Do I need an upgrade.

[Encolpius]

So, build is below. Thing is, next year we'll start seeing PS4 / XBoner stuff come out and probably a bump in system requirements.

All things considered, how much life is left in my system, do people think, especially considering I'm hoping to be able to play The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 on it and they'll probably run my hardware ragged.

 

[keynes]

How much life? Depends on the type of games and settings you wish to play.

 

[moosEh]

start seeing PS4 / XBoner stuff come out and probably a bump in system requirements.

On a side note
I have a similar CPU and I will be upgrading as soon as I can afford.

 

[Encolpius]

View attachment 3391

On a side note
I have a similar CPU and I will be upgrading as soon as I can afford.

On a side note, I bet he gets all borsant if you say that to him in real life.

 

[mantadog]

Hmmm... I have been thinking about the PS4 stuff too, looks like it should mean a jump up in specs for pc gaming. That hardware is probably just about alright for gaming on now, obviously nothing too hardcore but I can imagine it will struggle with some of the latest released games even now before the next generation consoles ramp it up.

If you were upgrading would you be going for a smaller form factor pc again? If so then you might run into the same kinds of performance issues again very quickly.

I'm running an i5 2500 and a 7870 so maybe 1 step up from you and i'm giving serious consideration to upgrading to something a with a little more meat on it for the new games, so I would say yes you should treat yourself to a new PC!

 

[tom_gr7]

I think you would be better waiting for the next lot of AMD gpu's. That way, prices are going to be cheaper for all gpu's. And personally, I'd stick with the sandy bridge cpu, no point in upgrading to haswell.

 

[Encolpius]

I've not really noticed too much in the way of performance problems. Most recent thing I've got is Tomb Raider '13 and that's pretty fine on very high settings at 1080p (although with some slowdown on the cutscenes). Or maybe I just have low standards, I dunno. Similarly, if things get a bit too much for it I turn down the AA a wee bit and its fine. I don't really multiplayer either.

Only performance eek I've had has been Dragon Age II. But that was horribly optimised anyhow, I understand, on DX11.

And yes, I would be wanting to stick with small form factor stuff. I like small form factor PCs. Why get a ginormous full tower when you can build a very powerful system indeed in a small box (although it's like a jigsaw at times.) Temperatures are just peachy also in my present case - the Sapphire card that I have almost never goes above 60 C and the CPU isn't concerningly warm either. Nor do I have need of more than one PCIe slot anyhow.

I think the thing to do is probably, like Tom says, wait for the next AMD cards then splash out on one of those and if I need more processor, grab a Sandy or Ivy i7.

 

[adamantium42]

Computers have advanced in power wayyyyyyy quicker than software requirements in the last few years. Upgrading your CPU IMO isn't going to make much difference unless you want the absolute best FPS.

A quad core in most cases is going to be enough for any game. Yes maybe you get 5-10% in some cases for splashing £200+ on a new-gen quad CPU but I just don't think it's worth it for casual gaming. All the performance will come from the GPU and that's where the money is best invested - not in a whole new PC.

If all you really need to upgrade for is gaming then that CPU and everything else is fine for a few years yet.
Even then for general increase in system speed and productivity - SSD is the best thing to add to a system - much more than a new CPU is.

I can honestly say I can run my new laptop quad core at less than 1ghz and for general process such as music, web browsing etc it never misses a beat. Performs pretty much the same in that regard as my 4.8ghz desktop CPU.