Gaming Gods - please give me your advice!

Floop1977

Hi,

This is my current gaming rig, and I cannot decide how to proceed:

Dell Vostro 270 with Intel® Core™ i3-3220 Processor (3M Cache, 3.30 GHz)
1 x GIGABYTE Radeon HD 7770 OC 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Card [GV-R777OC-1GD-2.0]
Corsair PSU Upgrade: Builder Series CX 500 Watt ATX/EPS 80 PLUS Bronze
Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3-1600 UDIMM : CT3740344
Crucial CT240M500SSD1 240GB M500 SATA 6Gb/s 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive
Dell 2405FPW Screen 24-inch 1920 x 1200

Option 1: Keep current PC, but buy new faster graphics card
Option 2: Buy new PC with faster processor, but retain graphics card
Option 3: Buy new PC with faster processor and new, faster graphics card

Total budget up to £750

Please give your suggestions in order, e.g. 3, 1, 2

Also happy to receive recommendations over:
Processor - i5? i7? AMD
Graphics card - AMD? Nvidia?

I mainly play 3D FPS games like Wolfenstein (if this makes any difference).

Your suggestions much appreciated!

Retrogamer

I'd pop in a decent i5 and a better graphics card if the rest of the PC is up to it.

Nilrem

The videocard isn't bad (it'll probably do most games at a good level) but the CPU would see a big improvement to an I5 for around £150ish.

Ram is ok, storage wise you can currently get a 240gb SSD from Amazon in the flash sale (I think it's there for another hour) for about £40, as 240gb isn't much for an OS and games if that's the only drive (some games are at 10-20gb+).

One issue you may face if you upgrade the video card is that it may require additional upgrades such as improving the PSU and a bigger case (you need to be quite careful with videocards if your case isn't quite large as some are too long for some cases).

bluenoseam

Think SSD's have been on offer all over the shop lately - but not a huge issue if you already have one. If you have a reasonable motherboard the i5 might be a good idea & then the graphics card which could require a new power supply. Either way it goes unless you're going for a massive graphics card there's a fair chance you might be able to get away with upgrading for a lot less than your £750 budget!

Floop1977

Hi all,

Thank you for your advice. After much deliberating and learning, I'm going to upgrade the i3-3220 processor to an i5-3570K.

Options for upgrading the processor were limited by the socket size (1155), however CPUBoss seems to think this particular i5 will be very good as it was basically the best i5 variant from that range, and as such it actually beats the mid-range variants from more recent processor generations. It also is unlocked for overclocking, which I have no idea about (yet) but I may well learn about this.

I already have an SSD, yes it isn't huge but it is good enough, and as I only play three or four games at one time, I can remove a game once I've finished with it to free up space for the next one.

Thanks for your advice! Hopefully I will get the i5 installed soon and see what difference it makes!