Computer Upgrade (for gaming)

[stuckless]

Once again, I'm using the Sage forums for my Windows Support center

I have a Windows 7 PC that my son uses for games (through Steam). For the most part his steam games run OK (especially if he reduces the graphics settings), but he has a new game, Warhammer 40,000 - Dawn of War 2 - Chaos Rising, and for this game it appear to "lag" to the point where it is not very playable.

For Christmas, he has asked if i could "upgrade" the computer, and I'm thinking that I can probably upgrade the video card, but I'm not sure what kind of video card to buy.

Any other suggestions on how to get the max performance out of this machine?

I've attached some screen shots of the Win 7 performance screen.





Thanks for any help,

Sean.

[Skirge01]

Where's the "off topic" smiley?

I don't game much, but when I intend to buy something (GPU's included), I use MaximumPC's "best of the best" list to get me started down the right path. Then, once I have my price range and GPU brand/generation, I find the noise ratio I'm comfortable with via other sites. I've had very good luck with passive HIS and Sapphire cards, in that regard.

[Dargason]

I usually refer to Tom's Hardware. They maintain a list of the best cards at a given price point, which is useful if you're on a budget. They generally have pretty comprehensive benchmarking for many of the cards as well.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...view,3107.html

FWIW, they also have a list of CPUs when it comes time to replace that.

[stuckless]

Thanks... I'll check out both of those sites... my main concern is also about whether or not the computer is worth upgrading... ie, would a newer decent video card breathe some life into this machine.

[panteragstk]

For gaming, nvidia is always my preference when it comes to gaming. It all depends on your price point as to which video card would be the best.

Anandtech's bench utility is basically a database of benchmarks to show what video cards do well at a given resolution depending on the game. Good way to compare amd vs nvidia as they each come out on top in different games.

[Dargason]

my main concern is also about whether or not the computer is worth upgrading

It depends a lot on how much you expect. Based on your windows experience results, I think you'll see a large benefit from a video card (at least for gaming), and the thing about the video card is that it can easily go into your next PC build. (Assuming you get a PCIe card and the PCIe bus doesn't go away soon)

[Fuzzy]

Kind of hard to say what to get at this point, I mean, it's a broad brush when dealing with video cards (they are pretty much the top item in most gaming rigs). There are plenty who play pretty decent games on the GPU's build into the AMD APU's, and then there are people playing those exact same games with 3 or 4 top end GPU's combined together. It's all a matter of experience expected.

What is the rest of the computer made of? The older Quad core processor in there is only going to feed polygons to the video card at a limited rate, so there's a point where going extreme on the video card front isn't going to net much more experience (though it might allow a bit higher quality settings).

I'd say, looking at a 2 year old game, that any standalone video card of the current generation is going to be adequate (and likely faster than even those recommeded requirements on that game). At this point, I'd look and see what the various online outlets are selling for cheap come next weekend during the sales, and go with that. Just get something that isn't the bottom of the current generation cards, and you are likely to be satisfied. (for reference, though, what GPU is in there now?)

Not knowing what motherboard you have, but you may find huge general system improvements throwing more RAM at it as well... You're already running 64-bit windows, and RAM is incredibly cheap these days. 8GB wouldn't be out of line on any system used for gaming/home use.

[stuckless]

@dargason - I'm not looking at spending a lot on this... I did some quick checking some of the current top end cards are running $1200... That's certainly way more than I'm willing to pay for a piece of hardware so my son can play a game Since this is also his christmas gift... $200 is probably the most that I'm willing to pay for a new graphics card.

@fuzzy - The card that is in there now is probably 3-4 years old and I do recall buying an NVidia (but not sure which model -- i'll check today)... I thought it was a 1gig card, but if I recall I only paid about $60 for it... so it's probably not very good

The issue with this computer is that it doesn't get used very often, and when it does, it's mainly for games. My kids have laptops, which are newer and faster than this computer, but the of course the problem with laptops (or at least these) is that the video card is not upgradeable, and some games (including this one) chugs on it. I looked into external video cards, but I can't really find anything recent. Given the choice I'd rather pay for a video card for the laptop instead of this older computer.

[RedR]

Muhahahah welcome to the zip-bang world of FAST!

Option 1: (Quick, upgrade, cheap, 2ish yrs of cranking the settings in the games)
If the kiddo is not interested in FPS shooters, and only games like Warhammer, then likely a mid-high range video card and RAM upgrade will handle it for now and for the next few years. Use the Toms Hardware link Dargason, it helps make sense of the new model #'s as well keep you in your price window on getting a video card. As well here is a graphics card hierarchy chart http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...view,3107.html you can use to help give you an idea. You'd be amazed how much you can save stepping off a few from the top of the list and still support all the current products (ex DirectX 11).

As Fuzzy mentioned, go more RAM. Its cheap, even high end quality RAM can be found at great sale prices. Assuming you have 2 sticks installed now and room for two more, get at least 8gig, I'd suggest 16gig if the price is right. Save some money and speed match the RAM you have installed now.

Want to spend a little more without a new box? Find a high throuput SSD (500ish MB/s). You can even go with a 120gb drive just for the OS or a data drive that Steam and its games can be installed on. My Steam +game install is currently 220GB with 13ish games installed out of 103 I own on Steam alone.

Option 2: (more research, and more money)
Get a new box. If you have a case, 500-650 watt PSU, and drives, you can cut the cost and/or invest more into the rest.
Windows 7 64bit (and sigh, possibly even buy the upgrade for Windows 8)
Get mid-high end RAM, and at LEAST 2 16gig sticks.
Get a motherboard that supports PCIe 3.0. And at most 2 PCIe 16x slots so he can do Crossfire or SLI in the future if he so desires.
Get a nice 120GB SSD for the OS drive, and at least a 500gb data data drive for games, and whatever else finds the kiddo in the later years.
Get an i5 CPU at the very least. AMD has really dropped the ball the last 2ish years here, although the FX-8350 has a great bang for the buck. Here is a chart based on its review to give ya an idea http://techreport.com/review/23750/a...or-reviewed/14
Get a PSU that is at least 500 watt that has dual rails. This will be a welcome addition as the machine is added to down the road (additional HD's, dual video cards, so on)

Like Fuzzy mentioned, shop around, now is a great time to start findind some kick ass sales on these components. New Egg has daily deals, Fry's has price matching. So do a little reacher either way, and be ready to pounce. Frankly I envy you and the kiddo. Always love researching an upgrade/new box, building it, and most of all the Christmas factor both of yall will be getting from this effort.

Happy hunting!

[stuckless]

@RedR - Thanks for those detailed options. I think my motherboard only support 4 gigs of ram, so maybe I'll just upgrade the 1 extra gig and try to get a decent video card and see how that ends up. (And I'll keep my eyes open for a good black friday deal for a video card)

[ccsmoke]

I recommend having at least a 650 power supply (corsair). The Kepler series of cards will really uncork the machine. (gigabyte 670 2-4gb or 660 series...some have free copy of borderlands 2 which is a nice bonus though comes at a cost. Games like Skyrim use a ton of gpu ram if using the high res packs. Though I have played the game in question on a 5870 with no issues after AMD updated their drivers worked out their cursor issue many revisions ago. Great game btw...love coop games that let you go through the story together.

When looking at frame rates it is best to look at the minimum and the average vs the peak. As long as the minimum is above 30 the game should be lag free. If your not reaching 30 FPS minimum tweaks game settings I generally do are : Turn off bloom, If your running 1920 x 1080 or higher resolution, anti aliasing is not really needed so i start turning that down. If still not reaching it I turn down the shadows from complex to simple. When running a dx 9/dx 10 game/card it is better to run it in dx9. Though upgrading the card you want a dx11 card as tessellation improves the graphics tremendously.

Having an ssd as an os drive and a seperate ssd for games/steam will also give a significate reduction in load times. It also reduces the downtime in reinstalling games.

System ram is always a welcome addition just make sure you using dual or triple channel...whatever your MB supports. Prices on this is very cheap atm.

[SWKerr]

I am getting my son a new graphics card for Christmans as well. He has pretty much gone over to PC Gaming and although the old AMD 5670 does pretty good on must games he does need to reduce setting for some games. Truth be told I am also looking to upgrade my PC as well.

In researching this TomsHardware has the best guide "Best Graphics Cards For The Money"
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...view,3107.html

The good thing about getting a decent graphics card is that it will definitly improve performance and can also be moved to a new PC if necessary. Hard to go wrong getting one and upgrading the PC later.

If you just want to go 1920x1080 then I doubt you need to upgrade anything more than the graphics card. I am leaning toward the AMD 7850. Reasonable heat and power draw so will probably work fine with an existing Power Supply. Should play most games at high quality setting at 1080p. All the Mid-range AMD cards come with at least Far Cry III as well.

The AMD 7870 gets out of your price range and probably would require an upgrade to the PSU.

The AMD 7770 would probably be a good solution as well with no external power connector needed and playable performance on most modern games even at high setting.

Gaming is mostly the Video Card. The CPU can make a difference to some extent but that is really in the FPS ego area. The playable frame rate at medium and high setting is what is important.

Often overlooked is the Monitor. Even if you don't want 3d a 120gz monitor makes a big difference to me. (But... even the AMD 7770 will drive a 120ghz monitory ok)

I can't say I have read anything that says in the sub $200 category that nVidia is competitive.

Note:
Added a 128GB SSD to my son's PC not long ago. Make sure you do not let Steam install to the SSD. It will only install games to one drive and we ran out of space on the SSD pretty quick. Had to uninstall Steam and re-install all the games on a separate drive. Can't say he noticed any difference in performance when we moved them to an old 500GB mechanical drive but that may be the Video Cards limits.

[RedR]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

Had to uninstall Steam and re-install all the games on a separate drive. Can't say he noticed any difference in performance when we moved them to an old 500GB mechanical drive but that may be the Video Cards limits.

FYI, you can just copy the Steam directory (and all games within) to your new location, then uninstall Steam. Now install Steam to the new location. It will not see the installed games by default. Just pick Install for that game from the Steam Library. When it starts to install, it'll see its already there thus go onto validate it, and walaa its installed!! No need to redownload it. This also works from computer to computer. I do this all the time for my main game box and laptop for just the games in Steam.

[Dargason]

@dargason - I'm not looking at spending a lot on this... I did some quick checking some of the current top end cards are running $1200...

Yikes... I hope I didn't link to the expensive cards. There are cards for $100 that will be a big upgrade over what you probably have.

I think you are smart in not going crazy on upgrades for that computer. You will probably want to upgrade the cpu/memory/motherboard before too long as what you have is pretty dated already. My point is that a graphics card can probably get you the performance boost you need to delay that for a while, and if you still aren't happy, the money you spent on the card won't have been wasted if you get a PCIe card.

[silkshadow]

I Steam game a lot and the last few years I've been using ATI/AMD cards because they are better at the top end. However, over the past few years I've run into problems with some games and ATI drivers and I've seen far less issues with Nvidia's drivers (still see issues though) in the gaming forums. So if you are just starting on this path, I'd say go with Nvidia. Especially since its for your son and you probably don't want to have to deal with a ton of tweaking to get games working right.

Ok gaming is all about the FPS. More ram will not get you that especially on an x86 system (you mentioned 4GB max?). If you want better gaming, your son knows what he is about, performance is all about the video card. FPS starts with the gaming resolution. We, ideally, want to game at our primary monitor's maximum resolution. This scales with the video card. Higher gaming resolution and you need a better graphics card.

If Warhammer 2, good game BTW, is the main game your son will play, you don't need too much. Its a lower demand game. On the other hand if he is going to want to play something like Skyrim, then beef is needed. You can make almost any game perform better, even on low end cards, by changing the graphics settings. Turn off or lower effects. Fraps will tell you what FPS you get in game and you can keep tuning the settings till you get a playable FPS.

SWKerr covered AMD, so I'll do Nvidia. I have to say I am going off of what I read and my experience with gaming performance. I do not have any of these cards.

You can get a GTX 650 Ti 1GB for under $140 today. This is an ok card. Be careful as there are a couple variants of the 650 and the 'Ti' is the one for gaming. Target with this card is 720p gaming, you can do 1680 x 1050 with some hit and miss, you will have to tweak settings to get some games playable. At 1080p, things get rough and high demand games will be almost completely unplayable. Warhammer 2 should do fine though, even be playable at 1080p.

The next jump up is at around $250. This is where Nvidia always excels over AMD. AMD gets the top end but Nvidia usually delivers the best price/performance at the $250 range. From what I have read, his holds true today. You have a few choices at this range. A 660 2GB or add $30 to get the 'Ti', then you also have the top end of the older gen 5 series is available. I really don't like going back a generation, as new games will take advantage of new features in current gen cards, so sometimes a lower end new gen card will perform a ton better than old gen.

The 660 is a great price/performance choice. Really, this is what I'd recommend for a kid about to get into gaming as this card *should* stand the test of time for a few of years. If your son gets a 2560x1600 monitor down the line, he can just buy a second one and SLI. It will handle 1080p gaming for many games and will do great at lower resolutions for everything but the most demanding games, which can be made playable by tweaking the settings.

Other things to add, enable beta in Steam and there should be a 10foot interface client available. My Xbox is now cold as this makes living room PC gaming workable. Cloud gaming is all the rage now. I don't like it myself but it makes high graphics demanding games playable on almost all systems. Another thing to consider with Black Friday upon you in the US is there are these SSD swap drives which use a small cheap SSD and windows software for caching. The reviews on this for gaming are generally favorable. I don't have one myself but I can say that going SSD has made my gaming performance much better in terms of load up times. Video card upgrade is still needed for FPS though.

[stuckless]

See I knew asking my sage peeps for hardware/windows support was the right decision You guys really know your hardware.

My son is already pretty good at adjusting video setting to get most games to work well, which is good, because I think just about every game requires some tweaking... and he's now passing that knowledge unto my other son as well

What I still find frustrating about all this is that the when I do a search for a particular card, for example the "Radeon HD 7850 1G", I get back several results and the price ranges from $186 to $225?? (Candadian... on TigerDirect.ca). The same is true for the "GTX 650 ti" except the pricing is much lower, ranging from the $149 to $201. I think I'm going to keep an eye out for both of these cards over the next week to see what happens (many times in Canada, they off Black Friday deals to compare with US online and border crossing shopping). Are both of these cards in the same performance range? If so, when shopping for either of these, does it really matter who makes it? ie, I see the GTX is made by Asus, MSi, EVGA, Zotac, etc.

[stuckless]

BTW... I think @fuzzy asked what I currently had for a graphics card... it's an ATI Radeon 2400 PRO.

[silkshadow]

Sorry I forgot that US sales don't always cross over to Canada. Between those two chips get the 7850, its far better in everything except power consumption (consumes about 50 more watts).

Yeah the whole pricing and branding is extremely confusing. Video cards are always the main topic of conversation in hardware gaming forums because of this.

It worth looking for an HD 7850 roundup to figure out which is the better end product but the difference between brands are build, support, cooling and software. Also some cards come factory overclocked, but I think your son will have more fun OCing the card himself, I know I do .

Just checking out Newegg.ca, this for $189 but the 2GB version is a better option for only $10 more. Again, I suggest you check out reviews, but Gigabyte makes good video cards and have a good response time for warranties (though I am in Asia). The other brands I like are MSI and EVGA. XFX is iffy I;ve had good and bad experiences with them, HIS is getting better but I could never recommend them, Asus is good but always overpriced, and avoid Sparkle like the plague.

[Fuzzy]

The major differences between cards of the same GPU, and what causes the price spread, are the memory used, and the cooling system employed. I haven't bought a discrete video card in some time (actually happy with my A8-3850's built-in GPU right now), but of the brands I've watched, it seems Gigabyte and eVGA seem to have the most consistently good reviews.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by silkshadow

Sorry I forgot that US sales don't always cross over to Canada. Between those two chips get the 7850, its far better in everything except power consumption (consumes about 50 more watts).

Yeah the whole pricing and branding is extremely confusing. Video cards are always the main topic of conversation in hardware gaming forums because of this.

It worth looking for an HD 7850 roundup to figure out which is the better end product but the difference between brands are build, support, cooling and software. Also some cards come factory overclocked, but I think your son will have more fun OCing the card himself, I know I do .

Just checking out Newegg.ca, this for $189 but the 2GB version is a better option for only $10 more. Again, I suggest you check out reviews, but Gigabyte makes good video cards and have a good response time for warranties (though I am in Asia). The other brands I like are MSI and EVGA. XFX is iffy I;ve had good and bad experiences with them, HIS is getting better but I could never recommend them, Asus is good but always overpriced, and avoid Sparkle like the plague.

Thanks... I'll keep my eye on that one over next couple of weeks (see if newegg.ca will do some black friday deals... who knows... and if not, then I'll pick up the $199 one.

Thanks to you Fuzzy for explaining the better choices in brands... it's pretty overwhelming I used to be a "hardware" guy, but I just can't keep up any more