Upgrade advice from LGA1155 i3 sandy and NV GTX460 1G?

Is there a good upgrade path without rebuilding? I currently run mostly medium (some low) settings and average about 55fps in general low population situations, but it drops down to 20 in large battles and even down to 7fps on some Amerish fights last night. I would like to find a solution to get me to High or Ultra with a stable 50fps. Is there a path without starting over?

Current:
i3-2100@3.1Ghz Sandy Bridge
ASUS P8P67LE MB (LGA1155)
Nvidia GTX460 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-E
8gig RAM
64bit Win7


Any suggestions? I really want to enjoy the game, but the erratic and brutally low frame rate can really cut into the fun factor. I would also like it to not look like a 10 year old game with low settings at the same time. Please help.

It would be very easy top upgrade your system, without having to start from scratch, as your motherboard support ivy brigde i5, as long as you update your motherboard with the newest bios

You can download it from here
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8P67_LE/#support

So if i were you, id simply buy an i5 3570k, along with a good cooler for it, and a nvidia 760

Agree with Dragam, by far the most sensible upgrade path.

Additionally, consider the new GTX750Ti if your old PSU is a bit on the low side for power, as it provides 25% more performance than the GTX650 but doesn't need an additional PCI 6 or 8 pin power supply, it gets everything it needs from your PCI slot.

There is hope!!!

I should have said this before, but I am not useless near a computer, but I am not a super techie either.

I have a Raidmax RX-850AE powersupply. It says 850w for "total power" on the side of the box. That can't be right. What on Earth caused me to buy so much extra power before? I guess it will help now though?

I very much appreciate the advice. It is good to know that it is just expensive (but not crazy town) to get a good PS2 rig as I really like the game, but the performance and look is a real turn off. I would LOVE to have my game play and look like the videos I saw on youtube for the suggested specs.

Will the MB be a bottleneck though? I don't know what RAM I have, but it was mid to high end for June 2011. It would be unfortunate to spend $600 and find out that the other parts are holding me back. Oh, I have a 1tb regular (not SSD) HDD.

If folks think this will work, then my last question is which GTX 760? I see several options. Is 2G okay? I plan to buy off the shelf at Fry's assuming folks think things look good. So any direct advice for that vendor would help.

Thanks everyone!

Honestly, Raidmax is a pretty terrible PSU brand, they don't make quality products. However, often problems with poor quality PSUs only raise their heads when you start pushing the PSU properly. 850W is such a hugely overkill number for a rig of your caliber that if it's been working fine so far, it will keep working fine if you upgrade to an i5 and a GTX 760, both of which are in the same power envelope as the CPU and GPU you currently own.

Personally though, if it were my rig, I wouldn't risk powering it off of a Raidmax unit. I like having a quality PSU from a trusted manufacturer/brand

No, the MB won't hold anything back. The MB doesn't support PCIe 3.0, but a GTX 760 doesn't saturate the bandwidth of a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot, you'd see maybe 1% performance difference compared to having a new motherboard.

You have DDR3 RAM because that's the only one your board supports. Probably 1333MHz or 1600MHz, which is fine. The only thing you need to make sure is the RAM amount, you probably either have 2x2GB or 2x4GB. If you only have 2x2GB, consider getting another identical kit for 4x2GB total.

Upgrading the CPU and GPU is the priority here, and I'd also put a PSU upgrade ahead of getting an SSD. Buy an SSD if you can afford it. At this point in time, I would only take a look at the 240-256GB drives because a smaller one will fill up quite fast if you have your games library in it. Samsung 840 EVO 250GB, Crucial M500 240GB to name a couple.

Also I'd mention that if you're not really into overclocking, buying a cheaper locked i5 (i.e. no K at the end) and using the stock cooler would be fine too. Planetside 2 does like a good overclocked CPU though so if you're willing to try your hand at that, definitely get a 3570K and a midrange cooler like Hyper 212 EVO.

Hmm, why not buy online instead? I don't know what kind of deals they have at Fry's. Do you have to pay tax for online purchases?

Microcenter has the best CPU deals, $180 for a 3570K but only in-store. If you don't have one nearby, then:

i5-3570K $210 or i5-3470 $189 @ superbiiz
Hyper 212 EVO $35 ish (available at superbiiz also), or use stock cooler
Asus GTX 760 DCII/OC 2GB $250 ($240 after rebate) @newegg
Optional but recommended: Antec Earthwatts Green 650W $80 ($65 after rebate) @ ncix
Optional but recommended: Crucial M500 240GB $132 @superbiiz

that psu should do it no prob. people talk smack about raidmax but whatever. more than enough juice on the 12v rails and its gold certified, should be fine.

as long as your ram is 1333mhz or higher it wont be an issue.

i have an asus dc2oc 2gb 760 right now. been happy with it but i would still recommend evga and gigabyte flavours first.

as for the vram, if youre running 1-2 monitors @ 1080, 2gb is more than enough. only start needing more when pushing 2+ monitors at higher than 1080. even then its more on the game itself and the type of textures its using.

Why?

did extensive reading for 760 cards specifically as i was looking at getting one in december. many have stated problems (on newegg and review sites) with doa cards and ones dying after a couple weeks.

i went with the asus because it was on a huge sale the day i went in to get one. if it wasnt on a crazy sale i would have went for evga or gigabyte over asus easily. i generally would with any gpu as their designs are tried and true over the years. the dc2 thing just looks weird and kind of scares me. i also dont like it when third parties completely redesign the pcb, but thats more of a pet peeve.

i can tell you i have ran mine 24/7 since december 23rd with no issue so who knows. maybe i got lucky.

1) I think it is two sticks of Kingston DDR3 HyperX 1600 RAM (I can read something like khx1600... 1of 2 on the side of one stick)

2) Why Fry's? Instant gratification. It is very close to my office and they will price match online vendors. So all I ready pay is tax and get it the same day.

3) I have never been an overclocker. I did look for the 212 evo heatsink, but it is not in stock currently. Runner up?

4) I have had and been fine with MSI and EVGA brands in the past. It looks like Fry's has some packaged OCed ones. Good?

I can't seem to find an edit function. Sorry if this is "spam".

1) Success!!! With a few moments of held breath, I flashed the bios to 3703 update (July 2013) despite the very limited information in the manual or on the site other than lots of warnings. So. I *think* I am good to go for Ivy Bridge tech. (note= mouse driven Bios--how refreshing)

2) When messing in the BIOS screen I saw it said 8gig of 1333 DDR3. So I assume it is sticks of 4gig 1333s.

Chaplyn :

Your ram is fine

He recommends buying online instead, as you can usually get more for less there.

I would heavily recommend, that you overclock the cpu, as it would greatly improve your performance in this game. Id recommend either getting closed loop liquid cooler, such as the Corsair H80i, or a highend air cooler, such as the Noctua d14.

It doesnt really matter that much which brand you choose (unlike what most people will tell you), as nvidia fabricate the chips for all nvidia Cards... what really matters, is getting a Card with a good cooler - so an evga 760 with the acx cooler, gigabyte with the triforce cooler, msi with twinfrozr cooler, or asus with their custom cooler... its all good

Btw im glad it worked out for you with the bios flash - you should be ready for your 3570k then

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...e-can-i-run-it-upgrade-advice-threads.170564/

Seasonic or Antec(Seasonic or Delta rebranded) PSU

Fastest i5 you can afford

Gigabyte branded GTX 660, 660Ti, 760, 770, wait for the higher end GM architecture 800 series chips.

Dragam:

Nvidia doesn't fabricate any chips at all. They, and AMD, are both fabless semiconductor companies. Their chips are both made by TSMC.

Intel is one of the few chip designers with their own fabs.

The brand of card actually does matter A LOT. AIB makers use different quality PCB's, capacitors, VRM components, heatsinks and fans. You'd want to get one that uses high quality components, like Gigabyte, Asus or maybe EVGA, since they typically have good boards and their coolers are manufactured by Cooler Master.

BlackDove : im aware of that, but my points remains the same... the chips themselfs are all manufactured by the same factory. Reference boards also all use the same components... only custom boards (such as the lightning or classified) uses different components.

Yeah, if it's a reference card, it's all the same basically, and all the chips are made by the same people. The better cards can give you more stability or higher clocks, if they have better power components and cooling.

BlackDove : which is basically what i said... so if he buys a 760, which just has a custom cooler, but is otherwise reference, then it wont really matter what brand he chooses, in terms of quality... but as far as warrenty goes, he is probably better off paying a bit more for evga.

IF he's buying a reference design, it doesn't matter that much, since they all use basically the same stuff.

A lot of people don't buy reference cads, and brands like EVGA, Gigabyte or Asus use their own custom coolers and boards.

In that case, it'd be better to buy something decent, and not a cheap junk one. There are some really bad aftermarket coolers out there. There are some really cheap graphics cards that I'd never want to buy, because they're loud, run hot and have cheap capacitors and VRM's.

BlackDove : you dont seem to understand that almost all the boards using custom coolers, are reference boards, just equipped with a custom cooler.

Lets take evga as an example:
http://www.evga.com/Products/Produc...ily=GeForce 700 Series Family&chipset=GTX 760

The only Cards here that doesnt use a reference pcb, are the Cards featuring 4gb vram and / or duel bios.

I also like the fact that you think reference nvidia Cards are cheap junk, as if nvidia would release something that doesnt Work optimally.

First, I want to thank everyone who is helping out. Thanks!

I looked at the Corsair Hydro80i just now, but hesitate to go down the over clock path. Not only because I am not comfortable with the technical knowledge and inherent risk, but also my P8p67 LE seems to be far from an ideal candidate for OCing given reviews. Which makes sense as the only times I have over clocked it seemed like a whole lot of more expensive parts along with tweaking, testing, and monitoring for a marginal boost, so I tend to buy based off of the plan to never over clock.

I am going from i3-2100 with GTX 460 to i5 3570k with GTX 760, considering I can already play medium with 7 to 25 FPS (usually low 20s with occasional dips) in heavy combat shouldn't the new setup pull high settings with a stable 45+ FPS? Do I need to go down the OC path? Will the extra ghz from OCing be the difference? Has anyone run the upgrade level specs without an over clock? What kind of performance was seen? Youtube makes me think high to ultra with a stable 45 seems likely, but folks seem to either not comment on clock speed or leave the FPS counter off.

Chaplyn, To bring the thread back to you (although do read the discussion between BlackDove and Dragam if you have an interest, as BD is a well respected tech support poster, and Dragam seems to be knowledgeable too, so could prove to be a very interesting discussion. personally I enjoy our community tech guys having a civilised debate, it often furthers my own knowledge)

OC'ing isn't mandatory, indeed don't bother with a 3570-K unless you are, as the standard 3570 will turbo-boost to the same level as the K, but offers no ability to be overclocked beyond it. Yes the game responds well to OC'ing, I myself have gone for a mid-range overclock at 4.5Ghz. Coupled with my GTX770 Lightning, the game is very smooth, and stays at or near the 60FPS frame cap in all fights. The Darkrock Advanced keeps my CPU nice and cool, rarely going above 60c and idling at 19c. The only downside being it is ridiculous in size, my coffee mug is smaller!

All in all, You probably won't get the best out of a 3570-K with your current motherboard, this coupled with your (sensible and indeed laudable) confession that you don't really have much previous experience with OC'ing, and are reluctant to risk your componants learning on them, mean you can save yourself a few Dollars on the CPU by getting the non-K version, put the money into a slightly better version of your chosen GPU, and enjoy the absolute NIGHT AND DAY difference this upgrade will make. Don't get hung up on hitting a prescribed number, trust me, the margins you've set out and your requirements mean you're on to a sensible and enjoyable upgrade and much improved gaming experience, and at the end of it all, that is the only real metric worth recording.

I'd recommend a 2500k/3570k/4670k with some decent-good cooling for overclocking with either a:

- a GTX 780 for other power-hungry titles,

or

- a GTX 760/770/670 if you're just going to stick with planetside 2.
(the game is CPU intensive - I got no FPS boost going from a 7950 to a 780 on PS2, but got a massive increase on games like FC3 and BF4).

and in case you're new to building, I'd recommend

A reliable mobo (just make sure the model is reliable - check reviews)
8GB RAM (Corsair is a safe brand to go with)
600W PSU (Corsair again)
And a Hard drive of your choice with an SSD if you want faster load times. Just make sure you choose a reliable brand and model.

This build (almost identical to mine) should score you 60FPS (40 in huge battles) if you overclock the CPU.