Older PC upgrades. Questions re: graphics and memory

WeeScot · May 10, 2017, 8:47pm

Howdy. I took ill a little while ago- they call it a “Cerebrovascular accident”. You and I would call it a “stroke”: blood didn’t get to my brain for a few nanoseconds or whatever, killed off a few of them pesky (and I assume lazy, dirty, and boring) brain cells that were hanging about, and suddenly my mind couldn’t control my right side correctly. I’m in my mid 40s. Happened because of a birth defect I have, nobody knew about until the stroke happened.

As your Entertainment Advisor that has experience here, I recommend skipping this “stroke” thing, if anyone asks you if you want to try it out.

I am on the mend, still have a few motor skills issues but I will recover 100%. So, I have spare time right now. I play a lot of older simulations, such as Grand Prix Legends (modded to the moon and back), IL2:1946, etc., although I enjoy a good story-driven fantasy game. Witcher 3 still has me stunned.

But I came across Kingdom Come: Deliverance and thought “here’s something!”.

So I am going to upgrade my PC, but not specifically for KC:D. I am keeping in mind that I do use old programs, one essentially from 1998! My two points of focus are the usual:

RAM
Graphics card

As background, I have not “built” a PC for about 15 years but I am familiar with the majority of the ideas and techniques needed to change memory and graphics cards. Here’s some details on my current entertainment PC (my crummy machine is the one I’m using right now).

WIN 7 home premium 64 bit
i7-3770K @ 3.50GHz (and a bit of liquid cooling)
Corsair XMS3 8 GB, 1333 MHz (with support for 16 GB)
GeForce GTX 670 4 GB
DirectX 11
Lots of disk space
700W power supply
Nice big PC case, lots of access room and empty bays

So obviously I’m going to use the full 16 GB of RAM. Cheap and easy-breezy. Ideally I’ll just find the exact same Corsair RAM and populate the rest of the slots, and I’m done.

The bigger question is the graphics card. I see no reason to go crazy here. The latest NVidia stuff…why would I bother? Won’t I be restricted by my i7-3770K before I can really use those features? I think so. So I am looking more at the GTX 900 series. I have had bad experiences with AMD, so that’s off the table.

Thoughts?

Aradiel · May 10, 2017, 8:50pm

If you’re looking at a 970 or 1060 then the 3770k is fine.

Lieste · May 10, 2017, 8:55pm

I’d start with the 670 you already have. It will be sufficient to run it, and if the performance is too low you can use actual feedback from the final release version to buy what is needed at that time, rather than guessing now and either spending more than strictly necessary or underspending and still having poor performance.

That said I have an MSI 970 and like it a lot. (The performance seems to be a bit higher than some other 970s).

For the beta it doesn’t really matter too much (performance is lack lustre and variable across nearly all hardware), and for the final version we simply don’t know what hardware will give what performance - only that the target is 60fps for PC and 30fps for console.

WeeScot · May 10, 2017, 9:00pm

Thanks for the help! Bear in mind this upgrade is not soley for Kingdom Come: Deliverance so I’m not just gambling on final specs for that game.

Any brands to steer clear of?

Aradiel · May 10, 2017, 9:11pm

670 is between a 950 and 960 in performance, not unusable, but definitely lacking compared current gen. I think a 970 or 1060 is worth upgrading. Both perform similarly. Just go with what ever is cheaper. That depends on the deals you can find.

With the 900 series, overclockability was very much dependent on the individual card. The 10 series changed things because they all seem to overclock to almost the same level. If you’re buying second hand, then try to get an OC demo before you buy if you plan to OC.

As for specific brands, I don’t think there are any that need to be steered cleared from in either series.

WeeScot · May 10, 2017, 9:38pm

Thanks again.

I think I’ll have to place some orders with Amazon after I investigate some cards. Hopefully I’m not too ham-fisted still to install the stuff! My brain is perfectly confident that my right hand does everything perfectly. However the hand has its own ideas!