Advice needed

[smokefest]

Agreed a 970 would do the job perfectly if you wanna save some $ by finding one used...

Also I would recommand going Dual Channel for you RAM.. Dual channel is very good for gaming.

[0ver]

1 minute ago, smokefest said:

I would suggest going for a GTX 1060 instead of a gtx 970 or 980.

Reason is : Almost same price, and the 1060 equals and sometimes beat the gtx 980, and support DX12, not to say that its the latest chipset...

actually 1060 looks pretty darn good

[smokefest]

Agreed. 

When you upgrade, if you have enough money, you want to go to the latest chipset oviously

And a 1060 will be an overkill for the games you play, so in the futur you should be good for a long time.

 

It really depends on your budget, if your short, go for a used 970 , if u can aford the 1060 6GB ( watch out therer are 3 GB versions )

Then go for it !!! 1060 6GB is an amazing card.

[Jordyrock]

2 minutes ago, 0ver said:

is it a lot better than the 970 (does it worth the money)

Well with bench marks on games like crisis 3 and bf4. The 980 has a 10fps boost on the 97. However it is like the guy said above the 1060 is a cracking price and is just as goo as the 980. Plus £100 cheaper and it has 6gb VRAM

[0ver]

1 minute ago, smokefest said:

Agreed. 

When you upgrade, if you have enough money, you want to go to the latest chipset oviously

And a 1060 will be an overkill for the games you play, so in the futur you should be good for a long time.

 

It really depends on your budget, if your short, go for a used 970 , if u can aford the 1060 6GB ( watch out therer are 3 GB versions )

Then go for it !!! 1060 6GB is an amazing card.

 

1 minute ago, Jordyrock said:

Well with bench marks on games like crisis 3 and bf4. The 980 has a 10fps boost on the 97. However it is like the guy said above the 1060 is a cracking price and is just as goo as the 980. Plus £100 cheaper and it has 6gb VRAM

Thanks a lot both of you dudes , yea ll probably get another 8 gb stick and a 1060 6gb 

[Jordyrock]

2 minutes ago, 0ver said:

 

Thanks a lot both of you dudes , yea ll probably get another 8 gb stick and a 1060 6gb 

Good Choice. Also once you have done your set up put a picture on here, I wouldn't mind seeing it.

 

[0ver]

Just now, Jordyrock said:

Good Choice. Also once you have done your set up put a picture on here, I wouldn't mind seeing it.

 

Sure my friend

[smokefest]

That would be a good decision. And that spec should be good for years to come considering you dont want to go end high 4k graphics and stuff...

 

You will be pleased with a 1060 and 16 GB ram and it will be a very good setup for later.

 

Go for it !

[EminentSun]

Bear with me this is going to be pretty long.

 

Your Current System:

Looking up the passmark scores of your cpu and gpu there is a major problem, your cpu scores in the 6000s while your gpu is around 3000.

-http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-3550+%40+3.30GHz

-http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+R7+260X

 

*Note while these scores don't translate 1 to 1 keeping them as close as possible between gpu and cpu is a good rule of thumb.

 

In addition your cpu is roughly equivalent (based on specs not experience) to an fx-6350, a very good budget cpu. However your gpu is completely obsolete. I would say that there is a moderate to severe bottleneck on your cpu depending on the task/game.

 

Upgrading the CPU:

You will likely see a large benefit in cpu bound tasks (cities skylines, video encoding, civilization games). However in most games you will see little to no benefit because your GPU will mitigate any benefit from the extra power.

 

Also if you do choose to upgrade the cpu you have two options, a new cpu or a used one. If you go new you will likely be getting a skylake cpu and will have to upgrade your motherboard, expect to pay around $400 in total. Or you can upgrade with used parts from ivy-bridge (the 3000 series) a 3770 will run you about $200.

 

Upgrading the GPU:

I'm going to stick with AMD hardware because that is what I know best, but the basic Idea's will apply to nvidia.

 

Because your gpu is very under powered it is both failing at its job, and making your cpu less efficient. If you are only upgrading one component it would be good to go as powerful as your budget allows so that later when you upgrade the other you will not find yourself in the same situation. I assume you are playing at 1080p so I'll work of of that.

 

AMD's relevant cards currently go roughly in this order:

Rx460 < RX 470/80 < R9 390 <R9 fury  <~ R9 Furyx <R9 295x2

 

Going with anything from the RX 470 upwards will be a huge improvement over your current set up, I would personally recommend the R9 390 if your on a budget as it can be had for $295. With 8 times the memory and far better computational performance than your current card it will likely reverse your current situation being slightly bottlenecked by your cpu, however this can be solved by a little overclocking down the road. The R9 fury is also a great choice if you have the money, for $350 currently (occasionally drops to $310-ish) you get more processors and the advantage of HBM memory.

 

R9 390:https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GV-R939G1-GAMING-8GD-Gaming-Graphics/dp/B00ZU48KFI/ref=sr_1_14?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1475267418&sr=1-14&keywords=r9+fury

R9 Fury:https://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-PCI-Express-Graphics-11247-03-40G/dp/B0196LWL3W/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1475264650&sr=1-1&keywords=r9+fury

 

In addition you can pay less for any of these cards if your willing to buy used from eBay/Craigslist, also keep in mind that there are a great number of very powerful older cards available used (for example gtx 970/980s are being unloaded by everyone who upgraded to pascal).

 

Helpful advice:

Before you buy anything find a couple of cards that you can afford and go to YouTube and watch some comparison videos between them, use that to figure out which gives you the greatest performance increase for the least money.

[0ver]

3 hours ago, EminentSun said:

Bear with me this is going to be pretty long.

 

Your Current System:

Looking up the passmark scores of your cpu and gpu there is a major problem, your cpu scores in the 6000s while your gpu is around 3000.

-http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-3550+%40+3.30GHz

-http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+R7+260X

 

*Note while these scores don't translate 1 to 1 keeping them as close as possible between gpu and cpu is a good rule of thumb.

 

In addition your cpu is roughly equivalent (based on specs not experience) to an fx-6350, a very good budget cpu. However your gpu is completely obsolete. I would say that there is a moderate to severe bottleneck on your cpu depending on the task/game.

 

Upgrading the CPU:

You will likely see a large benefit in cpu bound tasks (cities skylines, video encoding, civilization games). However in most games you will see little to no benefit because your GPU will mitigate any benefit from the extra power.

 

Also if you do choose to upgrade the cpu you have two options, a new cpu or a used one. If you go new you will likely be getting a skylake cpu and will have to upgrade your motherboard, expect to pay around $400 in total. Or you can upgrade with used parts from ivy-bridge (the 3000 series) a 3770 will run you about $200.

 

Upgrading the GPU:

I'm going to stick with AMD hardware because that is what I know best, but the basic Idea's will apply to nvidia.

 

Because your gpu is very under powered it is both failing at its job, and making your cpu less efficient. If you are only upgrading one component it would be good to go as powerful as your budget allows so that later when you upgrade the other you will not find yourself in the same situation. I assume you are playing at 1080p so I'll work of of that.

 

AMD's relevant cards currently go roughly in this order:

Rx460 < RX 470/80 < R9 390 <R9 fury  <~ R9 Furyx <R9 295x2

 

Going with anything from the RX 470 upwards will be a huge improvement over your current set up, I would personally recommend the R9 390 if your on a budget as it can be had for $295. With 8 times the memory and far better computational performance than your current card it will likely reverse your current situation being slightly bottlenecked by your cpu, however this can be solved by a little overclocking down the road. The R9 fury is also a great choice if you have the money, for $350 currently (occasionally drops to $310-ish) you get more processors and the advantage of HBM memory.

 

R9 390:https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GV-R939G1-GAMING-8GD-Gaming-Graphics/dp/B00ZU48KFI/ref=sr_1_14?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1475267418&sr=1-14&keywords=r9+fury

R9 Fury:https://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-PCI-Express-Graphics-11247-03-40G/dp/B0196LWL3W/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1475264650&sr=1-1&keywords=r9+fury

 

In addition you can pay less for any of these cards if your willing to buy used from eBay/Craigslist, also keep in mind that there are a great number of very powerful older cards available used (for example gtx 970/980s are being unloaded by everyone who upgraded to pascal).

 

Helpful advice:

Before you buy anything find a couple of cards that you can afford and go to YouTube and watch some comparison videos between them, use that to figure out which gives you the greatest performance increase for the least money.

That is actually really dope and thank you so much for spending your time on explaining to me how and why i should upgrade my gpu , really informative but yea i will go with nvidia probably gtx 1060 6gb as smokefest advised me on!

Again wow for this.