What's holding back my pc?

[Craizie]

Intel I7 960 3.1
12gb RAM
SLI GTX550 TI (2)
and two older SSD's.

The games I mostly play are BF4 and CS:GO. I get terrible graphics and some graphics glitch on and off rapidly.

[Gasser64]

The I7, probably the 550s. The older SSD's are still a lot faster than any modern HDD, so you're good on that front. How fast is the RAM? When you upgrade motherboards to get a better processor, get 2133mhz ram or 2300mhz. No modern game can make good use of anything faster than that.

A GTX 970 would be a giant upgrade. But that processor is just getting old too. I'd probably wait for the TI edition of the 970 though, and see if they fix that vram issue where you really only get 3.5Gb of "fast" vram, instead of 4gb like they implied.

[Craizie]

The I7, probably the 550s. The older SSD's are still a lot faster than any modern HDD, so you're good on that front. How fast is the RAM? When you upgrade motherboards to get a better processor, get 2133mhz ram or 2300mhz. No modern game can make good use of anything faster than that.

A GTX 970 would be a giant upgrade. But that processor is just getting old too. I'd probably wait for the TI edition of the 970 though, and see if they fix that vram issue where you really only get 3.5Gb of "fast" vram, instead of 4gb like they implied.

I really dont remember the speed of the Ram when I built it. Everything was pretty top of the line when I built it. I used to love messing with pcs and tweeking them for performance, but now it's just tedious to me.

[Gasser64]

Well it'll be pretty easy anyway. You'll just set your new processor to 4.4Ghz and auto on the voltage. You're done.

Set the RAM to the speeds they tell you, and you're done again. Get an evga GTX 970 FTW, or Classified so you don't even have to overclock or tweak the card. You can be done with that too. The heavy overclock those cards come with stock, will already net you the 10% gain that you'd get from overclocking a vanilla spec card. But you probably already know all of this by now. You really don't want to overclock those types of cards more anyway, unless you like listening to very high fan speeds. My 770 Classified will go a lot higher, but I just won't do it without water cooling because I don't want all that racket.

I know that CPU and card/s are a big bottleneck though.

[JC316]

It's most likely the GTX 550's holding you back. IMO, SLI and Crossifre is more trouble than it's worth and probably the source of your graphics bugs. What brand/specs is your power supply?

[Craizie]

It's most likely the GTX 550's holding you back. IMO, SLI and Crossifre is more trouble than it's worth and probably the source of your graphics bugs. What brand/specs is your power supply?

It's a cooler master 850w psupply.

Just looked up the ram it was DDR3 1600.
ORSAIR DOMINATOR 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMP12GX3M3A1600C9

[CexMashean]

I'm going to blame sli for graphical glitching. Now that could mean motherboard chipset, chipset driver, video cards, or video card drivers.

What settings and resolution are you running the games at?
How long have you been running on the same windows installation? Which version is it?

I doubt the i7 or ssd drives are related to your problems.

[Craizie]

I'm going to blame sli for graphical glitching. Now that could mean motherboard chipset, chipset driver, video cards, or video card drivers.

What settings and resolution are you running the games at?
How long have you been running on the same windows installation? Which version is it?

I doubt the i7 or ssd drives are related to your problems.

Recently installed windows 8.1 about two months ago. Running a single 29" 2560x1080 monitor. My secondary 24" monitor quit working at random.

[CexMashean]

Try one video card at a time to see if the graphical glitches go away.

Honestly, if it was me, i'd scrap them and at the very least get a gtx 960.

[Craizie]

Try one video card at a time to see if the graphical glitches go away.

Honestly, if it was me, i'd scrap them and at the very least get a gtx 960.

That's kind of what I was thinking. I didn't know if that was the bottle neck or not, and didn't want to dump cash into something I wasn't sure about. What should I get for $300 +/- ?

[CexMashean]

I'm absolutely loving my gtx 970 with 4gb ram.

bf4 on ultra at 1080p runs smooth 90+fps, and Dragon Age Inquisition on ultra at 60fps.

rest of my peasant system specs:
AMD fx-8350 8 core at 4.0ghz
16gb ddr3 at 1866mhz
main drive is a 256gb ssd
990fx motherboard chipset

[Craizie]

I'm gonna do it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487088

Look alright?

[CexMashean]

i actually went with this one, because I'm a jew

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500362&cm_re=zotac_970-_-14-500-362-_-Product

but both are absolutely fine.

[Craizie]

I too, am a Jew. I've never heard of that brand before.

[Gasser64]

I go with evga because their customer service is outstanding. Its like walmart used to be. They'd take diapers back with shit in em. Evga is that way with video cards. And motherboards. After having a couple of video cards die on me over the years, I don't really like to use anyone else.

I'm sure it won't matter, but on the off chance that it does. The 970 only has 3.5Gb of "fast" vram, and the other .5Gb runs at 1/7th the speed of the rest. Its pretty much like its not even there, because your framerate will tank if it ever has to make use of it. Might want to bear it in mind, if you're planning on playing much newer games like Shadow of Mordor. Its a good game, but if you look at the youtube vids, people can show you where the framerate tanks right when it needs that last bit of vram. Personally that's why I'm waiting on the 970 refresh where they bump the vram to 8gb, or perhaps the 980 TI edition. But if you're not one who likes to play all maxed on the bleeding edge, this may never matter to you.