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Best Next Upgrade

Meat_Man
Expert Protege
Hello!

What would you guys suggest would be the best next upgrade for my PC?  My current rig is a GTX 970, i5-3470, 8 GB RAM, 250 GB SSD, Windows 7, 650w PSU.  Would an upgrade on one of those components be more effective than purchasing a new VR game?  I've only purchased BoxVR, and nothing else.  What do you think?
9 REPLIES 9

Anonymous
Not applicable
Upgrade to Windows 10 first mate. Windows 7 has security holes all over the place.

The 11 GPUs are being released some time during the next few months so that would be a good place to start. The 10s will come down in price too around that sort of time so you can either get one of those or one of the 11s depending on how much money you have to spend.

edmg
Trustee
Yeah, unfortunately you're probably best off downgrading to Windows 10, so you get ASW support. All games should run on a GTX970, but ASW will help performance with any that don't.

Otherwise, I'd be tempted to increase RAM before anything else. 8GB is getting a bit low these days.

Meat_Man
Expert Protege
Hmm..I'd like to keep Windows 7 if possible mostly because my family and I have been using Windows 7 since it came out and we're used to it.  Is the CPU fine for a while you think? It's slightly under the recommended requirements

edmg
Trustee
Problem is, to upgrade the CPU significantly, you probably have to upgrade the motherboard and RAM, too.

BrokenSymmetry
Heroic Explorer

I am running the same generation of CPU as yours (i5-3570K). It's 6 years old, but it's been holding up surprisingly well. Moving on to GTX 1070 from 680 made all the difference for me.


But in your case, increasing to 16GB of RAM probably is the cheapest yet substantial upgrade. But consider... you may need to upgrade your CPU soon. Once you do that, you'll need to change to new DDR4 RAM sticks. So your RAM upgrade may not be so worth it at this stage, unless you are planning to keep your CPU for at least another 3 years.


Go for the most expensive graphics card you can get once 11XX series is out. Wait until your system is dragged down by your CPU, then get a new CPU-MB-RAM bundle.


Or just hold on to your system for a little longer. 970 is still strong.

edmg
Trustee
Yeah, I'm using an i7-3770, and the only thing it struggles with is Skyrim in VorpX (which is notoriously CPU-intensive).

BrokenSymmetry
Heroic Explorer

edmg said:

Yeah, I'm using an i7-3770, and the only thing it struggles with is Skyrim in VorpX (which is notoriously CPU-intensive).



And now we have the VR version of skyrim. All should be good for you.

edmg
Trustee
Yeah, Skyrim VR runs a lot better. But some of the old mods haven't been ported over.

BeastyBaiter
Superstar
Your system is a bit on the lower end for VR, but the weakest link is going to be the graphics card for most games. Swapping CPU's wouldn't be a bad idea but that's going to require a new motherboard, new RAM and a new OS. So I strongly recommend a new GPU first. As far as waiting for the GTX 11 series, I have mixed feelings on that. The GTX 11 series isn't looking like it's going to be much of an improvement compared to the GTX 10 series (GTX 1170 = GTX 1080, GTX 1180 = GTX 1080 TI) and they don't even drop prices any. But that's all based on rumor and leaks, we won't actually know for another couple months. The AMD side isn't looking any better. They will be releasing 7nm based Vega's sometime this year, but it looks like they will be compute cards, not gaming cards.