[TeachPower]

Hello everybody.  Its been a long time I've been on this board but I always come back because I value the expertise and help I have received in the past.  I would like to have smooth gaming with high FPS and experience the best visuals the game has to offer.  What do you recommend for upgrading to for CPU, Geforce video card, and/or memory?

 

MB: Gigabyte GA-Z97-HD3

CPU: Intel i5-4460 3.2 GHz

Video: Geforce GTX 970 4GB

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 4GB DDR3 1333MHz (2 sticks)

 

Regards,

BP

Edited by TeachPower, 19 February 2018 - 03:24 PM.

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What's the budget?

Intel i7-6900K 3.2GHz ~$1,100
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ~$1,100
16 GB RAM ~$175
3840x2160 5ms monitor ~$400
850 watt PSU ~$150

[SpywareDr]

What's the budget?

Intel i7-6900K 3.2GHz ~$1,100
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti ~$1,100
16 GB RAM ~$175
3840x2160 5ms monitor ~$400
850 watt PSU ~$150

[TeachPower]

Most bang for your buck. Definitely not spending $1,000 for one piece or combined.  Given what I have should I only upgrade one of them?  Doing some research I saw that what I have is not bad but of course there is room for improvement.  What would be the economical approach?

[SpywareDr]

You did say "I would like to have smooth gaming with high FPS and experience the best visuals the game has to offer."

 

The most economical would be to bump it up to at least 8GB of RAM.

 

A decent SSD boot drive would be more money but, it would also be a more noticeable improvement.

[TeachPower]

You did say "I would like to have smooth gaming with high FPS and experience the best visuals the game has to offer."

 

The most economical would be to bump it up to at least 8GB of RAM.

 

A decent SSD boot drive would be more money but, it would also be a more noticeable improvement.

I do have 8GB of RAM total.  I have two sticks of 4GB.  Would it make much of a difference to upgrade to an Intel i7 CPU and total of 16GB of RAM?

[SpywareDr]

Noticeable while gaming? No, not really. Gaming needs a fast, powerful GPU, a decent CPU (i5-8400 is fine) and at least 8GB of RAM. A decent SSD makes a world of difference during bootup and while loading games.

[TeachPower]

What would you recommend for a GPU?  Should I get an Intel i7?

[SpywareDr]

You don't really need an i7 for gaming.

 

What's the budget for a GPU?

[TeachPower]

$300-$400. I could sell mine for maybe $150 so possibly $500 max.

[SpywareDr]

In order to see a performance difference, you need to jump up at least 2 tiers higher on Tom's Hardware Hierarchy list: http://www.tomshardw...archy,4388.html

 

That puts you over your budget.

 

It’s not a good time to build a gaming PC. There’s just no way to sugar-coat it. Graphics cards, some of which are coming up on two years old, sell out the moment they appear for sale.

... because cryptocurrency miners are allowing distributors to take steep mark-ups. Results: Obscene pricing for good graphics cards is a problem ... and will be for a while.