Video card vs CPU & Motherboard

[ZGundam]

I'm looking to upgrade my current video card Radeon 7770 to a better card to handle games like Final Fantasy 14 and Skyrim (as well as others).

My question is, would it be better to get a better CPU and motherboard when I replace the video card? I currently have a AMD Athlon X4 940 and a gigabyte motherboard.

Thanks in advance.

[DaveJB]

The 7770 is a pretty recent card, so I would definitely look at upgrading your CPU and motherboard first. A Core i5 or i7 would probably be the best choice, but it'd depend on exactly what your budget is.

[ZGundam]

Thanks DaveJB. I was searching around about this card and I found this article saying its not a card for someone who is not a serious gamer and I am.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/254346/r ... amers.html

Any other suggestions?

[TheFeniX]

I've got an older model i7 (almost 4 years old now) with 10GBs of RAM. No game has ever some close to requiring half that much horsepower with the exception of SWTOR which suffered from horrible optimization and was heavily CPU intensive. I've gotten by running games at 1920x1080 ultra everything by upgrading my video card twice, never spending more than $300 each time. (Though my last one was $297 shipped, almost over my limit).

You might want to download a performance monitor and use that to gauge where your bottleneck is and what and even if you need to upgrade. I went to a 3GB GTX660 because my GPU was fine, but my computer was constantly having to dump high-res textures/models in and out of the 1GB of VRAM my old 560 had. The GPU never got above 40% utilization because it just doesn't take a lot to run Skyrim, even with loads of mods.

[ZGundam]

Ok. I have a better idea of what to get. It will just take time.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I'm looking to upgrade my current video card Radeon 7770 to a better card to handle games like Final Fantasy 14 and Skyrim (as well as others).

My question is, would it be better to get a better CPU and motherboard when I replace the video card? I currently have a AMD Athlon X4 940 and a gigabyte motherboard.

Thanks in advance.

Did you mean to say Phenom II X4 940? Or did you actually mean Athlon II X4 640? If it really is an Athlon, then yeah ... consider upgrading your CPU/MB, because the Athlon doesn't have nearly the cache that the Phenom, or any later-generation AMD or Intel part has.

As for the video card, a suitable upgrade would be a Radeon 7950, though the 7950 is about a $275 to $300 part, but it's something like twice the card that the 7770 is. If you're not married to AMD, consider something like a GeForce GTX 660 Ti or 670.

[ZGundam]

Sorry, I got it wrong.

It's the Phenom II X4 940.

[ZGundam]

Sorry, its been tough financially to get my upgrade done but I have new choices.

I have an Athlon Phenom II X4 940.

My choices for upgrade are:

Core i5 3570K 3.4GHz Socket LGA 1155 Boxed Processor for $179

A10 6800K Black Edition 4.1GHz Quad-Core Socket FM2 Boxed Processor for $129

What do you think?

[Dominus Atheos]

Don't buy a new CPU, your current one is fine. A 660 will at least double your framerates.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814125443

Also, with that card and CPU, your games aren't CPU bottle-necked even a little, so replacing your cpu won't increase your Framerates even a little.

[TronPaul]

Don't buy a new CPU, your current one is fine. A 660 will at least double your framerates.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814125443

Also, with that card and CPU, your games aren't CPU bottle-necked even a little, so replacing your cpu won't increase your Framerates even a little.

Actually graphics cards tend to not matter for some games. A lot of games are still mostly CPU bound rather than GPU bound. For example Source games benefit a lot more from a better CPU than graphics cards. As for my suggestion I'd go with the CPU upgrade since I have had issues with the past involving AMD. The i5 is a solid midrange CPU buy and I would recommend avoiding AMD.

[TheFeniX]

Did you ever get a chance to download a performance monitor and see your bottleneck? I use GPU-Z for video card monitoring and the W7 performance monitor for CPU and RAM utilization. If you don't like that, CPU-Z is a great alternative.

Actually graphics cards tend to not matter for some games. A lot of games are still mostly CPU bound rather than GPU bound. For example Source games benefit a lot more from a better CPU than graphics cards. As for my suggestion I'd go with the CPU upgrade since I have had issues with the past involving AMD. The i5 is a solid midrange CPU buy.

Most Source games will run on a modestly upgraded toaster oven. However, at least for me, Skyrim performance seems heavily tied to the amount of VRAM you have with certain areas. It also benefits greatly from being run off a SSD.

I have no idea about Final Fantasy 14.

[ZGundam]

I'm actually playing FF14 a lot with friends and only getting 15fps on Ultra, so I will test GPU-Z and CPU-Z when I get home.

[Lord Revan]

dunno about FF14 but my AMD Radeon HD (7660+7470) Dual card seems to run Skyrim ok with high settings (unmodded atm though).

[ZGundam]

Was able to put it together and get it working.

NOW my problem is its rebooting on its own. I used to leave it on , no problem. Now when I go to work or to bed, when I wake up, it's restarted. What would cause that? My temp is fine. and I was able to use my existing Windows 7 on my existing hard drive.

[TheFeniX]

Define "restarting:" Are you getting the "windows has unexpectedly shut down?" screen after the reboot? Or does event viewer show a successful shut down and reboot? Have you disabled automatic restart on a blue screen?

For a crazy story, I was worried my motherboard was failing because Teamspeak 3 was hard crashing my computer. It then would not POST at all 90% of the time. It turns out my shitty Logitech headset USB dongle was the issue. Whatever, I got a Platronics out of the ordeal.

[ZGundam]

I get the "windows has unexpectedly shut down?" overnight after I go to bed or after I get home from work.