I built my PC in 2012, and it's honestly been amazing. The only thing I've had go wrong was my storage HD which was swapped out without a problem. I bought my Razor deathadder mouse in 2009, and it still works like a charm too.

However, the biggest limiting factor I'm starting to have is my Graphics Card, though I probably need to upgrade my ram as well. I really don't game that much anymore, mostly I just play DOTA 2, for which this rig is more than sufficient. However, I wouldn't mind playing a few of the newer games with decent performance. This is my current rig, but different monitor and an extra 256gb SSD.



In general, I'm interested in peoples opinions of the graphics card market. I'm not looking to play at anything over 1080p and I do not expect to be doing anything with VR in the near future. I also really don't want to spend a huge amount of money. I'm in NZ, so I expect this to cost a stupid amount, but what are the best low-mid range vid cards these days? Is AMD or Nvidia better? Is compatibility with Mobo an issue? I'm hoping for something to tide me over the next 2-3 years at least, as I'll probably do a full new build then.

The most demanding game I'll play on this will be Squadron 42, so I'll almost certainly need to upgrade my ram when that comes out, but what about my CPU? I don't think I've run into a CPU bottleneck yet, but I also haven't really pushed it for quite some time. What are my limitations around there?

 

As a general rule, AMD and nVidia cards are about equal in terms of hardware, but nVidia has significantly better drivers, so my standard recommendation is to go nVidia. It's not a huge difference either way, though, so you don't have to worry too much about it.

As for specific cards, that depends largely on your budget. Unfortunately, video card prices were driven way up by the bitcoin bubble, and while they're coming back down now that that's finally burst, it's still pretty pricey. For the needs you describe, I would recommend a GTX 1060 but that's a solid $300 USD. If that price is a bit too much, I'd go for the GTX 1050. It's not quite as powerful, but it's half the price and should still run most modern games at decently high settings at 1080p.

As always with computer parts, you'll want to double check yourself to make sure they're compatible with your rig. I exercised my google-fu and from what I found, both of those cards should work with your motherboard and PSU, but I can't be 100% certain that the stuff I found matches exactly to your hardware. It's always a good idea to do your own research and make sure at least the pictures match before spending money.

Edit:
As for the CPU question, well, you're definitely running an ancient CPU, but there's not a lot you can do about it without also replacing your motherboard. According to this thing I found, about the only option you have for an upgrade is to switch to an i7 3770, and even if you could find one, it's not really worth the money or effort to swap it out (all you really get is double the number of concurrent threads, which is nice, but hardly critical).

At this point, you'll have to replace your motherboard to upgrade your CPU, and at that point you may as well upgrade the whole computer, cuz half your stuff will probably be too old to be compatible.

However, on the bright side, as long as you're not multitasking like a motherfucker, your current CPU should be plenty sufficient for modern games. Even nowadays, developers are pretty shit at multi-threading properly, and the speed of a single core is still one of the most important factors for CPU compatibility. Yours is running at 3.4 GHz, which is more than fast enough for most games. It'd take a really CPU-intensive game, or like a million chrome tabs open in the background, to really detract from most games, at least between now and your planned total computer replacement.

 

Quick followup, when will the next generation of cards be released?

 

Technically, they haven't even announced that that exists yet, but there's rumors that nVidia's preparing to reveal it at Gamescom in August. No idea on public availability, but assuming those rumors are true, I'd expect to see them around Christmas time, maybe the early part of 2019.

 

This is not helpful, but I just want to say that I'd like cryptos to die yesterday so we can have less retarded GPU pricing.

Go nVidia. Unless you care that they're shady as fuck with their anti-competition practices. At the end of the day though, it's about the user experience, and the GPU market is pretty much nVidia or Radeon if you want something good. Everything else is fairy dust.

Of course if you hold out until new cards drop, you'd get better deals for current gen. If it's not a pressing issue (you mentioned hobby gaming) I'd wait at least until there's news on new cards.

 

Check out Logical Increments. It's a very useful site when buying/upgrading your PC.

http://www.logicalincrements.com/

 

Depends on what the requirements for Squadron 42 will be when they release it in several decades time (hurry the fuck up SC ).

Your low-end options are the GTX 1050 from the green team and the RX 560 from the red team. Both are really for esports and with a game like S42 they will mostl likely melt.

Middle would be the 1050 ti or the RX 570. Both are pretty good cards, the 570 smacking the 1050 ti by quite a bit. These would run things alright at medium-high (depending on game) settings or so at 60 fps. S42 might hit it hard though.

High-end and most ideal would be the 1060 6gb (I don't think you should bother with 3gb, you'll need the VRAM) or the RX 580. Both are awesome cards and will run a ton of stuff on ultra 60fps. These would be great for future proofing your build.

The RX cards have been molested by the miners by quite a bit, so their prices are still way off MSRP, be aware of that.

Your mobo should be fine, but CPU might suffer down the line. The more powerful the GPU, the higher settings you'll use (because well... you paid for it) and so stress will increase on both CPU and GPU. An old CPU like yours will cause start having a stroke at times on the high settings of some titles, I have no doubt about it.

BF1 already uses like 6 cores, so it can be stutters galore sometimes on older systems. If you are really going for a system refresh, I'd recommend retiring the old man PC and slap the new jetpack on a new PC.

If not, then the functionality of your CPU will really depends on what games you'll play and how high your settings will be. S42 will most likely be CPU heavy too, so you'll definitely want to take a look at replacing your old CPU. But by the time it's released, you'll probably have a good enough rig in the future xD

I think a 1050ti would suit you for the next 2-3 years, until you build the monster rig you have always dreamed of >

 

Interesting, so your argument is that if I'm going to be using a 1060 to it's capacity, then I'll probably need a new CPU as well. Accordingly, buy a 1050ti now, use it to get by, then dream big. That about sum it up? This is good advice.

Definitely planning a new build at some point, but don't really have the time/motivation/money to do it right, and if you're going to do something, better to do it right.

 

Hey @Innomine not sure if you've already made your build but if not then I've got a couple alternatives for you, both cloud gaming.

Cloud Gaming has advanced quite a bit since OnLive. I checked your post in the Broadband Thread and your Gigabit connection means that you won't notice any latency, input delay or lag at all. Besides, you'll only need about 1.5-2.5MBp/s which even people on non FTTH/FTTP lines can get.

Currently, in my opinion, there's two main options: ShadowandParsec. I was gonna make a thread for this but I'll probably do that later.

Shadow
Shadow costs $34.95 a month. The specs for the server you get are as follows:

• 256GB Storage (Worth about $60).
• Intel Xeon E5-2620 (Worth about $420 and a passmark of about 11.3k) .
• 12GB RAM (RAM prices differ but worth about $40).
• GTX NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Worth $420 and currently the eighth best Graphics Card on the market).

In total, that's a computer worth $940, not counting Motherboard, PSU, Coolers, case or Electricity Bills as the website didn't say what those were so I couldn't get a price for them.

At $34.95 a month, it would take about 26 months (Or just over 2 years) for it to stop paying dividends. There's also the fact that Shadow will periodically upgrade the system so that it can keep up with all the specs for the newest games.

Parsec
Parsec charges by the hour as opposed to the unlimited gameplay offered by Shadow. They have four different server options. Two Amazon servers and two Paperspace servers. The Amazon ones aren't worth it in my opinion as they'll charge you for the full hour even if you only play for one minute. That leaves a $0.51 and $0.78 per hour paperspace server. I'd say to go for the $0.78 one though I'm pretty sure the $0.51 can also handle pretty much any AAA game on the market.

The specs are:

• 250GB Storage (Worth about $60). NOTE: The website says you're charged an extra $10 for the storage but I've never been charged for it myself for some reason. Could be I misunderstood what they said.
• Intel Xeon E5-2623 (Worth about $400 and a passmark of about 8.9k).
  
• 16GB RAM (Worth about $50).
• NIVIDIA QUADRO P5000 (Worth about $1,800 and currently the 26th best Graphics Card on the market).

In total, that's a computer worth $2,310, as before not including the parts that weren't listed on the website. The graphics card bumps the price up quite a bit despite being inferior to the one offered by Shadow. I'm no expert when it comes to gaming hardware but I'm assuming there must be at least one benefit to getting the Quadro over the GeForce.

At $0.78 per hour, it take 2961 hours (Or 4 months of constant gameplay) for it to stop paying dividends. Parsec, unlike Shadow, haven't said if they'd upgrade the hardware but I doubt they'll be using the same hardware in ten years time.

What to Go For
Yeah, the Shadow GPU is apparently better than the Parsec one but the Parsec one can pretty much play anything as well. That may not be the case in the future but as you're not stuck ina contract with it, you can cancel anytime you notice performance issues.

For the Shadow to be a better choice, you'd have to be gaming at least 44 hours a month. Anything below that and you'd be getting better value with Parsec.

Storage Issues
250GB isn't much storage wise (probably enough for half a dozen games if you squeeze it) but as the data centre your server is in has a Gigabit connection, you could download and install a game in the span of a few minutes so it's not much of a hassle to just delete old games and reinstall them when you feel like playing.

I should also mention that while most people play their games on Steam on these servers, as you get a Windows 10 OS< you can pretty much just download any game off the Internet and play it like that.