Upgrading a month old PC?

[WaXT]

Is it necessary? I just bought this thing and it is a Li'l beast indeed. Everygame I slap on it can run smooth @high settings (some can run @maxed). And I'm not quite contented with my mid-range card(well, maybe 97% contented).

BUT....if you would suggest me to upgrade ANYTHING in my rig, what would it be? (and what would I upgrade it to)

See my specs.
Card OCed to 930MHz / 1330MHz
CPU not OCed (but as soon as I get my h70 I will overclock it to 4.2GHz)

[IINexusII]

nothing needed yet if all your games are working fine

[WaXT]

Fast reply. But it takes like 7 seconds to start a game and load some software. While it takes less than a second after I bought it that night.

[JrRacinFan]

Pickup an ssd maybe? A dedicated sound card? Blu ray burner? I see you are on a 15" Lcd, so new monitor maybe?

[Mussels]

i would suggest monitor and the second 5770, for potential upgrades.


as for game loading times, that stuff varies so much... could just be extra programs running, fragmentation, etc.

I run all my games off a dedicated hard drive, so i rarely have loading issues.

[WaXT]

Originally Posted by JrRacinFan

Pickup an ssd maybe? A dedicated sound card? Blu ray burner? I see you are on a 15" Lcd, so new monitor maybe?

What is a solid state drive? and what does it do? (lol sorry)

What sound card do you recommend? (I also have been wanting a good sound card)

for what is the blu ray burner?

And yes, I was planning for a monitor upgrade, but I don't think it is going to work out with the card. as I have said, I can run all smooth @high settings, by that, I get 40+fps. So I thought if I upgrade my monitor to let's say a 20" , it would increase the games resolution, which then also increases the activity of the card. and I bet it would be 30fps+ if I switch to 20. So I would upgrade card first, then monitor.

[WaXT]

Originally Posted by Mussels

i would suggest monitor and the second 5770, for potential upgrades.


as for game loading times, that stuff varies so much... could just be extra programs running, fragmentation, etc.

I run all my games off a dedicated hard drive, so i rarely have loading issues.

Fargmentation, maybe. but extra programs running, idk. I mean I have 6GB RAM and should be fast enough. How do you defrag a disk? Besides Window's defragment tool.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by WaXT

Fargmentation, maybe. but extra programs running, idk. I mean I have 6GB RAM and should be fast enough. How do you defrag a disk? Besides Window's defragment tool.

by using third party defrag programs.

6GB of ram means squat, if the programs are accesing your HD.

Hard drives can only really do one thing at a time (they just do them relatively fast), so multiple programs doing multiple things at once is bound to slow things down.

[WaXT]

Originally Posted by Mussels

by using third party defrag programs.

6GB of ram means squat, if the programs are accesing your HD.

Hard drives can only really do one thing at a time (they just do them relatively fast), so multiple programs doing multiple things at once is bound to slow things down.

Well I am not a multitasker, I only always run 2 programs at a time. A browser and a game. Except now, I'm not playing a game.

[WaXT]

What does an SSD do ??

[mosheen]

i wouldnt do crossfire on that gd55

[Crusader]

Originally Posted by WaXT

What does an SSD do ??

It's a hard drive, just with no moving parts. They're noticeably faster and run much cooler, but have crappy capacity (atm) and are expensive.

OT: Get a new monitor, 15" makes me sadface.

[WaXT]

Originally Posted by mosheen

i wouldnt do crossfire on that gd55

Why not?

[mosheen]

pcie 2.0 16x and pcie 1.0 4x

Edit : http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=pr...0&prod_no=1936

[WaXT]

Originally Posted by Crusader

OT: Get a new monitor, 15" makes me sadface.

I think so too. If I get more room space here, I would buy atleast a 20"

[WaXT]

Originally Posted by mosheen

pcie 2.0 16x and pcie 1.0 4x

it has 2 x PCIex16 slots
wait, I'm sorry what does that mean then? (2.0 16 & 1.0 4)

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by WaXT

it has 2 x PCIex16 slots
wait, I'm sorry what does that mean then? (2.0 16 & 1.0 4)

that they arent 16x slots, ones 16x and ones 4x

[stefanels]

I think a SSD would be a nice upgrade, and definitely a new & bigger LCD (at least a 22")... Cheers

[WaXT]

Originally Posted by Mussels

that they arent 16x slots, ones 16x and ones 4x

but it says in the box it has 2 x PCI E 16x slots

and on the brochure i bought it can crossfire (sorry guys but i don't get it.. :/) what's the diff?

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by WaXT

but it says in the box it has 2 x PCI E 16x slots

and on the brochure i bought it can crossfire (sorry guys but i don't get it.. :/) what's the diff?

they fit a 16x card, but they arent wired up electrically for 16x worth of badnwdith.

it can do crossfire, but as stated, that second slot has 1/4 the bandwidth it should, for full performance.

[WaXT]

the second slot perform 1/4 of the bandwidth? So it is a fail?

[WaXT]

So doing a crossfire would be senseless on my board?

[Mussels]

please use the edit button, instead of making more posts.

and yes, 4 is a quarter of 16, so its got less bandwidth. crossfire will work, just not to its maximum benefit.

While conventional wisdom says its a bad idea to run crossfire in such a situation, i've done it before and will say that you WILL be fine with 5770's - anything faster however, would not be worth it.

[WaXT]

Thanks! So I would not crossfire it, but I would upgrade my card to something better. Another question, can I use NVIDIA card for this board? Because I currently am using ATI. Just wondering.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by WaXT

Thanks! So I would not crossfire it, but I would upgrade my card to something better. Another question, can I use NVIDIA card for this board? Because I currently am using ATI. Just wondering.

yes. nvidia cards will run fine (just not in SLI)