Hardware upgrade advice

[emjay144]

I've been holding off on starting a run of SE for a while now. Partly in (vain?) hopes of SKSE releasing sometime before the next ice age, but mostly because I want to upgrade my PC and play in 1440p - not just for Skyrim, but for a few other games as well. Trouble is, with gpu prices all messed up right now, I'm really struggling about whether to upgrade now and if so, what to upgrade to.

 

Here's my current pc specs:

Windows 10 64

Intel Core i5-4690

16gb ram

GTX 970

Gaming on a 4k tv, so refresh rates above 60hz is irrelevant

 

Ideally I'd like to upgrade to a 1070. However knowing that those cards are all way overpriced right now makes me hesitate. I can afford one, but I hate buying something I know is at an inflated price. I could get a 1080 but it's just more than I really need. I'm not considering Vega cards at all right now.

 

Any advice? Bite the bullet, or hold off until the prices drop, or hold off even longer until the next gpu cycle and go full 4k? I know there's always going to be something better just around the corner, but this is a really crappy time to be in the market for a graphics card.

 

[LeddBate]

Well, my rig is:

i5-3570K (goosed up from 3.4 GHz to 4.2GHz utilizing my mobo's UEFI and stress-tested with Prime95)

8GB of RAM

GTX 980 4GB of VRAM

 

But I'm only gaming on a 32" 2K at 1080p. So it's not too surprising that I can get 60+ FPS even with texture heavy mods installed.

 

Since your CPU isn't a "K" model, I guess you can only turbo up to 3.9GHz. However, the real issue is the GPU, as you well know. My last upgrade was from a GTX 670. Which had a monstrous effect on my graphics. I also got lucky in that I was able to snag a basic 980 for $249 right after the 10-series hit the market. But, yeah, GPU prices aren't really budging right now. Kind of surprising. Usually there's enough after-market manufacturing saturation by this point to drive prices down. Looks like EVGA, ASUS, Zoltac and others are dragging their feet a bit compared to the last couple of GPU production/sales cycles. Nvidia DID mention a price drop on the standard (non-ti) cards, particularly the 1080 this Spring -but I certainly don't see any sub-$500 1080s out there. (Or for that matter, very few sub-$550 ones.) But you said 1070 is your preference. But they seem to be in the same static boat, running between $450 to $490 depending on the model. There's a few out there running around $400, but they're very hard to find them in stock as you can imagine. It looks from all the blah-blah on the various on-line tech mags that a price drop in the 10 series is coming, but probably won't really set in until after the end of the year. Of course, by then we'll probably being drooling over the specs of the impending 11 series...

 

tl:dr;

Probably no significant price drop (except for sales just after the holidays) until the end of the year. If you can't wait that long, my advice is to bite the bullet. However, I'd also recommend a 1080 over a 1070. Not because there's anything wrong with the 1070 (it's the best bang-for-the-buck out there IMO) -it's that you already have a 970. So a 1080 seems like a better upgrade for you (again, IMO.) I've no experience with 4K, so I cannot offer you informed advice about whether to wait for the 11 series or not in that regard. Sorry.

[emjay144]

Well, my rig is:

i5-3570K (goosed up from 3.4 GHz to 4.2GHz utilizing my mobo's UEFI and stress-tested with Prime95)

8GB of RAM

GTX 980 4GB of VRAM

 

But I'm only gaming on a 32" 2K at 1080p. So it's not too surprising that I can get 60+ FPS even with texture heavy mods installed.

 

Since your CPU isn't a "K" model, I guess you can only turbo up to 3.9GHz. However, the real issue is the GPU, as you well know. My last upgrade was from a GTX 670. Which had a monstrous effect on my graphics. I also got lucky in that I was able to snag a basic 980 for $249 right after the 10-series hit the market. But, yeah, GPU prices aren't really budging right now. Kind of surprising. Usually there's enough after-market manufacturing saturation by this point to drive prices down. Looks like EVGA, ASUS, Zoltac and others are dragging their feet a bit compared to the last couple of GPU production/sales cycles. Nvidia DID mention a price drop on the standard (non-ti) cards, particularly the 1080 this Spring -but I certainly don't see any sub-$500 1080s out there. (Or for that matter, very few sub-$550 ones.) But you said 1070 is your preference. But they seem to be in the same static boat, running between $450 to $490 depending on the model. There's a few out there running around $400, but they're very hard to find them in stock as you can imagine. It looks from all the blah-blah on the various on-line tech mags that a price drop in the 10 series is coming, but probably won't really set in until after the end of the year. Of course, by then we'll probably being drooling over the specs of the impending 11 series...

 

tl:dr;

Probably no significant price drop (except for sales just after the holidays) until the end of the year. If you can't wait that long, my advice is to bite the bullet. However, I'd also recommend a 1080 over a 1070. Not because there's anything wrong with the 1070 (it's the best bang-for-the-buck out there IMO) -it's that you already have a 970. So a 1080 seems like a better upgrade for you (again, IMO.) I've no experience with 4K, so I cannot offer you informed advice about whether to wait for the 11 series or not in that regard. Sorry.

Thanks for the input. For me it's less a matter of "need" than of "want" at this point. Silly thing to be complaining about, I suppose. But it does make it harder to justify a rash decision. On the other hand, I could wait forever, but that's no fun :confused:

[kthompsen]

I'm doing fine with a 1060 (though to be fair I don't game in 1440 often), but I'd personally hold it for a 1080 price drop if you can. Ryzen/Vega will eventually force Intel/Nvidia to do so.