PC upgrade help

[TheJayke]

Hi all,
I'm looking for some advice on a PC upgrade, it turns out I can't really afford a whole new PC at the moment, so I'm looking to upgrade what I currently have.

Currently:
AMD Athlon II X4 640 Processor - 3.0GHz Quad Core
4GB RAM
1TB Physical HD
Nvidia GeForce GT430


The most obvious thing to me that needs upgrading is the videocard, and I found one on Amazon that seems to fit the bill. A GTX 760 for £150
Now my questions, firstly, is it going to be simple enough to take the old card out, put this one in and install some drivers?
Also, is this the best value I can get for around that sort of price point? If I need to spend a little more to get a lot more I'm happy to stretch, but would rather not.


I'm also thinking I could do with 8gb RAM, with that, would I be better served getting another 4gb stick and doubling up or is there a benefit to having just a single 8gb ?

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[DoPo]

Now my questions, firstly, is it going to be simple enough to take the old card out, put this one in and install some drivers?

Yes. They both plug into physically the same thing. Although the 430 is for a PCI-E 2.0 and the 760 is for PCI-E 3.0, the latter is backwards compatible, so it shouldn't matter in the physical side. The difference between the two ports is data throughput (with the 3.0 port being faster), but I think even if your motherboard has a 2.0 PCI slot, it should be fast enough for this videocard.

Also, is this the best value I can get for around that sort of price point? If I need to spend a little more to get a lot more I'm happy to stretch, but would rather not.

I think the 760 is good. I used to have it but I upgraded, now my housemate owns it and runs with it. I've not checked up on the ATI video cards for a while so I'm not sure which ones are in the same category as the GTX760, hence I don't know if they are a better bargain. Hopefully somebody else can advise you on that.

I'm also thinking I could do with 8gb RAM, with that, would I be better served getting another 4gb stick and doubling up or is there a benefit to having just a single 8gb ?

No, there is no benefit of a single 8GB stick. In fact, it would give you worse performance. OK, not by much, but overall, two memory sticks would always perform better than a single one that's twice the size, since they would work in dual channel mode, giving you twice the bandwith. In theory, that is, in practice, you wouldn't be utilising 100% of the bandwith, not most of the time, anyway, so it's not like 2x4GB would be twice as fast as 1x8GB under normal usage. Do note, that you need two memory sticks to be identical for them to work in dual channel mode, otherwise they wouldn't benefit from it.

At the end of the day, though, it's probably best to just go for the cheapest option - either get another 4 gig memory stick that's the same as yours or sell it and get an 8 gig one. Or an 8 gig kit with 2x4GB. I think the kits are generally cheaper than going for 1x8GB.

Just for completeness sake, there is a slight benefit of having 1 stick vs 2 that are half as big, and that is better upgrade option (namely, getting a second memory stick, vs getting two new ones). But I think it's not really that big a benefit to really take into consideration when buying, not in your case at least.

 

[TheJayke]

DoPo, thanks very much for all the info. Very helpful.

I also had no idea that the RAM sticks would need to be identical!

If you don't mind, what sort of games were you running with your 760, and with which level settings and overall setup?

 

[DoPo]

I also had no idea that the RAM sticks would need to be identical!

I'm not totally sure but I think they need to be. At the very least, they need to have the same specs, e.g., they both need to be 4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz 1.5V sticks. At the very least. It's safer and easier to just get two identical ones.

If you don't mind, what sort of games were you running with your 760, and with which level settings and overall setup?

I was running pretty much everything on the highest settings. I can't remember having something that I needed to lower the settings for. It's possible I didn't turn up Anti Aliasing to max in a couple of games, but I'm not sure - most of the times when I wasn't on the highest settings was either because of my own choice[footnote]I don't like motion blur, for example, so I always turn it off when possible[/footnote] or I couldn't be bothered to turn up everything[footnote]most games would automatically choose to be on the highest possible settings anyway. Either that or "hight" when the maximum is "ultra high", as in, one step further. The latter case I've seen happen even if I totally cover the specs for ultra high, though.[/footnote]. Though I don't think I actually played anything that was a real graphics hog along the lines of Crysis or similar tech demo-y games. Off the top of my head, some of the "heavier" games I've played on it are Bioshock Infinite, Remember Me, Divinity: Original Sin, Borderlands 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. No issues with any of them.

And just a note - nVidia's drivers also come with the nVidia Experience software which can optimise games for you, if you want. I've not used it, personally, but it's a good options if you can't be bothered playing with the settings yourself.

Finally, my entire setup was the following:
CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K
RAM: 16 GB (2x8 GB)
HDD: Samsung 840 EVO SSD
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z87X-D3H

I also had two monitors hooked to the video card for a while, if it matters.