Upgrading PC - Help Required

[Mark Havel]

(...)
By the way, if you don't mind my asking, why do you want an SSD but not want to upgrade your processor/graphics card past i5 760/gtx 460? You will see more of an impact out of the latter for the price.

I can understand if the concern is power consumption, while staying at a lower price than 2nd gen i7 (which is better for power consumption).

Oh sorry, but no, adding a SSD will make far more difference in the every-day use of a computer than whatever powerfull combo of CPU and GPU you can throw at it. Think about it, since hard disk drives reached their now standard 7200 rpm, their access latencies got stuck at 10-15 ms. So since a dozen years now, computers have seen their computational power grow to unparalleled extremes while the disk latencies got stuck and never really improved. Add a SSD to the mix, and suddenly, you're not speaking anymore in ms of latency but in a few tens of µs. Yup, that two orders of magnitude quicker.
Why is that important? Because most real-life usage involve a lot of disk reading to load stuff such as the OS, take in account configuration files, playing a startup sound and so on. A lot of disk reading of small files, so the HDD (or SSD for that matter) sequential bandwidth becomes irrelevant compared to the time it takes to locate and read (or write) the file. Computers literally spend their time waiting for the disk to give them the data they need and now, they can wait a hundred times less.
Obviously, it won't replace fast CPU and GPU in games, but since it's the last real bottleneck in computer performance that hasn't moved since years, it's logically the upgrade which will make the most difference.

So actually, it depends of what matter most for you. If you're looking to have better performance in games, then buying new CPU, GPU and other stuff is a good choice. If you want to use a computer where the every day and casual use feels like it's been built in 2010-2011 and not in 1999, then the SSD is the way to go. If you have the money for both, go for both maybe. And don't forget that not many people expected AMD to beat so thoroughly Intel 12 years ago when they launched their widely successful K7 CPU.

 

[Riker13]

Well decide to go for this:

i5 2500k

Asus P8P67 Motherboard.

Coolermaster HAF x case

Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator and Fan Quiet CPU Cooler

8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 PC3-1280

1GB Asus GTX 460

120GB OCZ Technology Vertex 2E, 2.5" Sandforce SSD

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

 

[Atranox]

Looks very nice -

I hope the SSD isn't your only hard-drive though.

 

[Riker13]

Nope, that was just the new system, I have 2x 1TB drives and 2x 650GB Raptors from my old PC.

That should sort me out for at least 3-5 years with luck

Regards

Riker13

 

[Smote]

Oh sorry, but no, adding a SSD will make far more difference in the every-day use of a computer than whatever powerfull combo of CPU and GPU you can throw at it. Think about it, since hard disk drives reached their now standard 7200 rpm, their access latencies got stuck at 10-15 ms. So since a dozen years now, computers have seen their computational power grow to unparalleled extremes while the disk latencies got stuck and never really improved. Add a SSD to the mix, and suddenly, you're not speaking anymore in ms of latency but in a few tens of µs. Yup, that two orders of magnitude quicker.
Why is that important? Because most real-life usage involve a lot of disk reading to load stuff such as the OS, take in account configuration files, playing a startup sound and so on. A lot of disk reading of small files, so the HDD (or SSD for that matter) sequential bandwidth becomes irrelevant compared to the time it takes to locate and read (or write) the file. Computers literally spend their time waiting for the disk to give them the data they need and now, they can wait a hundred times less.
Obviously, it won't replace fast CPU and GPU in games, but since it's the last real bottleneck in computer performance that hasn't moved since years, it's logically the upgrade which will make the most difference.

So actually, it depends of what matter most for you. If you're looking to have better performance in games, then buying new CPU, GPU and other stuff is a good choice. If you want to use a computer where the every day and casual use feels like it's been built in 2010-2011 and not in 1999, then the SSD is the way to go. If you have the money for both, go for both maybe. And don't forget that not many people expected AMD to beat so thoroughly Intel 12 years ago when they launched their widely successful K7 CPU.

Heh, totally valid. SSDs do indeed have a nice feel for casual use [internet browsing, installing stuff, updating, booting, etc].

Personally, I would rather have 50% more computing power for intensive applications while being worse at casual use for the same price. It certainly is debatable either way.

 

[bhavv]

Just adding a 64 Gb SSD for windows, drivers and apps will make your normal PC usage fly. For games, you can just grab a couple of cheap HDD and put them in Raid 0, just make sure to have a backup drive for anything you dont want to lose.

Even though you already went with the GTX 460, the GTX 560 just came out and does really well in Civ V:

Its around an extra £50 though, but its worth considering for anyone else that wants an upgrade for Civ V.

 

[Riker13]

Interesting, I will look into the 560 now as I still have time to change the card.

Thanks for info.

Regards.

 

[bhavv]

Its around £200 though, the cheapest models are the Gigabyte and MSI OC versions at £199 and £203, which surprisingly are also among the best custom designs you can get.

The 1 Gb GTX 460 is still good for £150. Basically for these two cards, you dont want to be paying too much over £150 for the 460, or £200 for the 560. And for lower budgets the 768 mb GTX 460 still remains the best buy.

ATI's cards were great in the last gen, but they didnt improve upon the HD 5000 design enough with the HD 6000 series, and any game like Civ 5 which heavily uses DX11 features (tbh, theres not really a lot) wont run very well on the HD 6000 series.

Nvidia on the other hand had a great DX 11 and geometry engine with Fermi, but mucked it up at first with the GTX 480 and 470. However they made a brilliant job of improving the architecture in the GTX 460, and GTX 500 range of cards and while they still consume a bit more power than ATI's cards, they have much better DX 11 performance which shows in Civ V.

I went crazy and impulse bought a pair of MSI GTX 560s even though I already had 460s :x I want to give Civ 5 another try if it has stopped getting black screen crashes now.

 

[Riker13]

What with the Sandy Bridge issue I dont know now wheather to wait, still get it or go for a X58 i7 950 instead?

 

[Smote]

What with the Sandy Bridge issue I dont know now wheather to wait, still get it or go for a X58 i7 950 instead?

I'd advise to wait as the best option, or use the 6Gb/s sata 3.0 slots for hard drive, as they are unaffected the by the faulty transistor. However, you won't have any room for extra hard drives on the motherboard, because most only have 2 6Gb/s sata 3.0 slots. The 32nm technology is worth waiting for over the older technology.

 

[454ss]

If your motherboard supports more than one PCI Express 16x keep the other GeForce for Direct Compute. Wonderful improvements for texture decompressions.