When do you upgrade?

[joenewbie]

What's the standard you use to upgrade a card?  Is it only when there's a game you want to play that your old one can't handle?  Or is there some other metric? 

Personally I think I should get double the performance for the same price I paid for the old card, or at least in the same price range.  To me it says the tech has advanced enough and gotten cheap enough to get the most bang for the buck.  If you're not doubling up, why bother? 

For instance, I have a GTX 660, 3DMark gives it a score of 6850 and a value for money at 38.  If I cant get to 13,700 for a value score of 38 or better, I won't be upgrading.   I know I tend to overthink things, but I don't think it's a bad standard.  AMD R9 290 fits that standard presently, but I'm more inclined to wait for an Nvidia product.  

Anyway, just curious how others look at it. 

[-TesseracT-]

Maybe every 2 years

[StingBull]

When the time comes that my card cannot play games on medium settings.

[miyabwah]

when i feel like it (when I'm not poor)

[Unhelpful]

When I feel like it is necessary.

[AddonCustoms]

I have a good system so I will upgrade bits at a time, when I have some free money.

[ZetZet]

I just upgraded my 6 year old pc this year so not often, only reason I did it was because my pc couldn't run cs;go at a reasonable framerate.  :lol:

[AlwaysFSX]

When I have money...

 

Which is almost never.

[TheTacoSniper]

when someone else in the house has a better computer than me :3

[SeanAngelo]

when im not broke

[eLucid]

Every year.

[joenewbie]

Every year.

What do you do with your old card?  

[DigitalHermit]

When I have money, or when the current one breaks (but usually this results in a downgrade), or after 4 years...

[eLucid]

What do you do with your old card?  

I always sell before the new series launches for a nice return.

[Timopomer]

when im getting mad at my pc running to slow.

 

usually when you upgrade a pc,all the components are outdated so yea

 

"just upgrading the video card" is a pretty meh move if your processor wasnt ever the "super high end" at the first place that it could support that faster video card

[joenewbie]

when im getting mad at my pc running to slow.

 

usually when you upgrade a pc,all the components are outdated so yea

 

"just upgrading the video card" is a pretty meh move if your processor wasnt ever the "super high end" at the first place that it could support that faster video card

Well to me one of the economic advantages of building your own system is after it's built the first time, you can upgrade modularly and one of the fastest to go stale components is the video card. 

I mean a case will last through several builds.  A motherboard should be able to go through a few video cards before getting too old.  I have a Z77, if I had to buy one today it would be a Z97, but I think I'll skip that generation and in a couple years upgrade to DDR4/latest Intel board.   When you say the processor has to support a faster video card I'm a bit confused.  Could you elaborate? 

[Timopomer]

Well to me one of the economic advantages of building your own system is after it's built the first time, you can upgrade modularly and one of the fastest to go stale components is the video card. 

I mean a case will last through several builds.  A motherboard should be able to go through a few video cards before getting too old.  I have a Z77, if I had to buy one today it would be a Z97, but I think I'll skip that generation and in a couple years upgrade to DDR4/latest Intel board.   When you say the processor has to support a faster video card I'm a bit confused.  Could you elaborate? 

i have a 8350,there is no way i wont be bottlenecking the 980 or whatever when it comes out,the gtx770 is probably the highest end option i could go with anyways so an upgrade would be all the major components

[MPX309]

I've gone through 3 cards within as many years, but I won't be upgrading again for a while now (card wise)

[Malteasers]

When it stops playing the games I need it to play .

[joenewbie]

i have a 8350,there is no way i wont be bottlenecking the 980 or whatever when it comes out,the gtx770 is probably the highest end option i could go with anyways so an upgrade would be all the major components

Well that's where overclocking can help extend the life a bit near the end.  But I see what you're saying but that chip came out in 2012, so if you bought a video card at the same time as you got that chip, now you can upgrade to GTX770 which is a very good card, and then wait til next year to upgrade the mobo/chip.  then once the video card hits about the 2 year mark you can upgrade that again as well.  It's like a leapfrog mentality.  It's a way to spread the cost of upgrades over time.  

By doing that you can look at it like an optimist or pessimist.  The pessimist will always think of the older component and think, shit that sucks. The optimist will look at the newest component and say, yeah that's kick ass.  Both are right, but in the end it's about bang for buck.  But at least I don't have to buy everything from scratch again.   I don't need bleeding edge.  Just enough to do what I do.  *grin* 

[D2ultima]

I'd upgrade a GPU when it no longer does what I want it to do. "What I want it to do" is purely subjective. In my case: My 780Ms even stock do whatever I throw at it on max settings. But SLI sucks for streaming so sometimes I play games single-GPU; so if I could get cooler 880MX (maxwell flagship) cards that use less power and are stronger, I would want to upgrade. Alternately, I stuck with my Clevo D900F and 280M for 4 years because it worked

[joenewbie]

I'd upgrade a GPU when it no longer does what I want it to do. "What I want it to do" is purely subjective. In my case: My 780Ms even stock do whatever I throw at it on max settings. But SLI sucks for streaming so sometimes I play games single-GPU; so if I could get cooler 880MX (maxwell flagship) cards that use less power and are stronger, I would want to upgrade. Alternately, I stuck with my Clevo D900F and 280M for 4 years because it worked

That's why I'm not keen on SLI in general, too many compatibility issues.   Although I do admit I've considered just adding a second 660. 

[D2ultima]

That's why I'm not keen on SLI in general, too many compatibility issues.   Although I do admit I've considered just adding a second 660. 

Honestly, if you're just a gamer who doesn't mind a little elbow grease now and then, SLI is no problem. If you're like me and everything must be 455140% perfect and you insist on understanding everything and making stuff work, then SLI may annoy you a little bit. If you're a streamer without a capture card who streams PC games and cares about your quality a lot, you'll hate it.

 

As for the 660, I wouldn't SLI that. Probably use it as a dedicated PhysX card or something and throw a 4GB 770 in the mix . If you wanna read up more, check my SLI guide. PLEASE don't use it as a reference for everything crossfireX though.