By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - PC Discussion - PC upgrade, should i buy a better video card ?

I want to know your opinion, my gaming pc is starting to lag on newer games. I have a oldish pc.

here's my specs : Intel i7 920 quad-core, intel motherboard, 12 gb of ddr3 ram, 512 gb SSD hard drive, Nvidia gforce 660 GTI

I have two options, either change the video card, or change the cpu. But changing CPU imply a new motherbard and probably memory too, so changing the video card would be a lot cheaper. and if i change the CPU and the motherboard for cheap ones, would they will be stronger than my actual ones, or will i just pay for getting the same power at the end ?

But changing the video card migth not cope for the older CPU. 

I know that my motherboard bottleneck me because I dont have any SATA3 port on my board, and I dont have PCIe X16 gen 3 slots, so my drive and a newer video card wouldnt work at their full potential.

 Having that in mind, what do you think ? Should I updrade the video card, or save for buying a new CPU and motherboard later ? any suggestion on what parts would be a good deal ?



Around the Network

660 is a pretty budget build card. Get up to a 970 at least I'd say. Your processor should be fine as most games are GPU-intensive.



Dude, that thing was "oldish" 5 years ago.
I doubt your PCIE is throttling you. With that hardware you play on low enough settings that it shouldn't be an issue at all.

You should check while playing what the bottleneck is. Open the task manager and something like MSI afterburner. Whatever reaches 100% is your culprit. My guess is the GPU.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

your cpu should be good enough for almost every game, if not just oc it. sata3 / x16 3.0 shouldn't be noticable. so just a gpu should be enough. but those prices right now ... everything above 1050 ti is way to overpriced and a 1050 ti wouldn't make such a big difference.



Buy a used 970 or 980



My Etsy store

My Ebay store

Deus Ex (2000) - a game that pushes the boundaries of what the video game medium is capable of to a degree unmatched to this very day.

Around the Network

Get everything new, that is ancient stuff.



i7 920 is also to old, if you want a new graphics card I would not aim to high. A 570 or 1050Ti would be a big upgrade right now.

This is however the last upgrade for this PC because you are going to have to sell out and get a new CPU/Motherboard and modern Ram at some point, you are going to be CPU Bottlenecked in many games if you buy a much higher graphics card.

The 2500k and 2600k are still acceptable but the first generation of i5/i7 processors is at its limit for some time.




Twitter @CyberMalistix

Greate pieces. Keep posting such kind of information on your page.Im really impressed by your blog.

Edited: Removed spam link. ~ Pemalite.

Last edited by Pemalite - on 03 October 2018

I think the latest games can be played smoothly on the latest version of PC.



A 1060 6GB or an RX 580 would be a decent and not too costly upgrade for you already.

I wouldn't take any stronger GPU than those though, as otherwise your CPU will start to strongly bottleneck. Even 15W Laptop processors with 4C/8T should trash it in terms of power nowadays, as both the IPC and the clock rates (let's face it, 2.66 Ghz in a desktop processor is very slow by today's standards) have gone a long way since then.

In other words, while you can just upgrade your GPU for now to buy yourself some time, you'll have to brace yourself to upgrade your CPU, and with it your entire platform in the near future. Considering the price hike on Intel CPUs due to the shortages, I'd rather suggest switching to AMD (R5 2600 would be a good choice atm imo) right now even though Intel still has the gaming performance crown.

Last edited by Bofferbrauer2 - on 03 October 2018