Looking to upgrade - Hardware & Software

Current specs: Processor: AMD Phenom II x4 965 Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6770 4GB DDR2 Ram Motherboard: ASUS m3a78-em 320 GB Hard drive 500 watt power supply. Just give me a rough idea where i can improve without getting another motherboard or processor

We need your budget, and we need to know the PSU model.

Either way, you're not going to get far with an upgrade with a DDR2 motherboard...

SSDs are nice and quickly getting cheaper.

[QUOTE=rockerx;43515834]SSDs are nice and quickly getting cheaper.[/QUOTE] It doesn't help to have a fast data storage device when your computer can't process the data quickly. That's not really a good upgrade path except to decrease boot time, and even then you are dealing with some very low speed RAM.

Budget is $300-350 and antec earthwatts

Ignoring processor and motherboard upgrades as you said, the best performance option is to get a GTX 770; however, this would be pointless, as such a high end card would just be bottlenecked by the rest of your system. If I were you I would purchase an R9 270, and save up for a decent processor, motherboard, and RAM combo. I suggest a 4670, or 4570 if it's a good bit cheaper, with a B85, H81, or H87 motherboard. Probably something like the B85-G41. Add in 8 GB of DDR3 RAM (2 x 4 GB, 1.5V, heat spreader, any frequency, any CL).

[QUOTE=flayne;43517729]Ignoring processor and motherboard upgrades as you said, the best performance option is to get a GTX 770; however, this would be pointless, as such a high end card would just be bottlenecked by the rest of your system. If I were you I would purchase an R9 270, and save up for a decent processor, motherboard, and RAM combo. I suggest a 4670, or 4570 if it's a good bit cheaper, with a B85, H81, or H87 motherboard. Probably something like the B85-G41. Add in 8 GB of DDR3 RAM (2 x 4 GB, 1.5V, heat spreader, any frequency, any CL).[/QUOTE] Say i just bought the motherboard, a processor and some new ram, could i keep my graphics card and upgrade my graphics card later on?

Probably.

Yes, and that may very well be the better plan. It wouldn't give you better frame rates initially, but generally interacting with your computer would be much nicer, and you wouldn't have to be wary of processor bottlenecks since you have pretty much the best gaming processor you can buy (which is the 4670k, although the 4670 is the same just not overclockable). Here's my recommendation: [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2xWLN]PCPartPicker part list[/url] / [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2xWLN/by_merchant/]Price breakdown by merchant[/url] / [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2xWLN/benchmarks/]Benchmarks[/url] [b]CPU:[/b] [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54570]Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor[/url] ($194.99 @ NCIX US) [b]Motherboard:[/b] [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-b85g41pcmate]MSI B85-G41 PC Mate ATX LGA1150 Motherboard[/url] ($79.99 @ Amazon) [b]Memory:[/b] [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f310666cl9d8gbrl]G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory[/url] ($63.75 @ Newegg) [b]Total:[/b] $338.73 [i](Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)[/i] [i](Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-13 20:31 EST-0500)[/i]

[QUOTE=flayne;43528382]Yes, and that may very well be the better plan. It wouldn't give you better frame rates initially, but generally interacting with your computer would be much nicer, and you wouldn't have to be wary of processor bottlenecks since you have pretty much the best gaming processor you can buy (which is the 4670k, although the 4670 is the same just not overclockable). Here's my recommendation: [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2xWLN]PCPartPicker part list[/url] / [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2xWLN/by_merchant/]Price breakdown by merchant[/url] / [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2xWLN/benchmarks/]Benchmarks[/url] [b]CPU:[/b] [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80646i54570]Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor[/url] ($194.99 @ NCIX US) [b]Motherboard:[/b] [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-b85g41pcmate]MSI B85-G41 PC Mate ATX LGA1150 Motherboard[/url] ($79.99 @ Amazon) [b]Memory:[/b] [url=http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f310666cl9d8gbrl]G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory[/url] ($63.75 @ Newegg) [b]Total:[/b] $338.73 [i](Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)[/i] [i](Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-13 20:31 EST-0500)[/i][/QUOTE] That looks good to me. My birthdays in about a month so ill be make sure to use whatever money i get from that for this. Thanks guys

Old topic but im looking into getting another graphics card too, some recommendations? Budget $100-150

If you can bump that up just a bit, you can get an R9 270 for around $185 which is a [U]fantastic[/U] card. If you can't, the best option is probably a 7850 ([url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131547&clickid=V3oWB4TiK2V5UeD0zjUf0UgaUkT3z9Ses0JtR00&iradid=97618&ircid=2106&irpid=79301&nm_mc=AFC-IR&cm_mmc=AFC-IR-_-na-_-na-_-na[/url]). The newer R9 260X is a bit slower. If you had to go down a tier get that or the 7790 which is on par with it. I would personally get the cheapest of the two, but you might want to pay a bit extra for a 2GB frame buffer.