Originally posted by GrayGhost79

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Derza10

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Derza10
You would be better off getting a good GPU now and adding the SSD in later, a SSD will not improve gameplay it will only reduce load times.

It's a matter of priorities, really, but I'd advise exactly the opposite.  I can live with using merely high rather than max graphical settings, but don't want a computer that makes me sit and wait every time I ask it to do anything.  Also, it's very easy to upgrade a video card later, while adding an SSD later to an existing system is much more of a pain to do.

Let me get this straight... You are saying he is better off wasting $100-$130 on a GPU that he will need to replace soon ( for another $200-$300 more) and getting a SSD that will give him maybe a few seconds faster load on some load screens. Then spending $200-$300 on a good graphics card now and then waiting a bit to install a SSD?

You are basically telling him to spend ~$130 more for the same end results and have worse performance now......

Adding a SSD to an existing system is very easy...

As I said, it's a matter of priorities.  Do you want fairly high graphical settings on a computer that is very fast and responsive, or do you want to max settings in most games on a computer that is sluggish?  Which is better is a matter of opinion, but I'd take the former.

Video cards have gotten so fast that the only ways to push the higher end ones anymore are by being really inefficient, by introducing some very computationally intense effects that are easy to turn off, and by having a ton of stuff on the screen at once.  And I'm not aware of any games that go the third route, as that would make the game unplayable for most of your potential customers.

Of course, if you assemble your own from parts rather than having one built to order for you from a cite like CyberPower PC, then you can have both:  a faster video card (Radeon HD 7870 or GeForce GTX 660, either of which roughly double the performance of the 7770) and a good SSD.

Adding an SSD without putting anything on it is easy to do, but defeats the point of adding an SSD.  Adding an SSD and reinstalling the OS and a bunch of programs on it is far more of a pain.

Not really a pain to transfer to your SSD. Most use Windows 7 which has the capability of doing so built in. You clone the HDD onto the SSD, format the HDD and BAM done lol. Any novice can do it without to much trouble. 

 

Granted it use to be a pain and could even be expensive, that simply isn't the case anymore lol. 

Buy a GPU that you will replace soon that will serve no purpose after so that you can get an SSD now, or remove a redundant step and buy a good GPU now and pick up an SSD later?

Not to mention you will already have an HDD for storage now that will prolong the life of your SSD ontop of preserving the random write speed thanks to waiting on the SSD. 

Have fun with a straightforward cloning of 300 GB of data onto a 120 GB SSD.  If you're not going to use more data than the SSD offers, then just skip the hard drive and buy an SSD only.

And who says you have to replace the video card soon, anyway?  A Radeon HD 7770 is a plenty capable card if you're not the sort of person who has to max settings in everything.

Or you could just work on the side, save up $400 , which can easily be done in 1-2 weeks if you are resourcful, and not make any comprimises .

But maybe thats just my way of thinking, since I find it easy to work 70+ hours a week to save for my toys and house

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by GrayGhost79

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Derza10

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Derza10
You would be better off getting a good GPU now and adding the SSD in later, a SSD will not improve gameplay it will only reduce load times.

It's a matter of priorities, really, but I'd advise exactly the opposite.  I can live with using merely high rather than max graphical settings, but don't want a computer that makes me sit and wait every time I ask it to do anything.  Also, it's very easy to upgrade a video card later, while adding an SSD later to an existing system is much more of a pain to do.

Let me get this straight... You are saying he is better off wasting $100-$130 on a GPU that he will need to replace soon ( for another $200-$300 more) and getting a SSD that will give him maybe a few seconds faster load on some load screens. Then spending $200-$300 on a good graphics card now and then waiting a bit to install a SSD?

You are basically telling him to spend ~$130 more for the same end results and have worse performance now......

Adding a SSD to an existing system is very easy...

As I said, it's a matter of priorities.  Do you want fairly high graphical settings on a computer that is very fast and responsive, or do you want to max settings in most games on a computer that is sluggish?  Which is better is a matter of opinion, but I'd take the former.

Video cards have gotten so fast that the only ways to push the higher end ones anymore are by being really inefficient, by introducing some very computationally intense effects that are easy to turn off, and by having a ton of stuff on the screen at once.  And I'm not aware of any games that go the third route, as that would make the game unplayable for most of your potential customers.

Of course, if you assemble your own from parts rather than having one built to order for you from a cite like CyberPower PC, then you can have both:  a faster video card (Radeon HD 7870 or GeForce GTX 660, either of which roughly double the performance of the 7770) and a good SSD.

Adding an SSD without putting anything on it is easy to do, but defeats the point of adding an SSD.  Adding an SSD and reinstalling the OS and a bunch of programs on it is far more of a pain.

Not really a pain to transfer to your SSD. Most use Windows 7 which has the capability of doing so built in. You clone the HDD onto the SSD, format the HDD and BAM done lol. Any novice can do it without to much trouble. 

 

Granted it use to be a pain and could even be expensive, that simply isn't the case anymore lol. 

Buy a GPU that you will replace soon that will serve no purpose after so that you can get an SSD now, or remove a redundant step and buy a good GPU now and pick up an SSD later?

Not to mention you will already have an HDD for storage now that will prolong the life of your SSD ontop of preserving the random write speed thanks to waiting on the SSD. 

Have fun with a straightforward cloning of 300 GB of data onto a 120 GB SSD.  If you're not going to use more data than the SSD offers, then just skip the hard drive and buy an SSD only.

And who says you have to replace the video card soon, anyway?  A Radeon HD 7770 is a plenty capable card if you're not the sort of person who has to max settings in everything.

Theres a bigger performance gain from a better GPU than with an SSD lol so I wouldn't go the "A 7770 is plenty capable..." because most HDD's fall into the same category lol but offer a lesser performance difference. 

As far as your cloning concerns go... I would hope you as a fellow system builder know the process for this lol. If not I can explain it in detail for you. 

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Originally posted by GrayGhost79
Theres a bigger performance gain from a better GPU than with an SSD lol so I wouldn't go the "A 7770 is plenty capable..." because most HDD's fall into the same category lol but offer a lesser performance difference. 

 

As far as your cloning concerns go... I would hope you as a fellow system builder know the process for this lol. If not I can explain it in detail for you. 

---

Really it depends on what performance metric your talking about.

FPS - sure, GPU wins there, because an SSD doesn't do anything for FPS.

But there is more to gaming, and computing, than just frames per second.

I consider the 7770 the entry level card for gaming. It is capable enough to play pretty well every game out there at 1080p at some varying degree of graphical settings. It can max out a lot of popular games, it can play all the latest games (albeit with a few reduced settings) and still look great. It has enough power to be able to handle games for the next couple of years at the least, before it just won't be able to handle a game and force a reduction in resolution or require an upgrade.

Sure, a more expensive video card will get you more graphics settings, or better FPS, or some combination of both. But only in video games.

SSDs help with ~everything~. Windows boot times, game load times, map load times, zoning delay times, application response times, texture load times, and even small things that you wouldn't think would be related, like right click contextual menus and Start menu response, get huge response benefits from an SSD.

SSDs also have the added benefits of being completely silent, very cool running, requiring little interior space inside the case, and having nearly infinite shock resistance.

The only time I would not recommend an SSD would be on the most extreme (<$700) budgets, where your already cut down to the 7770 and an AMD processor and barely squeaking by on the budget with that. Personally, I won't even quote or spec out a build without an SSD in the mix any more, and haven't for the past year - and when the budget is tight, I take the money from the GPU budget, because an SSD adds more value to a computer (even a computer used primarily for gaming) than an equal amount of money added to an entry level GPU (of which I say a 7770 is entry level).

Let's look at some numbers:
The difference between a 7770 and 7970 Passmark scores:
2053 vs 5009
TFLOPS:
1.28 TFLOPS vs 4.3 TFLOPS

So depending on the metric, we see around a 2.5 and 3x performance increase, going from a ~$130+ GPU to a ~$400+ GPU. A ~3x cost increase... that more or less stands to reason.

Let's look at an SSD (Samsung 840 Pro) vs a 10k RPM VelociRaptor (fastest consumer platter drive)
4k Random Read:
281 MB/s vs 1.9 MB/s
129k Sequential Read:
372 MB/s vs 144 MB/s
(http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/665?vs=182)

Depending on the metric, a 150x increase (no typo there) in random reads (most of what your hard drive does anyway), and a bit more than double in sequential reads. Writes are similar, but I didn't compare because a hard drive doesn't spend most of it's time writing, we tend to read the same data over and over.

The price difference there? $249 for the 256G SSD (as tested) vs $179 for the 600G Raptor (as tested). Even if you need 600G (spread across multiple SSD drives), your still at a cost of about 3:1, for a performance increase of 150:1.... and that's going ridiculous: most people get by very nicely on a 120G SSD drive, and a second lower cost traditional drive for bulk data - but we are talking strictly performance here and I wanted to throw out some apples to apples numbers.

So yeah... drop down from a 7970 and put that extra money towards an SSD... the numbers even point to that if you want to talk about "lesser performance difference", especially if you put it in terms of performance per dollar for GPU performance versus HD performance.

Originally posted by Ridelynn

 

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Originally posted by GrayGhost79
Theres a bigger performance gain from a better GPU than with an SSD lol so I wouldn't go the "A 7770 is plenty capable..." because most HDD's fall into the same category lol but offer a lesser performance difference. 

 

 

As far as your cloning concerns go... I would hope you as a fellow system builder know the process for this lol. If not I can explain it in detail for you. 

---

 

Really it depends on what performance metric your talking about.

FPS - sure, GPU wins there, because an SSD doesn't do anything for FPS.

But there is more to gaming, and computing, than just frames per second.

I consider the 7770 the entry level card for gaming. It is capable enough to play pretty well every game out there at 1080p at some varying degree of graphical settings. It can max out a lot of popular games, it can play all the latest games (albeit with a few reduced settings) and still look great. It has enough power to be able to handle games for the next couple of years at the least, before it just won't be able to handle a game and force a reduction in resolution or require an upgrade.

Sure, a more expensive video card will get you more graphics settings, or better FPS, or some combination of both. But only in video games.

SSDs help with ~everything~. Windows boot times, game load times, map load times, zoning delay times, application response times, texture load times, and even small things that you wouldn't think would be related, like right click contextual menus and Start menu response, get huge response benefits from an SSD.

SSDs also have the added benefits of being completely silent, very cool running, requiring little interior space inside the case, and having nearly infinite shock resistance.

The only time I would not recommend an SSD would be on the most extreme (<$700) budgets, where your already cut down to the 7770 and an AMD processor and barely squeaking by on the budget with that. Personally, I won't even quote or spec out a build without an SSD in the mix any more, and haven't for the past year - and when the budget is tight, I take the money from the GPU budget, because an SSD adds more value to a computer (even a computer used primarily for gaming) than an equal amount of money added to an entry level GPU (of which I say a 7770 is entry level).

The problem is the degree that an SSD helps out in this specific case vs. the increased cost of getting the SSD now and skimping on the GPU only to upgrade it later. An SSD is beneficial, that isn't really the debate. The OP is planning on getting a 7770 now and upgrading it later. You are talking about $130ish now which he will then upgrade later making the purchase redundant. With the primary focus being gaming and looking at the rest of his selection the only upgrade he will need to make with his build over the next several years would be the GPU. 

Getting the GPU now and grabbing the SSD later = an automatic $130 savings. Better gaming performance now and another boost to loading times and such when he gets the SSD later. 

On a $1500 budget, there would of course be no reason to consider a Radeon HD 7770.

But for someone who just wants games to run smoothly and is fine with medium graphical settings, upgrading a Radeon HD 7770 "later" might mean you get five or six years out of it first--long enough that there's a considerable chance that hardware failure rather than insufficient performance ends up driving the upgrade, and a higher end card isn't going to be more reliable.

But once more, if you can assemble parts yourself, then you can have both the SSD and also a faster video card on that budget.

I noticed the debate, get the SSD first. If you have the intentions of getting an SSD at anypoint in the future just get it first. Performance aside, just the inconvience of it all. I hate cloning and I think it only leads to problems in most PC's. I do fresh installs on all drives.

As for the 7770, its a good card for its price. Get it now and replace it when you're ready for higher quality graphics. Believe me it isn't wasted money to have a GPU laying around. There has been a time or two when i've not had a backup GPU and I had to resort to intergrated graphics.

I mean I still use a 5830(similar to a 7770 in ability) on a 1440p monitor lol. I play most games perfectly fine with setting tweaks the difference in quality is dismal. I can say that because i've had a 7950 in this same system and while I could tell the difference it wasn't enough to warrant the cost. Because sure with the 7950 i could turn everything up 100% BUT did i really need it or notice it? not really. With tweaking ingame settings got near the same noticeable graphics on a much lower card.

Also if you aren't crazy FPS competitive and more into rpg, rts or mmo games then IPS monitors are absolutely great. SSD+7770+IPS will yield better overall experience than HDD+high end GPU+LCD

Originally posted by Derza10
This system is for gaming..... You are telling him to get an SSD to cut out maybe a few seconds on his load screens in games vs better gameplay? He can add that SSD later and it would only take a short amount of time to get windows loaded on it and be good to go making him much better off in the long run going with a good GPU now...

lol it's just funny to see them arguing against saving the guy $130ish dollars. Doing SSD first then upgrading the GPU later as he said he was going to do thats $130 that doesn't need to be spent when he can get a good gaming rig now thats fairly future proofed. SSD now = a wasted $130 lol. SSD later = a saved $130. 

Theres not a great deal of reason to argue against it. 

Originally posted by GrayGhost79

Originally posted by Derza10
This system is for gaming..... You are telling him to get an SSD to cut out maybe a few seconds on his load screens in games vs better gameplay? He can add that SSD later and it would only take a short amount of time to get windows loaded on it and be good to go making him much better off in the long run going with a good GPU now...

lol it's just funny to see them arguing against saving the guy $130ish dollars. Doing SSD first then upgrading the GPU later as he said he was going to do thats $130 that doesn't need to be spent when he can get a good gaming rig now thats fairly future proofed. SSD now = a wasted $130 lol. SSD later = a saved $130. 

 

Theres not a great deal of reason to argue against it. 

There is value in having something better now.  Otherwise, you could tell people to wait two years before buying anything, and then you could get something just as good as a system with both the SSD and a faster video card, while still saving a lot more than $130.

I think the main crux of the argument is that a 7770 is "good enough" for a gaming computer, allowing you to use the saved money for other speed improvements (SSD). You can say that you will uprgade it eventually, but you will upgrade any card eventually, it's just a matter of when - and that largely depends on what games you play and your personal preference. I still know people gaming on 7x00's (nVidia...) from years ago, and they are perfectly happy playing EQ on it and have no reason or inclination to upgrade.

Sure, there are faster cards, but it all comes down to staying inside the budget and getting the most bang for the buck. A faster GPU usually isn't very good bang for the buck once you get over the hump of "Fast enough to play most games at your monitors resolution".

Originally posted by Derza10
True but.. well i guess for me personally i would rather play on high setting than low-medium with slightly faster load screens... Its really up to him.

Can you name a single game in which a Radeon HD 7770 means you won't be able to go over low-medium settings?

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Derza10
True but.. well i guess for me personally i would rather play on high setting than low-medium with slightly faster load screens... Its really up to him.

Can you name a single game in which a Radeon HD 7770 means you won't be able to go over low-medium settings?

There isn't, I use a 5830 which is older tech but around the same ability as the 7770. I run many games with the 3570k with high and even some extreme/ultra settings. This is all on a 1440p monitor.

Originally posted by Aori

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Derza10
True but.. well i guess for me personally i would rather play on high setting than low-medium with slightly faster load screens... Its really up to him.

Can you name a single game in which a Radeon HD 7770 means you won't be able to go over low-medium settings?

There isn't, I use a 5830 which is older tech but around the same ability as the 7770. I run many games with the 3570k with high and even some extreme/ultra settings. This is all on a 1440p monitor.

Depending your own personal definition of medium settings (aside from straight default "medium" settings) and what one considers acceptable Framerates I indeed can name ONE game but that is mainly because much like Crisis 1 it is POORLY coded.

Metro 2033.

Originally posted by miguksaram

Originally posted by Aori

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Derza10
True but.. well i guess for me personally i would rather play on high setting than low-medium with slightly faster load screens... Its really up to him.

Can you name a single game in which a Radeon HD 7770 means you won't be able to go over low-medium settings?

There isn't, I use a 5830 which is older tech but around the same ability as the 7770. I run many games with the 3570k with high and even some extreme/ultra settings. This is all on a 1440p monitor.

Depending your own personal definition of medium settings (aside from straight default "medium" settings) and what one considers acceptable Framerates I indeed can name ONE game but that is mainly because much like Crisis 1 it is POORLY coded.

Metro 2033.

That isn't even fair lol, i think metro 2033 ceased to be a game awhile ago and now is a benchmark to prove something and brute force its way thru crap.

Originally posted by Aori

Originally posted by miguksaram

Depending your own personal definition of medium settings (aside from straight default "medium" settings) and what one considers acceptable Framerates I indeed can name ONE game but that is mainly because much like Crisis 1 it is POORLY coded.

Metro 2033.

That isn't even fair lol, i think metro 2033 ceased to be a game awhile ago and now is a benchmark to prove something and brute force its way thru crap.

Haha yeah much like the original Crisis it's really a better bench tool to see how much PC power your system holds in order to force it's way through the bad code than a good FPS game.  I just felt like proving the point there are games out there that people might enjoy but due to bad coding their actual hardware requirements far exceed what they should and so a higher powered GPU can benefit those individuals who insist playing said games.