Upgrade time
My computer has started acting like a chump so I decided to get some new parts. I mainly need help choosing a video card which is the main thing I need to replace but I'll take suggestions for other parts too. The card I have right now is a Radeon 5800 and I'd like to get something just a bit better that's not crazy expensive. I'm replacing my case, motherboard, video card, and CPU. So far this is what I think I'm going to get.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129021
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113286
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514
Thoughts?
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Comments
Great picks so far. A small suggestion would be that you could get ~11% faster CPU for $20 by going to the FX-6350, which bumps you into the "second tier" on the list below.
These are my go-to links for checking out the performance "tier" I should expect vs price points. Note these are links to direct articles for May, so it won't be accurate into the future.
Tom's CPU
Tom's GPU (check out the dropdown for price point breakdowns on both of these)
From that, best under $200 is likely to be R9 270 - $180 after $10 rebate
Did you have a budget in mind for the overall build or the video card by itself?
Radeon 9800 Pro. That's like 4000 upgrades from your 5800, right?
I mean, you still have AGP, right?
Any radeon more than $149 will be faster than what you have now.
I suggest picking up a 280X or 7970 on eBay.
I found the R9 270 Tushon linked on eBay for $119. Will the fact that the motherboard uses PCI express 2.0 and the card is 3.0 be a problem?
No.
No the the card will be backwards compatable.
If I'm looking at the Tom's charts correctly, it almost seems as though getting recent AMD tech compared with my 4-5year old AMD machine (Phenom 1090T BE, 6870) wouldn't net me much benefit?
Also, it makes me think it would be worth getting the old 4870 x2 working again.
I wouldn't trust the charts to provide performance increases from tier to tier in the way you're looking. They just group similar level items together to give you a general idea. My decision process usually goes "does my computer do what I want?" > where is the bottleneck? > check out current competition.
Check out the Memorial Day SALE page. You can also just click on the "EMAIL DEALS" tab at the top of the newegg home page.
I checked on that last night and found I can knock $40 off the price of my items so far. $20 of that came from changing to the processor Tushon linked which cost $20 more in the first place so free upgrade which I can't argue with. I ordered the R9 270 last night and plan to order the rest today but one last question.
With the promo codes on Newegg right now I can save another $50 if I go with this motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128651&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL052014&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL052014-_
instead of this one I was looking at originally
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514
I can't see a huge difference in the two and wonder if it's actually worth it to pay the extra $50.
I would stick with the 990FXA. It's a generally more robust chipset, especially if you intend to overclock.
New computer on the way. Thanks for the advice. Saved $119 by checking eBay (which I hadn't thought of) and looking up promocodes. That's basically getting the videocard for free.
Did you buy an extra video card with that money? Because if not, you should just set that cash on fire right now.
Will it give me blast processing?
In all seriousness, there are considerations with going to dual cards that people should take into account before doing so.
Did this once. Would not do again.
I've always just bought a more powerful single card and called it a day.
Yup. Would recommend.
I may consider dual cards someday but it seems unnecessary and complicated. Maybe if I ever get to a point where I can afford and want/need to support two monitors. I would like to have such a setup someday but it would be entirely a luxury.
I am also not actually recommending a second card. I was just being silly.
I assumed as much. I still set all the money I saved on fire. Tell your soon future waifu I did it for the lulz.
It's not a difficult thing to have dual, triple, or quad GPUs in a system. In fact, I've had predominantly good experiences with such setups. Every once in a while something doesn't work as expected (Titanfall before recent patches), but it's not as frequent as the internet echo chamber might lead you to believe. The biggest issue is diminishing returns beyond two GPUs.
That being said, single GPU systems are much more simple to troubleshoot should something go sideways.
There aren't diminishing returns if you're driving resolutions large enough to require such horsepower: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/05/13/amd_radeon_r9_295x2_xfx_290x_dd_trifire_review#.U3386PkhA0s
So I got everything installed today except for the video card which I should have tomorrow. For now I have my old card installed. Hit the power button, case fans run fine, heatsink fan does nothing, power supply fan runs ok for a few seconds before turning off or becoming so slow that I can't even feel the air it's moving. Windows tries to launch but keeps restarting before it even gets to the password screen. I can get into the bios but with the problems my video card is having at the default resolution I can't tell what anything I'm looking at is. Rechecked all the connections and can't find a problem. I'm guessing the power supply is insufficient (3 year old 850 watt). Any other thoughts?
Windows reinstall time. Probably windows and not hardware this time.
PSUs, modern ones, power up their fans high for a bit then if things are cool they power down low or off. if the CPU heatsink fan does nothing, check its connection. Should power up then power down low if case is cool. Again, modern machines are conserving power compared to even 3-5 year old machines.
I was planning to format the SSD with Windows on it tomorrow and reinstall everything but I can't see how upgrading the hardware would cause windows to suddenly fail. I'll check the fan connections again. Now that I think of it my CPU heatsink has two fans and the motherboard only has enough fan connectors for me to plug one of them in. Four fan connectors in total, 3 of them are going to fans installed on the case and 1 to the heatsink. Maybe both fans need to be connected for either to work?
Ummm, Motherboard changeouts cause Windows to suddenly have a massive mess of the wrong drivers, and it safeties. People were imaging windows installs onto new machines, Microsoft caught on, and proceeded to make it nigh on impossible to fix that without reinstalling. I hope you have Win 7 64 bit Pro or Win 8, the newer motherboards and chipsets and BIOSs need 64 bit Windows.
Got the new video card this morning. Tore the whole thing apart again and put it all back together. I found two problems with what I did yesterday. The one heatsink fan I plugged in was only connected to 2 of the 3 pins on the motherboard, I disconnected on of the case fans and plugged the second heatsink fan into it. They both work now. Looking at the power supply fan I realized that when I took the blade cover off yesterday to clean it out I screwed it back on upside down like an idiot so that it was physically pressing down on the fan blade. Took it off, flipped it over, fan runs fine. Everything is detected and working but windows is still being a chump so I'm working on reinstalling it now. Here's the really funny part though. I decided to go ahead and put this together because I was sure the video card was dying. After I got everything running and got into the bios I see that the screen issues are still there, sooooooo I'm thinking it might actually be my monitor that's going out. Awesome.
Well, other than video card, cable and/or video converter (the thing that converts video signal, not the video card, if any converter is used) can go bad after a time, and monitor can still be ok.