upgrading i5 2400 config for WoW Legion

Hi!

I am looking to upgrade my wife's desktop, which she uses to play World of Warcraft Legion with me. She might use it as well to run some Assasin's Creed game.

Her setup is:
CPU: i5 2400
RAM: 4 GB DDR3
HDD: 1 To HDD
GPU: GTX 550 Ti 1Gb
FHD monitor with DVI and VGA

As the new Legion expansion released with substantially increased requirements, she has been plagued with extremely long loading screens and very low framerates (she fared pretty well in the previous expansion).

So I am thinking of improvements to her machine, without breaking the bank.

I was thinking to put her OS and games on an SSD, which would make it more snappy, and perhaps a 4GB RAM addition would help with loading times. Or perhaps I should uninstall her antivirus...

But my main question is relative to the GPU: GTX 550 Ti 1Gb is obviously outdated compared to Pascal, but at what level of the 10xx range would her i5 2400 be the bottleneck?

My first tought was for a GTX 1050 Ti 4Gb, which are quite affordable (~160$) around here, or is a cheaper (~120$) GTX 1050 2Gb already limited by the CPU? On the contrary, is there enough room to go for a GTX 1060 3Gb (~200$)?

I am looking forward to upgrading her rig, but do not want to spend needlessly.

Thanks for your inputs!

 

I think that in terms of gaming, the i5 2400 is probably coming towards the end of it's usefulness, so it would be foolish to spend lots on a fantastic GPU for that system. I reckon it could benefit from another 4GB of RAM. I wouldn't go with a 2GB VRAM GPU, as that's just not enough for modern games, 4GB VRAM would be OK. So, I reckon it's a toss up between the 1050ti and the GTX 1060 - oh, but the 1060 you listed has only 3GB VRAM, don't get that one! So, I would say that the 1050ti 4GB VRAM is the best one to get out of all the cards you listed, and failing that then the 6GB version of the GTX 1060 - 6GB version of the GTX 1060 is about 50% faster than the GTX 1050ti - it's your call, but I'd get at least 4GB VRAM for your next GPU. Here's some performance data:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_geforce_gtx_1050_and_1050_ti_gaming_x_review,13.html

EDIT: if the GTX 1050ti 4GB is sufficiently fast for your needs then probably best to get that one, as GTX 1060 is probably too much to spend on your old system with that CPU. That CPU is not gonna be relevant for gaming quite soon, so the GTX 1060 would be a poor investment when you can save the money not spent for a brand new rig in a year or two. If that's not long enough to keep your GTX 1050 ti system, then maybe splash out on a whole new rig now. (If you don't play modern games then maybe you can keep your 1050ti system longer, but it will soon struggle with new games - CPU limitation mainly, and to lesser extent 1050ti limitation if willing to turn down game details).

 

I'd say you should look at the GTX 1050 or GTX 1050ti cards. Try to get 4GB of VRAM, but don't kill yourself over it. The 4GB will let you hold some textures and keep anti-aliasing up. Since I can't find any 4GB VRAM NVIDIA GTX 1050 cards, that means you need the NVIDIA GTX 1050ti. Though once you get up to the minimum there, you will be bottlenecked by CPU. SSD is up to you. It will help some with the loads, but load times (once the disk has read the files) is going to be bottlenecked by her CPU once you get the SSD upgrade. But a 2.5 inch SATA SSD is trivially moved to a new system so it is not a bad deal.

Personally I don't care to be one generation behind the recommended settings. And Ivy Bridge is 1 generation behind Sandy Bridge. A 2GB 1050 is like a $100, right? The 1050, although weak by today's standards, solves your immediate needs for a Wow Legion recommended GPU. Your i5-2400 is at or near the end of its useful service life for WoW. Is overwatch in her furture? I saw they are suggesting a 4-generation i5 for that (i5-4460). Really you are bottlenecked by CPU clockspeed, or will shortly be (after the small upgrades), but you already kind of knew that.

If it were my wife, I'd get the 2GB 1050, 4GB more system RAM, and a 512GB SSD (or 256GB if WoW is the only thing she plays). Since she's asking for faster load times and not more detail and not more AA, then a 2GB card might be an OK stop gap. Any more money than that should be set aside for a 6-gen or 7-generation i5 setup. You need a better i5.

 

Oh yeah, I missed the loading times comment - yep an SSD required for sure (although you might want to make sure your HDD is defragged first as that might be the problem and produce a good enough solution - I used to use Auslogics Disk Defrag when I had HDD's - very quick & effective). It's interesting that we're both leaning towards the 1050 side rather than 1060, but I really think you need that 4GB VRAM, 2GB VRAM is just a really really poor investment, it's not enough even for current games. 1050ti 4GB VRAM looks like the better deal to me.

 

I'm going to throw in with the 1050ti, it's about the right balance for a temporary upgrade. Add an SSD that's big enough to hold the OS and it should hold you over until you need to think about upgrading the CPU.

 

Thanks for all the valuable inputs! I'll prioritise replacing the GPU with a 1050 Ti then and see how it goes.

 

Be sure and post results.

 

Will do! Now on to find a cheap and silent one...

 

I think EVGA and Gigabyte have pretty quiet ones. Though none of the reviews I have read so far actually take a decibel reading that I can recall.

 

My approach when buying my GTX 1070 was to simply google search for the cheapest 1070's at the time of buying, and then look at the specs & reviews, mainly on guru3d where they do comparison performance graphs for games & benchmarks, as well as temperature readings. Reviews are good to determine temps/noise/performance. It's a little bit of work, but you'll get the best results!
e.g. https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sour...B720&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=1050ti,+guru3d&*

 

Finally got her a a Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti OC 4G, it was well stocked and we'll priced. And with 2 fans it should be more quiet.

Luckily my brother had a 2x2Gb set of DDR3 laying around, and the motherboard had 2 available slots.

After opening the beast and some dust cleaning, I popped everything in place and it's working like a charm.

Computer is a bit more responsive, but I guess I'll need to find an SSD (eying some 256Go Toshiba Q300 Pro at $100, seems interesting with the 5y warranty).

Graphic performance is much better, but I'll have to test it more to see how far it goes.

 

Is that a benchmark talking, or does it have some game time under its belt?

 

Ah, that's good! You should be able to overclock that 1050ti really quite well considering it's a cool running card with a monstrous aftermarket cooler on it! My approach has always been to overclock everything from first day of ownership to extract max value & performance from it - this philosophy hasn't failed me yet, haven't had any hardware failures. Would be interesting to see your GPU overclocking results & also what kind of 3DMark Firestrike scores you're getting. The first thing I do with a new build is to run something like 3DMark Firestrike and to compare scores against what I should be getting for that hardware, to make sure it's working properly.

Re. buying SSD's, I think it's best to just buy one that's on a good deal. All SSD's now are pretty fast, and endurance (you're talking warranty) isn't really an issue, I wouldn't worry about warranty & just go for price per GB. Before you buy one, just check the reviews in online publications like Guru3D (or elsewhere), and also to check there are no bugs or issues with a particular model. In terms of size of the SSD, definitely wouldn't get less than 256GB, but more useful to get 500GB so that you can use it in your next rig over the coming years.

 

More like game time, but we hardly got any time to play lately alas (babies...).
I want to push it a bit, tough I know in the most demanding context it will be bottlenecked by the CPU...

No Benchmarks planned yet, as I am a total novice. Same for overclocking, but I might give it a try. I even briefly entertained the idea of upgrading the CPU...

On the SSD front, saw a nice 500Go Samsung 850 EVO for a nice $150, might be the better value...

 

Good SSD!

 

850 Evo is what I have in my rig at home, and I highly recommend it.