My noobish upgrade decisions: am I wrong?

[Mohorovicic]

For a 1920x1080 your PC is seriously fine. More than fine. And if anything, you will never need to OC the CPU, ever, since stock 2500 can chew pretty much anything you can throw at it gaming-wise.

[Ash_firelord]

For a 1920x1080 your PC is seriously fine. More than fine. And if anything, you will never need to OC the CPU, ever, since stock 2500 can chew pretty much anything you can throw at it gaming-wise.

Thanks. I'm sure it's fine. I can run most games at max everything. But I'd like it to be more than fine, and as I got a bit of spare cash to spend and time to use on tweaking my rig, I figured - why not?

Batman: Arkham City, for instance, has framerate issues with all settings on max. Skyrim drops below the smooth 60FPS when serious shit hits the fan in populated areas. Assassin's Creed 2 gets the ocasional stutter on the areas with the widest FOV.

Is this important stuff? No, not at all - I still have a blast gaming on my rig. But just like a motorhead will have a blast making sure every bit and piece of his vintage 1920's car is polished and running fine, I have a blast getting everything running at 101%.

To repeat the metaphor I used earlier: I have my cake, and I like it. I'm just looking for a cherry to put on top. :)

Maybe it's not possible without throwing a lot of money at it; that's a possibility. But considering my screen resolution and the kind of hardware I have, I honestly think it should perform a bit better than it does.

[Alex Bakke]

They can only sustain a limited amount of write cycles. They get worn out eventually. But as long as you don't do silly things like defragment it, it's still going to last several years before it becomes a problem.

HDDs would get worn out over time too, but it would take far more write cycles. They're more susceptible to wearing out mechanically (something that doesn't affect SSDs).

This is largely a thing of the past now. When SSDs were still 'new', they didn't come with a command called TRIM - Which recognises and deletes unnecessary copies of files that are left over after the new files have been written to the drive. TRIM has boosted the life of SSDs to that of a standard HDD now. With normal usage you can expect to get 5-7 years out of one before you should think about replacing it.

[Moraven]

Good review of two new Xonars vs on board sound.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/23358

I built my PC in Feb with a SSD, 128gb. Enough space for a few games, definite noticeable chance on load times.

Not familiar with those games and fps drops, but it will not hurt to overclock your video card and cpu. As long as your cooling and airflow is good.

[Sakkura]

This is largely a thing of the past now. When SSDs were still 'new', they didn't come with a command called TRIM - Which recognises and deletes unnecessary copies of files that are left over after the new files have been written to the drive. TRIM has boosted the life of SSDs to that of a standard HDD now. With normal usage you can expect to get 5-7 years out of one before you should think about replacing it.

That's why I said it's not really a concern with current-generation firmware. It's still not on par with HDDs in this regard though.

[Sakkura]

Thank you for the tip.

Can you please suggest any resourses I could look at to learn about CPU overclocking? I have some software that came with my motherboard, but it doesn't feel all that great, and certainly isn't compreensive enough - basically a couple of buttons that say "push me and PC will be better, magic!".

Overclocking software isn't really much good. It's always better to do it manually.
There are many excellent guides to overclocking around the net. Here's one that's actually tailored to your CPU.

While I'm probably not going to do this, I am curious about one thing: would I need to get another EVGA GTX570 SC, or would any GTX 570 do?

Generally no. Getting a different one might cause compatibility issues, but it should work with any other GTX 570. Both cards would run at the frequency of the slower one, so if you got a second card with a lower clock, you'd want to at least overclock it to match your EVGA card.

[Ash_firelord]

Good review of two new Xonars vs on board sound.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/23358

Thanks! I might just have found my new soundcard.

Overclocking software isn't really much good. It's always better to do it manually.
There are many excellent guides to overclocking around the net. Here's one that's actually tailored to your CPU.

Great! Thank you, I will check it out.

Generally no. Getting a different one might cause compatibility issues, but it should work with any other GTX 570. Both cards would run at the frequency of the slower one, so if you got a second card with a lower clock, you'd want to at least overclock it to match your EVGA card.

Good to know! However it seem much less of a hassle and not that much more expensive to get a fully new GPU in a year or so. Of course, I'll keep my eye out for second-hand GTX570s on the cheap...

[Sakkura]

Yeah there are definitely drawbacks to multi-GPU setups. And it's not like a GTX 570 is a weak card anyway.

[Shooop]

I've read modern video cards don't need to run at the same clock anymore when in SLI on the nVidia forums.

But ultimately I'd recommend one more powerful card rather than two lessers because some games don't run SLI well and it generates a lot more heat. This is especially important if you have a mid instead of a full tower case.

[Jesus_Phish]

I'd love to get a SSD for my os, but the thought of installing windows again *shudders*. And then making steam work with it again without having to download everything. Is there a new easier way to do this?

*EDIT*

Sorry for hijacking the thread, I'm also interested in getting an SSD for my PC and didn't want to clutter the forum up with another thread of a similar topic

[Finicky]

id5 and ue3 games will see some benifit from an SSD, these shitty engines suck at texture streaming and are too retarded to properly cache through ram, so installing games that use these engines on an SSD will alleviate the slow LOD switching of textures a bit.

Still, it's pretty pointless to get an SSD for gaming, loading times on a good HDD are already negligable and there is 0 performance increase.

Bang for buck a good monitor >>>>> modern gpu >> a quad core cpu (phenom II or better is all you need) >>>> more than 4GB ram >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>SSD

Stay away from SLI, it's a headache with compatibility/driver issues/cap versions, microstutter is unavoidable due to the very nature of each gpu rendering a frame in turns + you get a bunch of extra noise from the fans having to work overtime to cool things.

If your money is burning a hole in your pocket :
You have a fancy PC combined with a shitty samsung TN panel monitor.... Replace that with something that doesn't suck it's the best bang for your money.

[Wolfenswan]

If you're getting a XONAR you def. want to look into these third-party drivers.

I've been running with a XONAR DG since my onboard broke and I'm perfectly content. However I'm only using headphones and 2 speakers.

[Sakkura]

I've read modern video cards don't need to run at the same clock anymore when in SLI on the nVidia forums.

It wouldn't be all that helpful if they didn't. It would just mean you were introducing microstuttering on purpose.