Crossroad Of Upgrading, Desktop (Level 2)

Part and parcel of being a PC gamer is the perpetual war with the system requirements of new and upcoming games. Every year, there will be a slew of new titles that promises a higher level of photorealism and gameplay physics. This however comes at a heavy price of needing to have the hardware to catch up with it. Contrary to popular believe, you don't have to get the latest and greatest from the market every single year to experience the full enjoyment of the game. A well timed upgrade can last up to 3 years without having to turn off many of the new features that may be introduced in the newer titles.

Earlier this month, Nvidia has launched their new line of graphics card, the Geforce GTX 700 series while Intel made their Core i5/i7 4000 series processors (a.k.a. Haswell) available to the market. Does all these new pixel pushers essential for you to enjoy the upcoming new titles for the rest of the year and beyond? Well, this largely depends on several important factors.

First of all, what do you expect from your games? Are you content with smooth, medium details settings on a 1920x1080 resolution or you want the highest possible graphics fidelity turned on? If you want the latest and greatest, you probably have the budget to go with it and this guide is pretty much meaningless to you. However, if you are looking forward to play next generation titles with reasonable frame rates without having to make everything looks like someone smeared Vaseline on your monitor, it's not that hard if you know what to buy and when to buy it. 

Besides that, what is the budget you have in your hand for the upgrade? Combine that with your budget for the upgrade, we will analyze what is the best possible course of action for you in the context of the 3 primary component in a gaming PC, namely the processor (CPU), graphics card (GPU) and RAM.

PC gaming is a love hate relationship.

Processor (CPU)

While most retailers will focus on the specification of the processor in their brochure, it is not the most important component in the gaming PC's component hierarchy. While a largely outdated processor can cripple the most powerful graphics card, a midrange processor will be able to sustain one or two more graphics card upgrade in the course of its lifetime without incurring too great of a bottleneck to the system. 

Those sporting the 1-2 year old Intel Core i5/i7 2000/3000 series or AMD's FX series, there is no reason for you to upgrade at all. The newer processors launched last year and this year are essentially in the same level of performance save for better energy efficiency and integrated graphics performance. For example, Intel Core i5 2500K that was introduced in 2011, when compared to the latest Intel Core i5 4670K, the performance difference is only a few frames in games.

Even if your system is running on the first generation of Intel Core i5/i7 600 to 900 series, Core 2 Quad or AMD's Phenom II X4/X6, A6/A8/A10 series, there is still enough grunts in them run today's game reasonably well. Save the cash now for other parts of the system or play the waiting game for another year to get the best deal.

While you are spotting a dual core processors like the Intel's Core 2 Duo E series and AMD's Athlon X2 or Phenom II X2 series or older, its really showing its age now, especially in RTS and RPG games. Even overclocking it will not yield desireable result as it is becoming increasingly common for games to utilize up to 4 processor cores. Not only that, newer technologies like USB 3.0, PCI Express 3.0 and SATA 6.0 Gbps are not available on the motherboards that they ran on.

Now the question is to invest on Intel or AMD's processor? While in gaming benchmarks, currently Intel's i5/i7 are still the king of the hill but that might all change in advent of next generation console's port. Both PS4 and Xbox One run on 2 AMD's A10 quad core processors with a GPU equivalent of AMD Radeon HD7870 and AMD Radeon HD7770 respectively. This might give an edge to PC running AMD processors in the upcoming games due to better optimization. However, this is just a speculation. Personally, I would go Intel's processor as next generation titles will still take at least another year or so to really realize its potential and gain momentum. 

Intel i5 4570 is available for about RM550 is a great value as its shares most of the features of the more expensive processor while performing very similarly in games and couple that with a H87 motherboard, you will have the latest desktop platform that is ready for upgrades a few years down the road.

Graphics Card (GPU)

There are millions of pixel fairies inside that paint your games as you play it.

The usual rule of thumb of upgrade expenditure is to aim for the GPU first and only spend the remaining funds on other parts as it is the single most important component in your PC when gaming. A GPU can accounts for up to half of a PC's budget as it's the primary bottleneck in most situations. In majority of the situation, merely by upgrading the graphics card alone can exponentially improve your gaming experience.

Upgrading graphics card is also determined by what resolution you are playing at. If you are still running 1280x720 to 1600x900, cards like AMD Radeon HD4850/HD6770 or Nvidia Geforce GTX 450/460 still capable of producing playable frame rates at medium settings.

If you are playing at resolution at 1920x1080, those cards will start to struggle. With high resolution texture being a norm, 1GB memory on those graphics card will not be enough to render the game at 1080p, resulting in a stuttering gameplay. It's worth to spend about RM700 into AMD Radeon HD7870XT or Nvidia Geforce GTX 660. You will see performance gains of 80% or so on average. This is the current sweet spot as spending more than this and you will start to see diminishing returns. Bare in mind, switching on anti-aliasing or maximum graphics fidelity settings will still bring these cards to its knee. If you have bigger budget and other components of your PC are fairly up to date, Nvidia Geforce GTX 770 or AMD Radeon 7970 Ghz Edition is a great choice. These will cost about RM1300 for 30% more performance than the two cards above.

The choice between AMD and Nvidia cards will be determined by what games you are planning to play. Games with the tag "AMD Evolved" will obviously favor AMD GPU and likewise, "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" titles will give Nvidia cards the advantage. For the same reason with the processor, AMD cards may have an advantage in titles port from PS4 and Xbox One but at the cost of slightly higher heat output and power requirement.

RAM

Don't be deceived by high performance RAM's fancy looks, spend your money on something else.

When you are looking at RAM, there are 3 criteria you have to take into consideration which are the amount, the speed and latency. 4GB is the minimum a gaming PC should have nowadays. Speed is the core clock the RAM is running at. DDR2 will have up to 800mhz, typically and DDR3 will commonly spot 1333mhz and 1600mhz. DDR2 costs twice as much as DDR3 now despite being the slower of the two. Unless you are upgrading from 2GB to 4GB, it's not worth investing more to DDR2 RAM as it's an obsolete technology. 8GB is a good amount and anything more will be wasted on running games. Latency is the rating which how fast your RAM responses. Usually this is not a huge performance indicator and much reserved for high performance memory. Unless you are relying on integrated graphics card or overclocking your processor, high performance RAM will only bring you very marginal increased in performance.

Example Cases

Case 1:

Intel i7 870

4GB DDR2 RAM

AMD Radeon HD5850

This is an example of a high end machine from 2010. The processor is still holding its own on the current titles. Adding another 4GB RAM and upgrading to AMD Radeon HD7870XT will be enough to keep this PC going another 2 years of great gaming experience.

Case 2:

AMD Phenom X4 9850BE

4GB DDR2 RAM

Nvidia Geforce GTX 560Ti

While it performs similarly to the above case, upgrading the graphics card is not a wise decision as the processor is nearing the end of it's lifespan. Upgrading to a new processor and hold out the graphics card for another year is a better choice.

Case 3:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6500

4GB DDR2 RAM

Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS

It's not worth upgrading at all in this scenario as all 3 components are barely qualify for minimum requirements of the more demanding games today. Just save up and buy a brand new system.

Case 4:

AMD Phenom II X4 955BE
8GB DDR3 RAM
AMD Radeon HD7770

This is the classic scenario of being in a limbo. While there is enough RAM, the processor is not terribly slow but not fast enough to benefit greatly from a GPU upgrade. Changing the processor will only gain a little bit more performance. The best you can do is get another identical GPU to Crossfire it if your motherboard allows. This will net the best bang for the buck you paying.

Conclusion

While there is no definite guide to upgrading, I hope this article will give you a rough idea of what can you do with your current system. Gaming on laptops will be covered in the future.