Upgrading from SATA II & DDR2 to SATA III & DDR3, how much is it worth? Is it worth the trouble?

[191x7]

Hi,

 

How much is it worth to upgrade my PC that has an AsRock A770DE+ AM2+ motherboard and 5GB of DDR2 RAM working at 800 MHz for a new motherboard like the Asus M5A97 R2.0 and 8GB of DDR3 working at 1600 or 1866 MHz?

 

My SSD is a bit limited by the SATA II port of the motherboard, some improvements would be noticable when switching to SATA III.

Also, I would get USB 3.0 support (I have a 8GB USB3.0 flash drive and no other USB 3.0 device atm).

As for the RAM, I would get a bit more memory available (3GB more to be preceise), a bit higher latencies (timings) and a lot faster RAM BUS.

But I'm not sure how that would increase performance, since RAM is not a bottleneck for modern CPU-s since the time DDR2 arrived.

 

That upgrade would cost me about 1200 HRK (Croatian Kuna) which is roughly about 200$.

 

How much would my CPU benefit from switching from AM2+ AMD 770/710 to AM3+ AMD 970/950? And what about the benefits for the SSD and RAM? Would it pay off or should I just wait for an upgrade to the whole system in a year-two (ddr4, new platform)?

 

Maybe go for a lower end motherboard like the AsRock 970 Pro3 and the cheapest 8GB ddr3 1600 MHz to minimize costs?

As for the other plans, If I would upgrade my MBO and RAM now I would go for a CPU upgrade (AM3+ like the FX 8320) in the near future (maybe a year) but my budget is limited.

 

Thanks.

[bbrooking18]

Believe me you will notice the difference between cheap 8GB DDR3 @1600 MHz compared to 5GB DDR2 @800MHz plus upgrading to SATA 3, DDR4 is still a little while away, you would notice a superior CPU as well, motherboard differences are less noticeable.

[191x7]

Thanks. Anyone other?