New Rig

[BloodOmen]

Contemplating it. What I had in mind assuming I do

Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
£155.99
Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler
£57.89
Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
£109.16
G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
£126.37
Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
£91.09
Storage drive (already have a 2tb hybrid drive thats brand new)
XFX Radeon R9 280X 3GB Double Dissipation Video Card
£208.99
Corsair Air 540 ATX Desktop Case
£98.95
Corsair 760W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
£119.40
Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer
£16.95

Total: £985

To buy or to hold out until next year, that is the question. Newer games are bottle necking now however, so its warranted.

 

[Raven]

Had that memory on my last PC, really good - though I got 2300 (think it is) in my new PC. Not all that much more expensive.
Not sure its worth buying a 3rd party cooler unless you are overclocking, I just use the stock cooler on my I7 and have no problems.
You could also save a fair amount by getting a 600-650w semi modular PSU - The one I have has the main board cabling as non modular and all the rest modular, think it was £80 or something.
I probably wouldn't bother with the K version of the CPU either, unless you want to overclock.

The money saved stick on an AMD 290 card and slightly better RAM.

 

[BloodOmen]

I was going to overclock the cpu aye, was even considering a watercooler just so its more quiet/less cleaning involved

 

[ECA]

Get 2133 memory. It's a good 5-10% performance upgrade over 1600.

2400 isnt worth it, it's like a 2% upgrade over 2133 for a price premium ( although £5-10 ) for the difference on 8-16gb may not be too bad

Also, optical - do you really need it?

 

[Litmus]

Get 2133 memory. It's a good 5-10% performance upgrade over 1600.

2400 isnt worth it, it's like a 2% upgrade over 2133 for a price premium ( although £5-10 ) for the difference on 8-16gb may not be too bad

Also, optical - do you really need it?

Where did you read that? Afaik mem speed has very tiny impact on gaming.. Only useful on stuff like rendering.

High Speed RAM - Is it Worth it? DDR3 1333MHz vs …:
View: http://youtu.be/dWgzA2C61z4


And tbh blood.. That really isn't an upgrade on what you already have, certainly not worth £1k anyway.

Your cpu isn't much diff from that, maybe 5% - 10% under full load. Graphic card is in the same category as a 760, and the rest doesn't make much diff either.

 

[BloodOmen]

And tbh blood.. That really isn't an upgrade on what you already have, certainly not worth £1k anyway.

Your cpu isn't much diff from that, maybe 5% - 10% under full load. Graphic card is in the same category as a 760, and the rest doesn't make much diff either.

Well I'm pretty sure mines fucked then because some games are taking huge fps dips in some places. It's either that or pay £2000+ which I simply cannot afford, I can barely afford the above.

 

[ECA]

Where did you read that? Afaik mem speed has very tiny impact on gaming.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6372/...3-to-ddr32400-on-ivy-bridge-igp-with-gskill/9

 

[dysfunction]

That is almost the same as my new PC.
Major difference is I have got 8GB Kingston Hyper-x Beast 2133MHz Ram and a GTX760.

It's an upgrade from my Intel i7-950.
It is so much faster it's incredible.

 

[BloodOmen]

Current system I have is

i7 2700k @ stocks
16gig dd3/1600 (can't remember timings)
gtx 670

Motherboard I have is pretty gash, I was going to get a new one along with a new case some time back but in the end I decided not to bother and just wait until I upgrade.

 

[TdC]

hmm no advice but I would consider the faster ram for myself to see if I will get more FPS. tbh I am a great fan of quality (1600Mhz) ram, but I'm also old fashioned. Perhaps 2133+ speeds is the future?

 

[BloodOmen]

So after researching around I found these over at http://www.passmark.com/index.html

I believe these are all at stock speeds - my GTX 670 is still just above a 280x apparently, which I found odd.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Radeon R9 290
6,382
GeForce GTX 770
6,198
GeForce GTX 670
5,387
Radeon HD 7970 / R9 280X
5,137

My CPU vs a 4670k at stock speeds

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Intel Core i5-4670K @ 3.40GHz
7,752
Intel Core i7-2700K @ 3.50GHz
8,919 <--- What the fuck?

So based on the above, what the hell is bottle necking my PC? must be the ram surely? or ram/shit mobo combo? doesn't even seem worth upgrading as @Litmus said after looking at these, it'd essentially be a £800-900 downgrade excluding the ram.

 

[ECA]

I wouldn't bother upgrading bloodomen.

the 2 gens since your cpu havn't increased power, only decreased size/power consumption.

You'd prob be better off just upgrading motherboard, getting some faster ram and a new gpu.

 

[Athan]

I'd start checking in detail as to what's installed. It doesn't even have to be malware, could just be something running in the background that occasionally sucks up CPU, RAM, disk I/O, network, ... that's causing other things to stall. I'd recommend running Microsoft Process Explorer with the 'View System Information' window open and see if something other than your game has a CPU spike when the trouble starts.

Also of course, what games/applications? Some games just have areas/events that are poorly coded/optimised and always suck. It could be related to audio (if there's lots of down/up sampling going on in combination with 3d/surround calculations which all tend to be on the CPU), so fiddle with number of channels options in the game.

 

[Gwadien]

So after researching around I found these over at http://www.passmark.com/index.html

I believe these are all at stock speeds - my GTX 670 is still just above a 280x apparently, which I found odd.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Radeon R9 290
6,382
GeForce GTX 770
6,198
GeForce GTX 670
5,387
Radeon HD 7970 / R9 280X
5,137

My CPU vs a 4670k at stock speeds

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Intel Core i5-4670K @ 3.40GHz
7,752
Intel Core i7-2700K @ 3.50GHz
8,919 <--- What the fuck?

So based on the above, what the hell is bottle necking my PC? must be the ram surely? or ram/shit mobo combo? doesn't even seem worth upgrading as @Litmus said after looking at these, it'd essentially be a £800-900 downgrade excluding the ram.

The blocks of cheese tell the truth! You're downgrading n00b!

 

[dysfunction]

If you have a real slow down then don't bother troubleshooting. Just Format c and reinstall windows.

Feels like a new pc when you do that.
Do you have an ssd in your current pc? If not get one!

 

[BloodOmen]

If you have a real slow down then don't bother troubleshooting. Just Format c and reinstall windows.

Feels like a new pc when you do that.
Do you have an ssd in your current pc? If not get one!

nah, i did have 2 but they died (both were OCZ which are about as reliable as David Cameron) thats why i have the samsung ssd on the list so it can serve as my boot drive, my hybrid sshd can serve as storage/games i dont mind loading a bit slower

 

[BloodOmen]

I'd start checking in detail as to what's installed. It doesn't even have to be malware, could just be something running in the background that occasionally sucks up CPU, RAM, disk I/O, network, ... that's causing other things to stall. I'd recommend running Microsoft Process Explorer with the 'View System Information' window open and see if something other than your game has a CPU spike when the trouble starts.

Also of course, what games/applications? Some games just have areas/events that are poorly coded/optimised and always suck. It could be related to audio (if there's lots of down/up sampling going on in combination with 3d/surround calculations which all tend to be on the CPU), so fiddle with number of channels options in the game.

nah, no malware - running Malwarebytes + MSE atm. Nothing on the task manager seems to hogging ram

And games like Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline, World of Warcraft (should be getting much higher FPS in WoW than I do currently) running WoW at high settings and only maintaining 50 fps ish most of the time in uncrowded areas, should be at 60+ fps at all times with what I have. There are a few other games aswell, the slowdown is minimal but it is noticeable.

 

[Athan]

Like I said, grab Microsoft Process Explorer and see if that can shed any light. I prefer it to Task Manager. At least go to Performance > Resource Monitor in Task Manager to better drill down to what's happening.

But I agree with dysfunction that if you just can't find what's causing the issue it's worth doing a backup + reinstall to be sure it's not just Windows Cruft Syndrome.

 

[Embattle]

nah, no malware - running Malwarebytes + MSE atm. Nothing on the task manager seems to hogging ram

And games like Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline, World of Warcraft (should be getting much higher FPS in WoW than I do currently) running WoW at high settings and only maintaining 50 fps ish most of the time in uncrowded areas, should be at 60+ fps at all times with what I have. There are a few other games aswell, the slowdown is minimal but it is noticeable.

Shadows setting used to be a big killer for some graphics cards in WoW. Have you recently bumped up your resolution in games at all?

 

[ECA]

I'd just do a full reinstall first, see if that fixes your problems.

Then I'd swap out mobo+ram.

If you could post exact mobo + ram make/specs it'd be nice as well.

 

[BloodOmen]

I'd just do a full reinstall first, see if that fixes your problems.

Then I'd swap out mobo+ram.

If you could post exact mobo + ram make/specs it'd be nice as well.

http://eu.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=120-SB-E682-KR - motherboard

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-158-GL - thats the ram i think, looks like it anyway and i've only bought 1600mhz up until now so pretty sure it is, looking at it now the timings are terrible.


Feel free to recommend some bits and bobs via http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/ (theres a permalink url just near the top if you haven't used it before)

Would be nice to get

SSD
CPU cooler (mines like a tramps arse)
Motherboard
Ram
power supply is optional, still got a 650w fully modular corsair psu so should be fine

 

[BloodOmen]

Shadows setting used to be a big killer for some graphics cards in WoW. Have you recently bumped up your resolution in games at all?

just 1920x1080 what I always use, I run with shadows on low-medium

 

[ECA]

Your system should be killing everything, so yeah. Full reinstall and report back, if problems upgrade ram - your motherboard supports 2133, so just replace that see if it's fixed, then go from there.

 

[BloodOmen]

I'll wait, going to get an SSD again regardless I think, seems pointless formatting now only to format again when the SSD arrives think i'll get a new mobo/ram as well and see how it goes, will keep it updated.

 

[caLLous]

Err, why are you doing any of it if numerous people have told you won't see an improvement and after you yourself said you can barely afford it? Get the SSD sure but wait for that to arrive, put Windows on it and you will see a marked improvement. There's no reason for what you have at the moment to be struggling with anything you throw at it other than a bogged down system or maybe some malware or something.

 

[BloodOmen]

Err, why are you doing any of it if numerous people have told you won't see an improvement and after you yourself said you can barely afford it? Get the SSD sure but wait for that to arrive, put Windows on it and you will see a marked improvement. There's no reason for what you have at the moment to be struggling with anything you throw at it other than a bogged down system or maybe some malware or something.

I've had an SSD in it before, the SSD alone isn't going to fix it, trust me.

 

[ECA]

It takes about an hour to clean reinstall using rufus+ iso image. Give it a go you muppet.

 

[BloodOmen]

It takes about an hour to clean reinstall using rufus+ iso image. Give it a go you muppet.

Meh fine I really hate formatting.

 

[caLLous]

That's why your PC is so slow ya dingus.

 

[Gwadien]

I hate formatting, so I'll buy a new PC.