Advice for upgrading PC

[obobski]

 

 

Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 - $60 - plenty of airflow and a decent amount of space for future upgrades

PSU: XFX Core Edition 550 Pro, full wired - $61 - quality SeaSonic-made unit, offers plenty of upgrade room (won't run CF/SLI but will power any single-card configuration, and you can't even have CF/SLI on that crap of a mobo).

Graphics card: ASUS GTX 660 - $220 - The EVGA superclocked Rennn mentioned is 3% faster while using a reference cooling solution (reference cooling sucks), ASUS GTX 660 is one of the best 660s around for the price point, runs cool and quiet and overclocks great to boot.

 

In case you want to spend $320 on the card alone, there's only one candidate in that price range - Gigabyte Windforce GTX 760, you're $20-25 short of the 770 ($340), has same clocks as that EVGA Rennn mentioned but runs cooler and can overclock better cause of that.

 

Has 4GB VRAM, people seem to worship VRAM for some reason, the 2GB model will perform the same for $40 less cause 760 is too slow to utilize 4GB VRAM. That amount of memory on a 760 is only useful for GPGPU workloads and multi-monitor setups (3 and up, on which 760 can't run games well anyway).

 

 

All excellent suggestions, as well.

 

Buy yeah, 4GB of VRAM is nearly useless. I only recommended that because *technically* Skyrim can use 3GB of RAM, meaning 3GB is also mirrored into VRAM on DX9. People claim to get performance returns from above 2GB on a 760 when they use ridiculous amounts of HD textures in Skyrim. Not sure if it's true, but that was also one of the only overclocked 760s I could find so I suggested it. The 760 you recommended would almost certainly perform better.

 

 

You've got that backwards. Skyrim can use up to 3GB of system memory (with IMAGE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE and 4GT configured under 32-bit Windows; under 64-bit Windows the same will allow up to 4GB (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx)), but the overall application system memory footprint is NOT duplicated in VRAM. What is loaded into VRAM must, however, be backed by system memory under DX9 (and older). VRAM holds things the GPU chews on - not the entire application (that's what the system memory is for). You do not need more VRAM to allow the application to consume a lot of system memory; you do need a lot of system memory to let the application consume a lot of VRAM.

 

Here's a comparison between 2GB and 4GB GTX 770s:

http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/

 

The 4GB card does nothing but cost more and look slick.

 

Werne is absolutely right - there is no reason to need 4GB of VRAM unless you're doing GPU computing or workstation applications; for the most part even 1GB is entirely sufficient for Skyrim, as long as the GPU behind it is up to the task (as a random example, the HD 5870). But marketers have ostensibly "won the hearts and minds" of customers, and now we've got all sorts of hooplah about how 2-3-4GB is required just to browse the web, run an HD monitor on the desktop, etc. It has truly gotten out of hand...

 

 

Something that I noticed in the first post: the system as-is has mismatched memory modules, so it almost certainly is not utilizing dual channel RAM. Might be worth taking a look at, long term, especially if the motherboard is being replaced. the "fix" is to have equal DIMMs in each channel, and it will increase overall memory bandwidth. Replacing the graphics card is a much more important task at the present time, but the memory configuration would be a "next up" upgrade if it were me.

 

The point about "other TES games" also seemed a bit pertinent to address - in general if it can run Skyrim, it will run Oblivion and Morrowind better (because they have lower overall system requirements and are less complex). However that doesn't mean that Morrowind will magically become a model citizen and close its memory holes and run stable, or that some of the biggest/most ambitious mods for Oblivion won't still grind things to a halt because the engine just doesn't want to draw 400 NPCs all in one cell or deal with moving references or whatever else. Point is - yes you can (and should) upgrade, and yes you will realize considerable performance improvements, but some mods just wreck performance and the titles do have limits to what they'll handle smoothly. Just food for thought.