Best bang for buck upgrade?

[BennyBoyP]

Hi all. Bought my rig from PCS a couple of years ago. Have made a couple of tweaks to it in the past few months and it's running great. With the launch of BF4 looming I'm thinking of splashing out for an upgrade or two, so would value some advice please.

Current setup is as follows:

COOLERMASTER CM690 MKII
Intel® Core™i7-2600k Quad Core
ASUS® P8Z68-V PRO
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz
1.5GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 580
256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD
2 x 750Gb WD CAVIAR BLACK (Raid 0)
20GB INTEL® SSD 311 SERIES - possibly now redundant (advice welcome)
10x LG BLU-RAY RE-WRITER
CORSAIR 1050W PRO SERIES™
COOLIT ECO II A.L.C
Sound Blaster® Audigy™ SE

In terms of bang for buck, I could pick up a second GTX 580 for about £90 second hand off ebay, which would no doubt make an impact, but the one I have sounds like a jet taking off! I was thinking of an upgrade to 16gb ram and maybe getting a GTX 770 for some future proofing (will run SLI if I can in the future).

I guess the main question is will I see the benefit of the upgraded card with the current mobo/processor combo? Should I get a gen 4 mobo without upgrading the processor or is there no point?

Thanks for any advice.

Ben.

 

[keynes]

For games like BF 3 the GTX 770 will perform significantly better than the gtx 580. Upgrading to 16gb RAM is not going to provide any benefits gaming wise, I would suggest saving that money for a 2nd GTX 770. No need to upgrade your cpu either, are you overclocking your cpu?

 

[BennyBoyP]

Thanks Keynes. I bought the 2600k with the intention of overclocking but never got anything stable as when I tried it I had all sorts of issues with BF3. Might try giving it a tweak or two though. Do you think I'd see significant gains if I pushed the clock closer to the 4Ghz mark?

 

[keynes]

Thanks Keynes. I bought the 2600k with the intention of overclocking but never got anything stable as when I tried it I had all sorts of issues with BF3. Might try giving it a tweak or two though. Do you think I'd see significant gains if I pushed the clock closer to the 4Ghz mark?

In BF3? No. Your cpu wouldn't bottleneck any of the newer cards but just curious about your set up. I had recently issues with my coolit cpu cooler and had to replace it. Turbo boost pushes the core clock to 3.8 so an overclocked of 4Ghz wouldn't be much but most games do not benefit from overclocking your cpu.

 

[BennyBoyP]

Thanks Keynes. Will have a play with the overclocking for sh*ts and giggles, and think it'll be the GTX 770 for the next upgrade. Double rep for you

 

[tom_gr7]

I'd go for a GTX 680. The 770 is pretty much a copy of the 680. But you can buy a brand new OC'd MSI 680 for about 280 quid now. I cant post links though. Sell your current 580 and go for a 680.

 

[BennyBoyP]

Update for you all. Managed to get my hands on a brand new GTX 770 AMP! edition for £285 off ebay, so was a no brainer between this or a GTX 680 (which seem to have come down in price again!). Suffice to say I am very, very happy with the upgrade. 3DMark score has gone from around 6900 to 11000 and the graphics on BF3, Sleeping Dogs and Starcraft 2 look insane.

Oh, and Keynes, I have got a stable OC of my CPU to 4.4Ghz, which is nice. Thx for your advice bud.