PC advice please?

[Passeeo]

Hi folks i was looking for some advice regarding my current pc, sorry if this is not the right place to ask.

I've had it for 3 years and it has been running well for the most part on stock settings for the duration of its use.
It has been used quite a lot.
However when it comes to Star Citizen and a couple of other recent games it has started to chug a bit. A lot of this is probably down to the GTX 770 i'm still using.

I have been putting money away for a new pc for a while and i'll have about £1500 set aside soon.

My question is this to anyone savvy out there. Should i :

1. be thinking of purchasing a new system in the near future?

or

2. Alternatively should i pick up a semi-decent graphics card, give the internals of my pc a good clean and then overclock my cpu?
Then setting aside the remainder of my savings and adding to it for another year or so?
Also if this is the better option any suggestions on GPU's that are compatible with my current setup?

Bear in mind this was my first gaming pc, i'm not tech savvy and i've been nervous about the idea of opening my pc up and tinkering with it.

Here's my current specs :

Case COOLERMASTER CM STORM ENFORCER - GAMING ENTHUSIAST CASE
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-4790k (4.0GHz) 8MB Cache
Motherboard Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 3: ATX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs, XFIRE/SLI
Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X BEAST DUAL-DDR3 2133MHz X.M.P (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 770 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready
1st Hard Disk 250GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE
Power Supply CORSAIR 750W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling Corsair H80i Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler

Thanks in advance for anyone taking the time to chime in.

 

[Doggen]

Your system is pretty awesome tbh, I think a new GPU will go a long way. AMD Vega should be out end of august but cant go wrong with a 1080Ti unless you are into the freesync thing

 

[marcsand2]

I agree with BigTimes. Go for a GPU and save your bucks for later.

 

[StdDev]

What he ^ said..
Your system is not bad at all

 

[Xist]

Everything in your computer except the GPU are pretty good.

Start Citizen is a very CPU intensive game so eventually you'll want new motherboard and CPU but not yet. A 4th gen i7 will hold you over until SC launches at the very least, maybe longer.

That GPU is totally outdated though. Those change drastically every year, unfortunately for the cost, but the performance gains are significant in each iteration so it's worth it if you care about performance (unlike the CPU market which hasn't done all that much in the past few years to justify upgrading from 4th gen to 7th gen given the high cost of doing so).

 

[DarthMunkee]

£1500? Sounds like it's time for SLI Titans to me. For real though everyone else has already said it, cave to the peer pressure and get a nice overclocked 1080ti or something like that.

 

[Thalstan]

What OS version?
32 or 64 bit?
What drive is SC on?

 

[Thugari]

All you need is a video card, your system has a few years left in it. the one problem your going to find is the prices of video cards are outrageous right now.

 

[Printimus]

GPU GPU GPU!

 

[mindfart]

I concur, GPU is only thing really worth upgrading at this point in time.

If you want a small boost ssd speed (on paper it looks huge, but it's not that much of a difference in actual use) get a Samsung 960 EVO/Pro M.2 SSD

/ninjaedit

Also, can't go wrong with a 1080. But if you're playing on 1080p 60/70hz and want to save some cash get a 1070 for now.

 

[WaldoWohin]

I will chime. Don't buy a new whole setup. Don't bother overclocking the CPU.

Buy a 1080 or a 1080Ti.

 

[Passeeo]

What OS version?
32 or 64 bit?
What drive is SC on?

Windows 8.1 (yeah i know, ewww, this was a mishap on my part)
64 bit
It's not on my SSD yet but it will be as i'm just freeing up space.

 

[Passeeo]

Thanks to everyone for the advice.

Gonna hold on till 3.0 is out hopefully for the GPU market to get closer to being more sensible. Thinking a 1080 will be good enough to tide me over for another 12-24 months.

 

[Vindictive69]

The comments above are good advice. The price for the mainstream gaming cards are inflated pretty bad right now due to another round of people interested in crypto currencies. I would go with the suggestion of the 1080 since it is the least likely right now to have its price inflated from the crypto market demand. The 1060's and AMD 480/580's market area are most effected. AMD's Vega should be competitive with the 1080 so I dont see any upsets in graphics performance in the near future.. but you never really know.

On the CPU side your setup is just fine for current games so I would hold off and do a CPU upgrade early next year if you wanted. Reason being, the launch of all the new AMD Ryzen cpu's is causing Intel to make some changes and by early next year the main stream gaming CPU's from Intel will be 6 core instead of the current 4... or you can go with the new AMD's but i would give that the rest of this year to mature with the motherboard bios's and game patches that will come out supporting the new architecture.

Hope that helps you. Im pretty up on the tech since i build all my own systems and occasionally other peoples as a favor to them. I also make suggestions to friends and family all the time on whats best for what they need it for. :)

 

[Devastat3]

If the game was optimized today I think your system would be plenty strong with a gpu upgrade. However who knows how long that's going to take so the gpu route still makes the most sense... I don't know if I would buy a 1080 or a TI though.. that's a lot of money now to have to re-upgrade in a year or 2 once you build a new rig and you find yourself a generation or 2 behind once again.

 

[DirectorGunner]

I say to everyone, imo now's the worst time to buy new PC parts.. wait till next quarter for better deals or newer tech :3
Unless you're buying previous gen stuff now at a big discount.

 

[Vindictive69]

I say to everyone, imo now's the worst time to buy new PC parts.. wait till next quarter for better deals or newer tech :3
Unless you're buying previous gen stuff now at a big discount.

I agree... if the crypto mining people will release their stranglehold on the graphics card supply and let the prices return to normal by then. :)

 

[Sirus7264]

Honestly you should try to get a 1050 or 1060 for now if you are not planning a full on upgrade they are cheap and you can save the rest of your pennies for SC release and build something much stronger. If you feel you want to slurge though the 1080ti would be the way to go. Also there has been rumors running around for the next architecture for Nvidea which should come out mid next year. I heard it shouldn't be much different from the 1080TI performance but who knows atm they are all just rumors on what is going to come in the near future maybe this will be another big leap to 4k and 8k gamming with the new processors out and .

 

[Miasmic]

I had a 1060 while I was running 1080p and it ran everything great. That card is built to top out *most* games at 1080, that was its whole purpose. After getting a 1440p monitor, I bumped up to a 1080. The 1060 could hang just fine in, again *most*, games, but I had the cash to throw, so I threw it. SC is very CPU heavy. I am wishing I'd gone with an i7 when building my rig. This is the only game that has really taxed the i5 6600. At the time, I was under the impression that I didn't really have a need for the i7 as its selling point was mainly video editing/rendering and the i5 would be fine for a few years, so I shaved a few bucks there.

Point being, if you are running 1080p, a 1060 would be just fine (imo), 1070 even better. 1080 if you're feeling frisky/want to future proof a tad. The rest of your system looks just fine, as others have said before me.

 

[Crichten]

Lemme put it like this....

You've got what I would compare to a LADA 1.3 Diesel engine sat in the chassis of a god damned Porsche