Need help with a slight upgrade

Gimaru

Gimaru

New member
So I bought myself a decent rig recently and having loved it so far, I want more ram. A lot of it, I mean, why not? Would I be able to upgrade from my 4gb ram to say around 16gb, with the proper motherboard? I see on Sybaretic you can get 16gb DDR3 1600 for around R1100.

No idea what motherboard to get though, something with 4 ram slots at around R900? I'm not really keen on upgrading anything else at the moment, because I'm not going to go over my budget. Current specs are:

Phenom 2 x4 965 3.4ghz
4gb DDR3 1600 RAM
Radeon HD 5770

My budget is roughly R2000, nothing over. Would a massive injection of ram do the trick for gaming?

Any suggestions what I should/n't do? My knowledge on hardware is a bit lacking.

I'm much too impatient to "save up more and get this and that" btw :P
 
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Gimaru said:
So I bought myself a decent rig recently and having loved it so far, I want more ram. A lot of it, I mean, why not? Would I be able to upgrade from my 4gb ram to say around 16gb, with the proper motherboard? I see on Sybaretic you can get 16gb DDR3 1600 for around R1100.

No idea what motherboard to get though, something with 4 ram slots at around R900? I'm not really keen on upgrading anything else at the moment, because I'm not going to go over my budget. Current specs are:

Phenom 2 x4 965 3.4ghz
4gb DDR3 1600 RAM
Radeon HD 5770

My budget is roughly R2000, nothing over. Would a massive injection of ram do the trick for gaming?

Any suggestions what I should/n't do? My knowledge on hardware is a bit lacking.

I'm much too impatient to "save up more and get this and that" btw :P
Click to expand...

Yeah ram will help but it won't be as noticeable as what you are hoping. I wouldn't do it since the weak point is the cpu then followed by the gpu. Ram is cheap, probably always will be so don't worry.
If you have a motherboard already I would sell the 5770 and get a 7850...
 
If you really need to upgrade ram, try to keep it low, and save up for a new rig, its usually not worth upgrading something old.
 
Not looking to buy a new rig right now, I'm pretty content with it, just a bit more speed would be good. Have gotten advice to perhaps rather buy a 1 grand SSD HD, and a 1 grand external HD for excess.

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get a new graphics card, the 7 series radeons are pretty damn impressive compared to the 5 and 6 series cards. To be honest your cpu is still Fine in my opinion i still have a 945 phenom II at home and it can play 99% of new games @ max detail. buy the graphics card and another 4 gigs of ram as ram are pretty damn cheap these days.
 
i have a similar rig and i just got myself a 7850 for R2500.pretty sure if you browse enough classifieds you can find a 2nd hand one for cheaper.but basically there is not point in upgrading your ram/getting more of it.@ stock clocks 1600mhz wont bottleneck it at all.best thing to do would be to sell your 5770 and get a 7850.they can overclock to approx 580/7950 speeds and are the best value for money at the moment in my opinion check this link and youll see what im talking about
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18389760
 
Speed in games are one of two suspects usually - Loading speed, and playing speed. For loading speed (both between levels and within levels as areas are loading), I suggest the SSD. They are lighting fast, and any Generation 3 SSD will help hugely (and live long time). For playing speed, its either graphics card or CPU. If you turn down the graphics and play the game, and its runs faster/smoother, then its your graphics card. Otherwise its your CPU.
 
Selling my OCZ Vertex 2 90GB SSD if you are interested :P

Otherwise get 16gb of RAM and disable page file. What I did.
 
Cheers for the replies. I have decided to bite the bullet and save up another 2 grand and just then get a graphics card (and upgrade to 8gb ram after).

One I'm considering is the HD7870, would that be the best for that price range?

Though this might piss on my parade, I only have a 550w power supply. Would that suffice for the HD7870?
 
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Theres an excellent PSU calculator in the sticky in this forum. Use that to calculate your power requirements. Also remember, that PSU's get less efficient over time, so you'll want to have some extra wattage to spare, especially if your PSU is a few years old.
 
Tried it last night and it showed bunch of 400w psu's as result. If I did it right anyway, think I should be sorted.

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7870 is a waste.once overclocked properly there is just a 6-8% difference between 7850 and 7870 because of the extra shaders etc.personally i favour the sapphire 7850(the oc version is exactly the same with minor oc) get 2 fans for decent cooling and can get it for under R2700..where the 7870 is like R3500 cheapest..extra 20% money for 6-8% performance=waste of money for gamers on a budget
 
I'm a bit torn now though between waiting and getting a 7850/70 or waiting quite a bit longer and getting a 7950. Hmm

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check out the link i posted to see potential overclocks and it should rule out the 7870 for you.then its narrowed down to 7850 or 7950..if the 7950 has 3gb.then it would be more future proof..but by the stage its needed im sure this generation will be old news..
 
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