COMMUNITY The Master Race (All Things PC Gaming)
- Thread starter AP3.0
- Start date
konceptjones
The one between three and three.
How much you trying to spend?
hold on because I have to give you the rundown of what the situation is
I should be maybe 15 min
ok @konceptjones
here is my situation...i'll try to stick to the important things
basically, years ago, maybe 5-6, i made the decision to get into PC gaming but i wasnt fully committed so I kinda skimmed on some parts to be cheap
this was my first build
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XtbCdC
not being content with only being able to play most of the triple A games on medium, i opted to build another one maybe 3 years later
this one
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TgDkm8
this one has worked GREAT.
Forewarning, my primary choice is to game on a TV. Mainly b/c my old pc monitor was small as shit, but i upgraded this past fall to a 24 inch Spectre that has been great as well.
So in addition to the two gaming pc's i had, i had an office pc. Nothing fancy, just a prebuilt Dell joint. That sucker only had 2gb of ram on it.
The other day, I made the decision to blow off my first gaming rig and just swap out the HDD out the Dell and put it into the old rig. I still had all my other parts minus a power supply, so i bought one yesterday, hooked everything back up, and got to rolling...so I thought
The main goal for hooking up the old rig was so that I could play more PC centric games on my monitor. Isometric top down...turn based kinda games (Xcom etc...), and to play my building simulation games (Cities:skylines, Planet Coaster, etc...)
Now, my current GPU the Radeon HD7870 meets the minimum for a game like Cities and the recommended for Planet Coaster. BTW, if you looked at the first builds specs, you can see I only have 4gb of ram. Cities got stuck on my like 5x last night mainly b/c i had mods and shit that had been removed and the game was looking for them while loading and took a long ass time to boot. I looked into this issue and apparently, even with a good to decent modern GPU, loading the assets has been known to take a while
I booted it up today...removed those old mods, turned the settings down to medium, and it eventually loaded 10 min later. Initially, there was some frame stuttering, but i assume this maybe had to do with the ram I have. I compared my current GPU to some more recent joints and surprisingly, it held its own but obv, there are some drawbacks b/c its an older card and in hindsight, I saw it was kinda leaving the market, and I still bought it for some reason...i should've opted to just spend the extra bucks and gotten something current for that time.
Anyway. Today, i had a relatively smooth experience. I looked at the task manager and w/o the game running, i had chrome open with a buncha tabs and that shit was almost eating all the 4gb of ram, so my question to you is, do you think i can just get away with getting maybe another 8gb of ram? that will give me 12gb total. The MB on it can hold up to 32gb. I'm not trying to spend any unnecessary money, but im willing to upgrade a couple of parts but not at the expense of getting an entirely new rig.
The main use will be ofc internet shit, and some slight logo work i do with programs like inkscape and gimp. But i want to play those games i mentioned and others like it when im not playing on my TV i have
btw, nothing is overclocked. not sure if that matters
thoughts??
here is my situation...i'll try to stick to the important things
basically, years ago, maybe 5-6, i made the decision to get into PC gaming but i wasnt fully committed so I kinda skimmed on some parts to be cheap
this was my first build
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XtbCdC
not being content with only being able to play most of the triple A games on medium, i opted to build another one maybe 3 years later
this one
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TgDkm8
this one has worked GREAT.
Forewarning, my primary choice is to game on a TV. Mainly b/c my old pc monitor was small as shit, but i upgraded this past fall to a 24 inch Spectre that has been great as well.
So in addition to the two gaming pc's i had, i had an office pc. Nothing fancy, just a prebuilt Dell joint. That sucker only had 2gb of ram on it.
The other day, I made the decision to blow off my first gaming rig and just swap out the HDD out the Dell and put it into the old rig. I still had all my other parts minus a power supply, so i bought one yesterday, hooked everything back up, and got to rolling...so I thought
The main goal for hooking up the old rig was so that I could play more PC centric games on my monitor. Isometric top down...turn based kinda games (Xcom etc...), and to play my building simulation games (Cities:skylines, Planet Coaster, etc...)
Now, my current GPU the Radeon HD7870 meets the minimum for a game like Cities and the recommended for Planet Coaster. BTW, if you looked at the first builds specs, you can see I only have 4gb of ram. Cities got stuck on my like 5x last night mainly b/c i had mods and shit that had been removed and the game was looking for them while loading and took a long ass time to boot. I looked into this issue and apparently, even with a good to decent modern GPU, loading the assets has been known to take a while
I booted it up today...removed those old mods, turned the settings down to medium, and it eventually loaded 10 min later. Initially, there was some frame stuttering, but i assume this maybe had to do with the ram I have. I compared my current GPU to some more recent joints and surprisingly, it held its own but obv, there are some drawbacks b/c its an older card and in hindsight, I saw it was kinda leaving the market, and I still bought it for some reason...i should've opted to just spend the extra bucks and gotten something current for that time.
Anyway. Today, i had a relatively smooth experience. I looked at the task manager and w/o the game running, i had chrome open with a buncha tabs and that shit was almost eating all the 4gb of ram, so my question to you is, do you think i can just get away with getting maybe another 8gb of ram? that will give me 12gb total. The MB on it can hold up to 32gb. I'm not trying to spend any unnecessary money, but im willing to upgrade a couple of parts but not at the expense of getting an entirely new rig.
The main use will be ofc internet shit, and some slight logo work i do with programs like inkscape and gimp. But i want to play those games i mentioned and others like it when im not playing on my TV i have
btw, nothing is overclocked. not sure if that matters
thoughts??
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konceptjones
The one between three and three.
aiight, gimmie a minute. I'm finna cook dinner.
konceptjones
The one between three and three.
So, lemme see if I'm following: You want to build out the AMD-based machine to run AAA games, right?
nah lol
concentrate on the very 1st link i gave you
I want that to just run shit like Cities:skylines, planet coaster, etc...
i think a bottleneck is happening with the ram as its just enough or barely not enough respectively
these are the stats based on "can i run this"
this is the minimum for cities
this is recommended
for planet coaster
minimum
recommended
in this case, according to this site, i dont have enough ram for neither minimum or recommended
konceptjones
The one between three and three.
Ok, first things first: Upgrade the amount of RAM you have to 16GB. Not too long ago I would have told you that 8GB would be plenty for Win10, but Wednesday I upgraded to 16GB and I ain't looking back. Granted, I needed it 'cause the shit I do uses a fuckton of RAM (multiple VM's running at once, Chrome and Edge open with 30-50 tabs open each, etc), but even when I'm not working it just helps keep Win10 running smoothly.
Next: For a new video card/GPU, I'd go with a 4GB RX 570. Asus has one that was well reviewed by Tom's Hardware and Anandtech, the ASUS AREZ Strix Radeon RX 570. They're running about $140 on Newegg.
You won't need an SSD for this kind of stuff at all.
If you want more in the way of CPU performance, you can cop an AMD FX 8350 (4GHz, 8 cores) or an FX-6350 (3.9GHz, 6 cores). Right now Newegg has the FX 8350 Black Edition for $69.
Next: For a new video card/GPU, I'd go with a 4GB RX 570. Asus has one that was well reviewed by Tom's Hardware and Anandtech, the ASUS AREZ Strix Radeon RX 570. They're running about $140 on Newegg.
You won't need an SSD for this kind of stuff at all.
If you want more in the way of CPU performance, you can cop an AMD FX 8350 (4GHz, 8 cores) or an FX-6350 (3.9GHz, 6 cores). Right now Newegg has the FX 8350 Black Edition for $69.
This is helpful
Can I assume you looked at what was compatible with my current MB?
The thing is, I don't think I "need" another gpu especially if upgrading the ram will fix my issue or are you saying if I'm going to do that, night as well get a new GPU?
I guess I'm trying to prioritize a needs vs would be nice to have
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konceptjones
The one between three and three.
RAM is essential to keep the machine from thrashing the hard drive. When you run out of physical memory or get close to the limit, Windows will resort to using the swap file for virtual memory. That page swapping in and out of RAM to the hard drive will bring your machine to a crawl. 16GB of DDR3-1333 runs about $60-$65 depending on where you get it from; I'd get it if I were you just on GP.
A newer GPU would allow you to turn up the visual settings higher and would give you wiggle room for newer games down the line. There's going to be a point where an HD7870 won't even be good enough to run shit on "low".
Ok, this is perfect then
For the games in trying to play on this thing, I have plenty of juice left in the 7870 to play the kinda of games I want to on this particular machine
The bottlenecking at the ram is what's giving me the blues
This is right now will cities loading. Remember, I only have 4gb of ram right now
konceptjones
The one between three and three.
bruh, 4GB of RAM with Win10 is tragic. Shit, 4GB on Wn7 is barely usable (them machine I'm on right now only has 4GB of RAM w/Win7 and the shit sucks).
(edit: nm, in order to use the same ram I have you'd have to OC the bus)
