Guild Wars 2

Since my computer finally came across a game that didn’t run smoothly on, more or less, any setting – I think it’s time to upgrade my rig.

I already bought a gfx-card (budget card, but far better than my old 9600GT 1GB)

Now I’m looking to upgrade the rest.

I’m on an AMD rig with AM3 socket, atm. Running a Athlon 64 X2 240 CPU @ 2.8Ghz.
Was thinking about maybe just upgrade to a Phenom II X4 956 Black edition, since it’s cheap and I’m poor. But realise I only have DDR2 dimms on my MoBo which I feel is kind of meh.

So the question is.
Should I just get an intel 1155 MoBo with some 1600Mhz RAMs and an i5 3750k instead?
That still isn’t very pricey, imo. I’d just have to wait until I could scrape enough money together for all the parts.

Something along the lines of:

GIGABYTE GA-Z77-D3H Z77 S-1155 ATX IVY
INTEL CORE I5 3570K 3.4GHZ 6MB S-1155 IVY
CORSAIR 4GB DDR3 1600MHZ (1X4GB) DIMM 9 XMS3 (x2)

Would that be a fair mid-range gaming rig, or is there any better parts within the same price-range that I should consider?
I could get these parts for roughly $600 (rounded up).

Thankfull for any help and/or advice.

Yes that is a very good upgrade, you will eventually want to get 8GB ram. Since you got a motherboard that’s capable of overclocking, look up on how to do it and you should be able to get 4.2GHz once you buy an aftermarket heatsink (like a Coolermaster Hyper 212).

PS- I’m still using DDR2 memory on my system and it’s more than fine.

Yeah go the Intel, you won’t regret it. Whatever you do, do not get another Amd processor at this point in time.

Thanks for the reply.

What kind of PSU should I look for? My current is only at 420W.
Would a 600W PSU be enough if I decide to go SLI/Crossfire in the future?

Cbuzz.5083:

Yeah go the Intel, you won’t regret it. Whatever you do, do not get another Amd processor at this point in time.

I was having that feeling as well. Haven’t been hearing a lot of good things about the new AMD CPUs.

Pucko.8675:

Thanks for the reply.

What kind of PSU should I look for? My current is only at 420W.
Would a 600W PSU be enough if I decide to go SLI/Crossfire in the future?

00W is plenty if you’re using 1 GPU, 750W would be better for 2, I wouldn’t settle with 600W for 2 GPU.

As for the upcoming AMD CPU’s, the A10 is the first of the Piledriver and it can keep up with the lower end i5’s (3550) and passes the i3 3220/3225 in many areas. It can very well play GW2, but how would it play games like BF3 and others to come in the years. The rest of the Piledrivers will be coming out within weeks, I’m going to keep an eye on them.

you’ll find the power draw in sli/crossfire is rather high.

to give you headroom as you may want to upgrade your graphics later go with at least a quality 800+w psu even at that you won’t get 2 top end cards working you’d need closer to a 900 or 1000w + for some in sli.

don’t cheap on the psu either i say this often enough and have to tell enough people that did when a cheap one blows their whole pc that they should have gotten a decent one.

amd are doing a product upgrade soonish which are suppose to be competative with intel’s current but they aren’t out yet, so i would grudgingly suggest intel as there is nothing really wrong with any of the amd cpu’s on the market.

benchmarks show the real difference and unless you work in an industry where you really need the best and 2-3 secs on a render make all the difference then you won’t notice as that is the overall difference 2-3 seconds it’s not like amd chips are rendering minutes behind an intel comparative it’s literally seconds and that’s being generous to intel as well, they have more support and a wider range of motherboards and high end motherboards which may be all that difference really is.

That processor upgrade will do fine. As others have stated, dont go AMD atm.

As for PSU, 600/650 minimum if your overclocking your CPU only and have a single Graphics card.
If your going SLI and NOT overclocking your cpu, then 750w should be enough.
If your OC’ing your CPU AND going SLI then you should play it safe and get a 800w or above.

My cpu alone OC’ed to 4.6ghz and on 100% stress test load can spike now and then close to 300w, so dont underestimate the power draw of OC’ing. (granted mine is 6core SB-E, IB uses less power)

Remember with a PSU you always want more than you need not only for future headroom, but also so the PSU is not constantly runing at or close to max all the time.