations I have made during the last 4 years of PC building and gaming. When asking about a bottleneck please provide the below information about your system: Graphics card CPU Monitor resolution and refresh rate targets A few key games you will play and their settings RAM General observations I have made: If you are hitting your resolution, frame rate, graphic settings goals then do not worry! Quit reading this post and go play! You want your GPU to be working at 99% utilization. This means you are getting what you paid for and the bottleneck is your GPU and it's a good thing, really! If your CPU utilization is at 99-100% and your GPU utilization is "low" (50% - 80%) during gaming then your CPU is bottle necking your system. If neither CPU or GPU utilization is very high, that means the game you're running is not demanding. Either turn up the graphic settings or find a new game to test with. A high (120Hz, 144Hz) frame rate on CPU intensive games will generally require a "modern" i7 or an overclocked i5 perhaps (example: BF1). A high resolution (1440p, 4K) will more easily place the bottleneck on your GPU. 16 is the new 8 GB of RAM. 8 GB doesn't seem to be cutting it in high end AAA games anymore. For example when playing BF1 with only Steam and Discord (desktop version) open I see RAM usage of just over 8 GB (I have 16 available on my system). If this is the case then you may be bottle necking at your RAM in these titles. If you have the budget I highly recommend going with 16 GB. If you have a 144Hz monitor and are experiencing a CPU bottleneck, limiting your frame rate to a lower value will help make it smoother with less dramatic frame drops. This can be done with MSI Afterburner/Riva Tuner Statistics (link below). In order to view your utilization of CPU and GPU I highly recommend you go install MSI Afterburner/Riva Tuner Statistics Server (RTSS) right now! Use RTSS to limit your frames for individual games, or globally. Use Afterburner to display them as an overlay in your favorite games. With these tools and the above bullet points, you should be able to see if you have a CPU bottleneck. Afterburner can create a log file for you to see how your entire system is working at any given point. When monitoring CPU usage with Afterburner/RTSS make sure you look at all cores simultaneously. This will allow you to see if you have a bottleneck because the game is only utilizing 1 core at 99% and the rest are very low. HW Monitor is another great software that lets you see a lot more details about your system, although it cannot do an overlay it can also create a log file for you to view. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Excerpts taken from the GUIDE: How to locate the bottleneck in your system by whynotzoidberg1 FREE Software links (official developer web-pages): MSI Afterburner Page HWMONITOR Conclusion: With your limited budget, I'm afraid you will not be a good candidate for waiting about the new NVidia GTX 2XXX family that will come in a few months. They will surely cost you the double when released. I would be tempted to say "go for" a GTX 1080 instead if it's the GPU the faulty one, but your middle-end AMD FX-8350 CPU will be certainly the bottlenecker with the use of such high-end Graphic Card. Do the tests as explained above and make your choice after that.
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