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$220 budget. Need help deciding what to do with it

Otimus

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So, I more or less have a budget of $220 right now free (Sold an MMO game account of mine, and the money now only resides in my paypal) Anyways, if you need to know my current PC, it's a 280X, 8GB of RAM, a 2500K overclocked to 4.5 Ghz, a 700W PSU, and a 1.5TB HDD. I game at 1080p/60Hz. As far as it should be concerned, all I really do with my PC is gaming, and anything I need is gaming performance. If it matters, too, I do live in the hellish heat of southern Georgia, so, if anything at all pertains to reducing heat, that might would be a good thing! Anyways, basically, what I'm wondering is, is would it be worth it to sell my current videocard, the 280X, and get a GTX 970, R9 390, or something similar. (I'd greatly prefer going back to Nvidia (Especially now that they're giving away MGSV for free, a game I was going to buy anyways.), but I'm open to other suggestions if the performance is there). If I sold my 280X, I'd get about $120+, which would give me a bit over $300 to spend on a new GPU. Or -- would it be better to just stick with what I have for now, and get like, an SSD or something? (I do not have an SSD). In any event, I'd be open to hearing all kinds of suggestions of what to do here.
If it matters, I'm currently playing The Witcher 3 and GTA V. I also play BF4. If need be, this is my steam library: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Otimus/games/?tab=all

Thanks for the help!
 
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The 970 sounds like a solid choice if you can find a buyer for the 280x.
 
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I think a Hawaii chip (290/290x, 390/390x) or 970 is a very solid upgrade idea. Hawaii may be a better value, 970 obviously uses less power. Both are perfect for your use, and I would check misc forums (ex: [H]) to see what you could find used. Never know, you might find a great deal that even surpasses the pack-in of MGS.

I also think it is 1000% worth squeezing in an SSD, even a cheap one. While I've been using them for years, I can't ever imagine going back (as a primary system drive)...and it pains me when I have to fix someone's (usually laptop) with a HDD. It will change your world. Not only for gaming, but also for general desktop use. A good 240-256GB (Crucial/Samsung) drive shouldn't run you more than $100, and again, many can be found for a steal used on FS forums/ebay.
 

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SSD seriously get one ...
 
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If it matters, too, I do live in the hellish heat of southern Georgia, so, if anything at all pertains to reducing heat, that might would be a good thing!
And the room your computer sits in is NOT air conditioned? The heat outdoors is not important. It is the ambient (room) temperature that matters. I've lived and much of my family still lives in the deep south and the ACs go on early in the Spring through late Fall. If your room is not air conditioned, then you can get a really nice little 5000-6000BTU Energy Star rated window AC, with remote control :) for less than $200.

If your room is air conditioned, then I agree that an SSD is the way to go. And if you replace a hard drive with it, since SSDs are more efficient, both the SSD and your PSU will produce less heat than if running a HD.
 
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You need more than $300 to actually get an upgrade from your 280X. $300 will get you an R9 380, not much of an upgrade from the 280X. Get you a nice SSD with plenty of room, save what money is left and continue to save for a GPU upgrade. Think around the GTX 970/R9 390 for a noticeable upgrade from the 280X.
 

Otimus

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And the room your computer sits in is NOT air conditioned? The heat outdoors is not important. It is the ambient (room) temperature that matters. I've lived and much of my family still lives and the ACs go on early in the Spring through late Fall. If your room is not air conditioned, then you can get a really nice little 5000-6000BTU Energy Star rated window AC, with remote control :) for less than $200.

If your room is air conditioned, then I agree that an SSD is the way to go. And if you replace a hard drive with it, since SSDs are more efficient, both the SSD and your PSU will produce less heat than if running a HD.
hahahahaha Yeah, it's air conditioned. But every little bit helps!
 
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Otimus

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I'd say come up with some kind of cooling for your card and chip.
$170 will provide a complete bong cooler with cpu-only loop.
To add GPU all you need is 2-splitters,a block and some tubing.
http://www.overclock.net/t/1503843/my-bong-cooler-build-log-evaporative-cooling/0_100]
I use 48-qt cooler for a res.

OR an SSD and some kind of aftermarket air-cooling for GPU/CPU.
I could send you enough RAMsinks for your card for about $5
It'd keep me from stepping on them barefooted. :mad:
owch!
hahaha, I think I overstated the importance of heat/cooling. I just meant having a device that ran cooler would be a good thing than one that ran hotter. But it's not that big of a deal.


Anyways, guys
I guess right now, my main decisions are going to be either

A) Sell 280X, get a GTX 970
or
B) Buy a 2-3TB HDD and a 256GB Samsung SSD

Decisions, decisions...
 
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GTX970 cost $450 new
 
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I've seen 970s recently for $300 too, just keep checking and sign up for Newegg email promos.

A bigger hard drive and SSD are nice and all, but the reality is, a 280x is getting long in the tooth anymore even for 1080p, so the 970 is the only option that really does a gaming specific upgrade well. And that's coming from someone on a 7970, pretty much same as 280x. A 970 is at least 50% more powerful, it would make quite a difference in power hungry games.
 
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well damn, why didn't they show up when I searched PC Part Picker for the 970. They are there now, so......
 

Otimus

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I'm starting to think maybe I should just up my budget, get a GTX 970 and maybe a smaller (120GB or so?) SSD.
 
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I'm starting to think maybe I should just up my budget, get a GTX 970 and maybe a smaller (120GB or so?) SSD.
Sounds like a plan to me.
 
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SSD seriously get one ...

Here's the thing with SSDs, and I say this because a friend that blew through some money real fast and actually went in debt severely now wants me to do the cheapest upgrade I can for him..

A drive now a days, just like CPU, MB and RAM, are almost part of a core platform due to the new fast ones requiring proper connectivity to get anywhere near the rated speed out of them.

I know what it's like myself to have a SATA III SSD throttled down severely due to lack of a decent SATA III controller. My P6X58D-E was considered a good MB on it's debut, but it's Marvel SATA III controller is garbage compared to the Intel ones that followed.

On my next platform upgrade I'm going to be damn sure I get a MB with ultra M.2 x4 speed. It's looking like AsRock is ahead of everyone else on such features, esp for the price they're charging on current models that have it.

You can get a 128GB M.2 Pci Ex 3 Samsung SSD for $110 right now and it's speeds are 2150 read and 1500 write, and it's boot ready if you know how to configure it, but you need ultra M.2 x4, which makes direct use of CPU lanes vs robbing SATA III port bandwidth, to really make full use of it's speed. Even then you're left with only 16 lanes on a Z170 MB, so no SLI/Xfire.

Hadn't planned on dual graphics anyway, but I would like to see more lanes on budget platforms so you can run an Ultra M.2 OS platform AND dual graphics, just in case you get the itch to prolong your platform with dual graphics.

To put things into perspective, Windows mounted on an SSD that fast using an ultra M.2 x4 port will boot up in about 10 seconds.
 
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If you get an SSD get a big enough one for BF4 and GTA V at least 256. Loading those big maps with an SSD is amazing

Fill in your specs
 
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Well, Getting a SSD is a big deal. it speeds up your boot, softwares, setups, copy pasting and loading games. @1080p R9 280X is very good. you can run many games (with a little customization and OC) @ 60 FPS. upgrade your GPU later in 2016 and get a SSD. Samsung Evo 850 will be a good choice.
 

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Once you've had a SSD 530 from Intel, 2 x 850 EVOs from Samsung, a MX100 from Crucial, a SP610 from ADATA, and even just a generic budget SSD from Sandisk like I have, you'll find yourself cringing at the boot-up and response times of an HDD-only system. Make the jump. You won't regret it. You really don't need to get one of those fancy PCIe SSDs; the recent 850 EVO prices should be a good indicator of SATA3 SSDs beginning to make their mark on HDD territory.

@Frag Maniac has a point, except Win10 seems to have changed things up a bit. Boot times are a few seconds longer due to this weird waiting time after typing in the password and hitting enter. A greater than 2X the price premium for a XP941 over a BX100 isn't exactly worth it, and PCIe SSDs are bound to get better and cheaper.

The R9 280X is not efficient, and nor is it the fastest graphics card that money can buy. But if my R7 265 is of any indication, performance on the 280X can only get better from just moving on to Windows 10 and Win10-certified drivers. Don't throw away the money on a graphics card and have to scrape by with an HDD-only system in 2015.
 
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Well, Getting a SSD is a big deal. it speeds up your boot, softwares, setups, copy pasting and loading games.
Once you've had a SSD ... even just a generic budget SSD ... you'll find yourself cringing at the boot-up and response times of an HDD-only system.
I agree with both of the above. Even the slowest, budget SSD provides significant and very noticeable overall performance gains compared to even the fastest hard drives - even hybrid HDs.

I see no reason to build or buy a new computer today with HDs - except maybe with a large HD as a secondary drive to use for backing up the primary drive, and/or for mass storage of large "static" files (tunes, videos, and - again - backup image files).

And to be sure, it is not just boot and reboot times - which are awesome, no doubt. But virtually every aspect of your computing if faster too.

As an example, I have a 57 page "living" MS Word document that I have been using for over 10 years that contains all my canned texts and links and reference information I use on a daily basis as I "work the forums". It contains text, active crosslink fields, headers/footers, hyperlinks, tables, and images. I say "living" because I am constantly updating it, adding links, changing references (to add W10 stuff for example), and so forth.

Windows, MS Office and this document are stored on my [now aging] Samsung 840 Pro 256Gb SSD.

I have a shortcut to this Word doc on my Quicklaunch taskbar. Without any exaggeration, I look down to center the mouse pointer over the shortcut icon, click, then look up to see Word has loaded and the 57 page doc is already opened and waiting for me! It amazes me every time. I built this computer for W8 in Oct 2012 and I am still amazed at the performance due to having a SSD instead of a HD.

Yeah, SSDs still cost more, but spread that cost over the life of the computer and you are talking pennies per month - many of which you will recoup in lower energy and cooling costs compared to the more power hungry, heat producing HD.

I will NEVER go back to HDs for my boot or application drives. Never!
 
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hahaha, I think I overstated the importance of heat/cooling. I just meant having a device that ran cooler would be a good thing than one that ran hotter. But it's not that big of a deal.


Anyways, guys
I guess right now, my main decisions are going to be either

A) Sell 280X, get a GTX 970
or
B) Buy a 2-3TB HDD and a 256GB Samsung SSD

Decisions, decisions...
If it was me, I would just get a nice SSD and maybe a bigger/newer HDD. Your GPU should be fine for now at 1080p60 and the move up to a 970 (Or similar) would not result in that huge a difference (At least enough in my opinion to justify spending the money).

I am with @OneMoar, throw an SSD in the system and buy the Phantom Pain as that would be a better upgrade than the small performance boost of the GPU range your looking at. Wait until the next generation of cards from either Nvidia or AMD (Or both) and buy an upgrade then as that will be a much bigger jump in performance!
 
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@Frag Maniac has a point, except Win10 seems to have changed things up a bit. Boot times are a few seconds longer due to this weird waiting time after typing in the password and hitting enter. A greater than 2X the price premium for a XP941 over a BX100 isn't exactly worth it, and PCIe SSDs are bound to get better and cheaper.

M.2 SSDs, even extremely fast ones that use ultra x4 M.2 @ Pci Ex 3, already are affordable. The Samsung 128GB one I mentioned is only $110 ($220 for 256GB), which isn't even a sale price, and it's speed is 2150 read and 1500 write. Plus most Z170 MBs will have M.2, many Ultra M.2, and some 1150 MBs even have M.2 Ultra x4, like the AsRock Extreme6.

The main reasons prices were high before is not many were buying them because they weren't bootable, so you couldn't even mount an OS on one. Ever since new capabilities in the UEFI BIOS MBs though, that is all changing, and people are buying them. This is partly why you're also seeing M.2 Ultra x4 slots, which use direct CPU lanes, appearing even on budget MBs.

The only real caveat as I said is M.2 Ultra x4 takes up quite a bit of bandwidth, so you can't have that blazing OS/Program speed AND dual graphics on a budget platform MB. There's simply not enough lanes left. It really requires an enthusiast platform board, or a PLX chip budget platform board, either of which will drive up cost.

Personally I think it's pretty cool we can even get that kind of speed out of a budget platform though, and when Pascal debuts, we may start seeing GPUs that can single handedly drive most games at decent frame rates even at 4k.

Regarding W10, there's ALWAYS been ways to get around passwords and logins with Windows, it's no different with 10, just takes a bit of searching.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3bakaw/bootup_login_irritating/
 
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Isn't 390 just a better 970 for the same price? Anyway, get an SSD.
 
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Isn't 390 just a better 970 for the same price? Anyway, get an SSD.


Depends on the res you're playing at. At 1080p the 390X would be "a better 970". Even at 1440p the 390 doesn't yield more enough FPS to be noticeably better.

The 390 doesn't start looking noticeably better until you crank it up to 4k, and even then, we're talking like 6% better.

The only times at non 4k res it's going to look quite a bit better than a 970 is in a few games that are 3.5GB VRAM capped, like Shadow of Mordor.
 

tabascosauz

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M.2 SSDs, even extremely fast ones that use ultra x4 M.2 @ Pci Ex 3, already are affordable. The Samsung 128GB one I mentioned is only $110 ($220 for 256GB), which isn't even a sale price, and it's speed is 2150 read and 1500 write. Plus most Z170 MBs will have M.2, many Ultra M.2, and some 1150 MBs even have M.2 Ultra x4, like the AsRock Extreme6.

The main reasons prices were high before is not many were buying them because they weren't bootable, so you couldn't even mount an OS on one. Ever since new capabilities in the UEFI BIOS MBs though, that is all changing, and people are buying them. This is partly why you're also seeing M.2 Ultra x4 slots, which use direct CPU lanes, appearing even on budget MBs.

Personally I think it's pretty cool we can even get that kind of speed out of a budget platform though, and when Pascal debuts, we may start seeing GPUs that can single handedly drive most games at decent frame rates even at 4k.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3bakaw/bootup_login_irritating/

I guess our perceptions of "budget boards" and "affordable SSDs" are a tad different. No worries. I certainly hope that the 10-series chipsets will bring widespread adoption of M.2 throughout the product lineups.

As for the login, that's not exactly what I meant. I'm not one to remove my password just to save a few seconds of login time. I guess that it will improve over time, since that's what happened with 8.1.
 
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