41-50k Upgrade Time - Gaming and Maya (animation)

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Deepcee

Deepcee

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Well, that time of the year again. In the market to upgrade my graphics card,toss in more ram and switch to Windows 7.

Currently running (Everything at stock)
- Phenom II X6 1055t
- Gigabyte 880GM - UD2H
- Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333Mhz 4 GB x 1
- Random Hitachi HDD 160 GB
- XFX 8800 GTS (640 MB)
- LG dvd drive

Sitting pretty in an Antec 900 case. 2 x 120mm intake fans. 1x 120mm exhaust and 1x 240mm top exhaust

Powered by
- Corsair HX 620

Upgrade idea
- Asus GTX 670 DCII
- Add another 4 GB Corsair ram
- Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium
- SSD ?


You folks were quite helpful when I had to replace my motherboard and CPU so a few more questions this time. Would a HX 620 be sufficient to power all the potential upgrades?

Primary Usage
My usage would primarily be working in Maya, nothing too heavy though. As far as gaming goes, I'm playing Diablo 3 right now and would be looking to play a few pc exclusive games in the future like Company Of Heroes 2 or the new SimCity. Primary gaming would be my 360.

Budget
I have a rough budget of around 40k right now, but I had not considered adding an SSD. As always, can increase the budget as necessary. The SSD isn't absolutely required right now, but shall add if you guys think it's worth the performance boost.

Option B
Would just upgrading EVERYTHING be a better idea? A new pc essentially. I know the CPU is no slouch but would it end up bottle-necking my GPU in any way? I'm not a big fan of the motherboard design since adding the 670 might block out almost all the other SATA ports. The GTX 670 would be a snug fit in my Antec 900, but I'm sure it will have room.

I'm looking for any input you guys might have based on the two options.

Edit - Will be buying in Bangalore
 
I don't think you need to get a new rig totally,So here is what you'd get-
Corsair Vegeance OR Gskill RipjawsX 4GBX1 1600mhz-1.5k
Msi/Asus GTX670-27k OR Sapphire HD7950-25k
OCZ Vertex4 128GB-7.5k
The Corsair HX650 is good enough to power the new GPU.If you want to add new processor then here is your option,This will exceed your budget if you get everything together-
Intel i5 3550-13.5k OR Intel i3 3220-7.5k
Gigabyte B75M D3H-4.5k
Hope this helps.:)
 
@Deepcee here is what I suggest, stick with your current CPU and motherboard. No it will not bottle-neck the graphics card but neither will the performance be mind-blowing while we are at it.

Instead of adding a GTX670, for animation purposes and compute performance an AMD HD7870 2GB ~18900/- OR AMD HD7950 2GB ~25500/- will be a better buy.

Add a hard-drive, preferable a 1TB as you only have 160GB to play around with, if you are fine with this space though and don't mind shelling out for an SSD; the OCZ Vertex4 128GB ~7500/- should be what you should get (from onlyssd.com).

This should be the maximum upgrade(in my opinion) apart from the extra RAM module (stick to Corsair XMS3 OR Vengeance) and a license of the Windows 7 Home Premium.

Hope this helps, Cheerio!

Jakob said:
Asus GTX670-27k OR Sapphire HD7950-25k
Click to expand...

nVidia Compute performance is a bummer so no point investing in that.
 
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Wasn't sure hence suggested both,Also OP should get a 1TB HDD,Thanks for adding that.
ALPHA17 said:
This should be the maximum upgrade(in my opinion) apart from the extra RAM module (stick to Corsair XMS3 OR Vengeance) and a license of the Windows 7 Home Premium.

Hope this helps, Cheerio!



nVidia Compute performance is a bummer so no point investing in that.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the input guys :)
So, my upgrade idea is in line with what you guys suggested as well.

Jakob
I wish I could get a 1600Mhz module, but the cpu only supports 1333 max. (or am I mistake here?)

ALPHA17 (or anyone else)
Why AMD instead of Nvidia? I don't really have a preference, but I did like that Nvidia had lower power consumption and been quite happy with my 8800GTS so far. Seemed the better performer as well and I figured with my mixed usage of Maya and gaming, Nvidia was the way to go. As always though, any input you can give me is most welcome :)


Other than the GPU question, I can add the SSD to this configuration as well and not expect my HX620 to struggle, right? It's the HX620 and NOT the HX650. I bought it sometime in 2008 and I do believe the HX620 was discontinued.

I figured I'd skip on the 1TB HDD for now since I've got plenty of space in my current HDD and barely filled up my 500gig external :P
Will be adding the SSD though.
 
Deepcee said:
I wish I could get a 1600Mhz module, but the cpu only supports 1333 max. (or am I mistake here?)
ALPHA17 (or anyone else)
Why AMD instead of Nvidia? I don't really have a preference, but I did like that Nvidia had lower power consumption and been quite happy with my 8800GTS so far. Seemed the better performer as well and I figured with my mixed usage of Maya and gaming, Nvidia was the way to go. As always though, any input you can give me is most welcome :)


Other than the GPU question, I can add the SSD to this configuration as well and not expect my HX620 to struggle, right?

I figured I'd skip on the 1TB HDD for now since I've got plenty of space in my current HDD and barely filled up my 500gig external :P
Will be adding the SSD though.
Click to expand...

Skip the 1TB drive and aim squarely for the SSD in that case.

Here are a few benchmark runs, compare the Compute performance (important in MAYA) -- AnandTech - Bench - GPU12.

No issues of your HX620 struggling.

You will not get 1333MHz RAM modules anymore, especially Corsair XMS3 / Vengeance, 1600MHz will clock back to ~1333MHz. Though you can run it at 1600MHz by enabling AMP in AMD Overdrive.
 
Much appreciated :)

The 7950 does look to be the better option. Only problem is checking to see if it will fit in my case while not blocking two SATA ports needed for my current HDD and the SSD.
 
Well, I've decided on the 7950. Sapphire or MSI I guess.
Having looked it up online, I'm wondering now if my CPU would be a pretty big bottleneck as far as performance goes. Would it?


And on another note, would I really benefit from a SATA III SSD like the OCZ Vertex 4 or should I just settle for a SATA II SSD?
Obviously my motherboard only has SATA II ports.
 
Your CPU won't bottleneck and if you feel it does then Overclock it a bit,It's better to get a Sata III SSD as it's cheaper now than before and you'll get good performance from it as you might upgrade later on.Also SataIII SSD will have good resell value compared to SataII so no point in settling for SataII SSD.Hope this clears stuff.
Deepcee said:
Well, I've decided on the 7950. Sapphire or MSI I guess.
Having looked it up online, I'm wondering now if my CPU would be a pretty big bottleneck as far as performance goes. Would it?


And on another note, would I really benefit from a SATA III SSD like the OCZ Vertex 4 or should I just settle for a SATA II SSD?
Obviously my motherboard only has SATA II ports.
Click to expand...
 
Deepcee said:
Well, I've decided on the 7950. Sapphire or MSI I guess.
Having looked it up online, I'm wondering now if my CPU would be a pretty big bottleneck as far as performance goes. Would it?


And on another note, would I really benefit from a SATA III SSD like the OCZ Vertex 4 or should I just settle for a SATA II SSD?
Obviously my motherboard only has SATA II ports.
Click to expand...

As Jakob has posted that the CPU is no slouch and you will not face any issues in performance with it. Just that it is not the perfect combo for gaming but with Company of Heroes I trust nothing.

I still remember that the first game made my system crawl far worse than Crysis OR any other über-graphically awesomesauce game!

Best you go for a Sapphire card, they are a direct board member for AMD Graphics card and generally make great cards along with a great support system in India, also their pricing is on the sane end of things.

A SATA III hard-drive is more reliable as they have the newer generation of controllers vis-á-vis older SATA II SSD's which carried the less reliable SandForce series drivers. Also these boast a faster 4K speed (both read-write speed). The OCZ Vertex4 and Crucial M4 are ideally the best drive for your situation.

Here is a benchmark chart between a OCZ Vertex4 128GB (Marvell controller) and Corsair Force GT 120GB (SandForce SF2201 controller) --> AnandTech - Bench - SSD. (the Corsair drive has an edge in read-speeds but the former spits out a double lead in the write-speeds), mind you both drives are ~SATA III based.

Here is a SATA II based SSD facing off against the OCZ Vertex4 --> AnandTech - Bench - SSD.

Hope this helps, Cheerio!

P.S. -- Buy this from onlyssd.com, they are a Prime ABGB spin-off and will help you best in case the SSD decides to misbehave with you, pre-maturely.
 
I'll just bump down the settings a bit if it gets too taxing I guess. Like I said, primary gaming is still going to be the 360 :)

I've settled on this version of the 7950. Might be buying it locally though. Just to compare prices.
Sapphire AMD/ATI HD 7950 OC Edition 3 GB GDDR5 Graphics Card | Graphics Card | Flipkart.com


I might actually fit the gpu first and check how much room I have for my SATA connectors before jumping in with the SSD. Is it recommended to run only a SSD without a standard HDD?
I know an SSD is brilliant when it comes to booting up the OS and other general applications. I planned to install Maya on it anyway, but how does it fare when it comes to games?

Just making sure I don't store random crap on it and find out later that it contributes significantly to it's failure rate.
 
Deepcee said:
I'll just bump down the settings a bit if it gets too taxing I guess. Like I said, primary gaming is still going to be the 360 :)

I've settled on this version of the 7950. Might be buying it locally though. Just to compare prices.
Sapphire AMD/ATI HD 7950 OC Edition 3 GB GDDR5 Graphics Card | Graphics Card | Flipkart.com


I might actually fit the gpu first and check how much room I have for my SATA connectors before jumping in with the SSD. Is it recommended to run only a SSD without a standard HDD?
Click to expand...

@Deepcee, you can install games on a 128GB SSD. Not an issue they will run great; best part is short loading times. Best keep a mechanical hard-drive as a repository for applications / programs that you do not use a lot but have occasional use off, say once in ~1 weeks OR so.

I will not recommend using an SSD for storing music and Blu-Ray RIPz; the small storage space does not allow a lot of flexibility for those items and frequent read-write operations(s) can quickly cull a lot of storage cells. For this have an external drive handy OR use a larger mechanical internal disc as a data dump.

A good SSD, as the one you are going for has a life of ~5 years (nominally) and should not crap on you for no reasons. But just to be safe install a S.M.A.R.T. monitoring tool such as Crystal Disc Info OR HDD Sentinel.

Hope this helps, Cheerio!

P.S. -- Pricing on street should at the minimum similar as on flipkart.com OR ~1000/- -->2000/- quid cheaper than the mentioned price.
 
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ALPHA17 said:
You will not get 1333MHz RAM modules anymore, especially Corsair XMS3 / Vengeance, 1600MHz will clock back to ~1333MHz. Though you can run it at 1600MHz by enabling AMP in AMD Overdrive.
Click to expand...

Weird how they seem to be in short supply. I did find a few 1333Mhz modules on Flipkart though...problem is, they're Gskill.

Mixing and matching Corsair with Gskill would have issues, right? I would gladly stick with 1600 and hope it clocks back to 1333, but when I initially bought the ram and mobo two years ago, I heard a lot of stories of people having issues running a Phenom II X6 with 1600 ram. Lots of BSOD's...
 
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