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[Moses85]

Every 12 years if word doesnt start anymore
.

 

[Bonfires Down]

The 13th gen i5, the 13400 will probably last you a decade if you kept that i5 this long lol.

Or as a stop gap, you could buy the 3770k used on eBay for like 80 bucks. Would at least save you from a total rebuild... Though there's probably a xeon for that socket that's similar but for 20 bucks or so. That cpu plus an sata SSD and enough ram should keep you going a bit longer.

I would just upgrade to 13th gen though, the 2070 begs for it

Would you recommend Intel over AMD? I'm primarily leaning toward AMD because I hear their processors run cooler which would be good for my ITX case.

 

[64bitmodels]

Dusk is fucking amazing. I don't care much for Ion Fury, Wrath or a slew of other modern retro shooters I've tried. Can't wait for Gloomwood though. Still, it's hard to compete with Quake, Q3A, Tribes 2, Enemy Territory, UT99, UT2k4, NOLF, FEAR (2007 but still), DOD, HL, SOF.

Frankly i don't care for most boomer shooters. What makes a good shooter isn't harkening back to the past, since there are loads of more creative and inventive Doom mods that are built upon the shooters of yesteryear without being blatant pandering to nostalgia. See also: Ashes 2063 and Doom The Golden Souls. This new wave of boomer shooters is much fucking better than the slow ass boring shooters we get ni most AAA offerings, but still feels very uninspired.
A good shooter is one that manages to stand on its own merits and be good without being clearly nostalgiabait. This is why ULTRAKILL is astronomically based. Yes, it's a boomer shooter but it isn't one made to be specifically like the older ones. It's a new shooter that bases the gameplay off of the combo systems of DMC while having stylish as fuck and hyper fast gameplay. You couldn't point me to one main source of inspiration for ULTRAKILL because it's based off a little bit of everything. It takes that and mixes it into a nice, beautiful, very fun stew.

 

[StateofMajora]

You recommend Intel over AMD? I'm primarily leaning toward AMD because I hear their processors run cooler which would be good for my ITX case.

It totally depends on what tier you get. I9 12900k, yeah it runs hotter than amd 8 core 5800x3d. 5900x gets pretty toasty though. But the i5 12400 uses less or the same power as the and equivalent 5600x.

But yes Intel is better comparing the latest processors, exception being the 5800x3D but it's $450.

Seeing as 13th gen is almost out, you could probably wait a little longer. If you want to do something now, the i3 12100 is a great chip (4core 8thread) and it's super cheap, but you could drop in an 13th gen chip a couple years later, like the i5 when it's on clearance ; for example the i5 from a couple years ago is selling for $130 new right now.

The i3 12100 sips power, very cool running low watt chip but it's the best value chip for games in a loooong time.

 

[D-ray]

I upgrade it when the old one stops working. Power.

 

[fermcr]

Every 4-5 years I usually upgrade CPU/GPU/Board/MEM.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Every 10 years.

 

[jezhumphrey75]

i dont buy a new one every 10ish years...still rocking my 4790k,970 gtx, 8gb lol....serves me well as i only really ever play multiplayer shooters.

 

[fran.fernandez]

10 year all.

 

[The_Mike]

The only reason I upgraded my 8 year old 970 was because I gave my gf my old pc and got a new one for myself (can't let the mistress have the best stuff lol)

My geforce 2070s has no problem running stuff 1440p 140 fps on newer games.

Even when I go under the higher settings it will still be better than consoles.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

I'm very bad at controlling my expenses with PC hardware and I'm a sucker for new, shiny stuff. Don't ask.

 

[Sentenza]

I changed my PC entirely last year after 7 years from my previous new one, but I had a "GPU refresh" (from a 770 to a 1070) in the middle of that timeframe.

I went from an i5 4690K with the already mentioned GTX 770 and 16GB of DDR3 to a AMD 5800x with a RTX 3080ti and 32GB of DDR4, in case anyone would be curious (which I doubt).

 

[kraspkibble]

• built my first PC in february 2015.
• july 2015 i bought an SSD. i originally wanted an SSD but couldn't fit it into my budget so was using a HDD until i could save up a bit more.
• first big "upgrade" was mid 2016 when i basically built a whole new PC. new case, cpu, cpu cooler, motherboard, RAM, GPU. the reason i did this was because my first build was on a strict budget of £800 and i didn't know if i was going to stick with PC. i fell in love with PC gaming and the more i educated myself I realised i had made some bad decisions with my first build. i now wanted a CPU that could overclock and the GPU i picked was quite old. plus DDR4 had just came out and i wanted to upgrade to 16GB RAM so i thought it didn't make sense to buy 16GB of DDR3 and instead i should just move everything over to DDR4.
• between 2016-2019 i think all i did was buy a 1440p 60hz monitor to replace my 1080p 60hz one and i think i bought my first NVMe SSD.
• in late 2019 i done another big upgrade. new CPU, cooler, motherboard, RAM, SSD, GPU.
• in early 2020 i got a new monitor which is 1440p 165hz Gsync. that was the last upgrade i made. been using this PC for about 2 and a half years now. I still like PC gaming but i can't justify the money anymore. I'll use my PC until it struggles with games then I'll buy a console. I'll probably hold onto my PC to mess about with it with Linux stuff or maybe use it as a media server. I don't know.

i started off with this PC:

i5-4590, 8GB DDR3 RAM, R9 290 4GB, 1TB HDD, 1080p 60hz monitor.

and now have:

i9-9900K, 32GB DDR4 RAM, RTX 2080 8GB, 4TB SSD, 1440P 165hz monitor.

 

[Sanepar]

Cpu,mem,mb 3 in 3 years.
Gpu 2 in 2 years.

 

[GymWolf]

Gpu usually every new nvidia series or 2, the rest every 4-5 years.

 

[adamosmaki]

Usually 3 years for gpu and 4-5 for cpu and if needed mobo/ram

 

[Guilty_AI]

I think this is the best. Mid-gen is a perfect time to upgrade and now for sure that your PC will be able to handle anything this gen can dish out.

 

[ahtlas7]

I usually build a new one with each new graphics card, so about every 2 years. I remove the hard drive from the old pc and give it away.

 

[hybrid_birth]

I add a sticker to my PC case every week. So I upgrade weekly.

 

[SF Kosmo]

Less often than I used to. It's been almost 5 years since my last full system upgrade (though only 3 since my last GPU) and I am probably gonna build a new system in the fall when the RTX 40 cards hit.

But my system is not desperately out of date either. It still hangs in for most new games. A couple high end VR games and like Cyberpunk maybe struggle to stay at full frame rate but it's still decent.

But if you're gonna be a PC gamer you don't want decent, you want superior to console, which my system probably is not anymore. And with video card prices stabilizing and CPU prices already low I think it's time.

 

[Melon Husk]

Every doubling in performance/$. Used to be 3-4 years, now less often.

 

[Skifi28]

Not often enough. Still got a 1060, but I did upgrade my CPU-mobo-RAM so I at least have that going for me.

 

[jshackles]

About every 4-5 years, I just straight up replace the whole thing. These days, too much stuff changes too quickly to even bother with trying to salvage some working parts from a 5-year-old computer.

 

[Tarnished]

GPU 3-5 years
CPU/Mobo/RAM 5+ years

If I can't get the high level of performance that I'm used to then I upgrade. I don't mind turning a few settings down, but when I can't get high frame rate that's when it's time.

 

[GreatnessRD]

About every 4-6 years. Depends on how I'm feeling.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

My standard is to do a new PC build roughly every 5 years and then upgrade the video card in that build once after about 2 years.

This is the correct method. You won the thread!

 

[Shadowstar39]

Lately I seem to upgrade my videocard every other generation and then upgrade my cpu after three or four generations. I’m just curious what everyone else does these days.

Edit: my phone autocorrected, mods can you please change the title to “how often do you upgrade your PC”?

Not often anymore as I play at 1080p or 1440p down sampled since i only have 1080p displays (currently a 144hz 27" ips panel @1080p)
Simple answer: 2x last decade for cpu , 2-3x for gpu, depending on game demand or hardware failure.


I upgraded 2x in 2020 to play some games but before that it was 8 years. in the late 90s to 2010s it was way more often as tech was changing big time (and pc got crazy exclusives like Crysis, witcher, everquest 2, etc...)
Currently rocking a Ryzen 2 3600 , 16gb ddr4, m.2 ssd/sata ssd, 2 2tb hdds, nvidia 3060ti, logitech mechanical keyboard and hero mouse.

Have a steam deck in shipping, 2 i3 pcs one with a 1060 and the other a 1650super.


In the 1991-2011 - had a 80386sx wCD-rom and SVGA upgrade -> Cyrix M2 (pentium2 clone which sucked and got me started on the cpu/gpu upgrade thing)- > Pentium 3 650mhz - > Athlon 2xp 2300mhz - > athlon 64 -3ghz - >
Core2duo e6400 -> i3 2120 (2011) So i guess even going back then it was 2-3 cpus a decade, 2000-2010 was an outlier due to massive shifts in tech.

GFX cards - (1986-2022) appleii color display- > CGA 4 color - > VGA 256color - > SVGA 16bit color 800x600res -> Ati Rage pro (shit card) -> 3dfx Voodoo3 -> 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 (amazing card at the time) -> Geforce 3 (another amzing card -> geforceFX 5700 (crap gen for nvidia) - > nvidia 6800 (awesome card) - > nvidia 8800gts -> nvidia 9800gt - > ati 7870 (ps4 equiv) -> nvidia 1060gtx - > nvidia 1650super- nvidia 2060RTX - > nvidia RTX 3060ti.

A tone of gpus compared to cpus.

 

[DGrayson]

As little as possible haha.

Right now on the 7700k+3080 (replaced at 1080). Monitor is 1440p so I will try to ride this out as long as I can. Helps that I dont play a lot of new AAA games.

 

[Captain Toad]

Once every never.

 

[Cryio]

I've had 5 CPUs, that I only bought 4 times technically.

2005: 1st CPU was an AMD Athlon 2800+ I believe, at 1.8 GHz. This was provided by the shop dude. I didn't know anything about specs at this point in time.
2006: 2nd CPU was a free upgrade because my original PC boot looped all the time without any sane reason. I was upgraded to a 2.6 GHz, dual core Intel Pentium D 820, which was pretty amazing thinking about it.
2008: 3rd CPU I bought in 2008, a quad core 2.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550. At this point my CPU was 2.5x more expensive than my GPU, lol.
2013: 4th CPU I bought in 2013, a six core, AMD FX 6300 that I ran at 4.5 GHz for most of its life time. I held onto this one the most. I kinda was never CPU bound, lol.
2019: 5th CPU, AMD Ryzen 5 3600. Great CPU overall for the money in 2019. I have a dud sample though, can't overclock at all. Can't even do 4.1 GHz on all cores, lol.
Present: The only place where I feel CPU limited is in RPCS3 when emulating. That's it. And not even in all titles there. I might get an R7 5800X3D in 1-2 years. We'll see.

As for GPUs, I've had my hands on ... 7 GPUs.

2005: 1st GPU chose by the PC Store guy. An ATI X600 Pro 128 MB. Later I would find this was basically a renamed ATI 9600 XT GPU. All the compute goodness of 2002-2003, in 2005, lol. Not the most amazing choice, but NOT A BAD CHOICE. I know a TON of dudes that had a GeForce 5200, which was basically A TERRIBLE GPU in itself in general and EVEN MORE HORRENDOUS GPU at anything Pixel Shader 2.0 related. GeForce 5 was Nvidia's biggest misfire. I appreciate the fact my PC Store guy gave me an ATI GPU that didn't break the bank so my mom could actually buy me a PC.
2008: 2nd GPU: Got reward for getting close to max grades at school with the choice of a new GPU. I could've bought an Nvidia 8800 GT 1 GB. My mom was willing to do so. But I didn't want to force her hand so I willingly chose a slightly slower GPU, an Nvidia 9600 GT 512 MB. It was like 85% of the performance, half of the VRAM (but nothing really required 1 GB in 2008) for about 58% of the price. One of the best bang for the buck GPUs ever made as far as I'm concerned.
2011: 3rd GPU: A shiny new GTX 560 Ti 1 GB. I was kinda split on 560 Ti 1 GB and AMD HD 6950 2 GB. For my money, I could only find 6950 with really, really crappy coolers, whereas the 560 Ti had one of the ASUS DirectTOP coolers. I went with Nvidia. I kinda regretted it in the long term due to HD 6950 outperforming the 560 Ti in the long term and the 2 GB VRAM gave it way more room to stretch its legs. The GPU ended up dying on me in late 2017.
2015: 4th GPU: I didn't buy this. I had it for a while. I friend wasn't gaming much anymore and he let me borrow his GPU for ... 1 year. R9 280X. Coming from the 560 Ti 1 GB, it was a tremendous jump. Especially the VRAM that allowed me to play and max any game I ever wanted at 1080p with 60 FPS. A great time. I remember having a blast with Thief 2014 maxed out with 2xSSAA at 1080p60.
2016: 5th GPU: I didn't buy this. I had it for a while. A friend wasn't gaming on his old, imbalanced PC anymore because he bought a gaming laptop. So he borrowed me for about 1 year, his HD 7850 2 GB. Again, a better card than my 560 Ti. I finished Rise of the Tomb Raider, Quantum Break and Arkham Knight on this card. Not maxed out of course, but solid visuals with great 40+ fps performance.
2018: 6th GPU: I didn't buy this. I had it for a while. Lmao at this trend. After returning the HD 7850, I was back to my faithful 560 Ti. And it got burned near the end of 2017. So now I was employed, I was gathering some money to buy the recently announced still RX 480 8 GB. Might've been in 2016? Eh. 2 friends found themselves in financial trouble and required some money. One of them was the one that lent me the R9 280X, so of course I helped. Spent the entire amount needed for a nice looking, awesome cooler on t op, RX 480 8 GB between these 2 guys. Oh well. Things didn't line up for me to get enough money for a GPU again anytime soon, so ANOTHER FRIEND gave me his GTX 780, because he just bought an RX 580 8 GB, didn't care about selling his old GPU and it was in a poor condition (3rd party CPU coolers ducktaped to the GTX 780).
2019: 7th GPU: I rebuilt my PC from scratch, finally, after all these years. I bought an AMD RX 5700 XT, which was easily over TWICE faster than the GTX 780. Going from 3 GB VRAM to 8 GB also? Oh yeah. This GPU has been amazing and I love it to this day. I could've bought an RTX 2070 Super, but it was 50% more expensive for 7% faster performance and the "promise" in ray tracing and DLSS, which wasn't much in 2019 still. Do I regret it today? Nope. I prefer gaming at 1080p120 anyway.
Present: After just 1 year, I was seriously considering getting an AMD RX 6800 XT at launch and selling my 5700 XT. The 6800 XT would've costed me overall about as much as I paid for the 5700 XT. But then the pandemic happened and crypto also. So no GPU for me. I'm now content still. Waiting to see what RX 7000 offers. Might as well wait for RX 8000. I have TONES of games across 26 years across tons of consoles I can play/emulate. I'm not hurrying anywhere.

 

[Shadowstar39]

it was my first GPU, I had many prebuilts before then, several gateways and packerbells…

considering the GPU market barely existed before then, i’d be curious what gpu’s you had before that period (not even sure if it’s ok to calll any graphic card before the first Geforce a true gpu anyway. Still remember my Geforce 256 and Geforce 4 4400 fondly)

There was a gpu market before geforce. ATi had rage pro, nvidia had tnt and riva lines, there was also Matrox with Millennium, mystique and Parhelia lines. PowerVR with kyro and kyro2.
The king of 90s gpus was of course 3DFX, with Voodoo cards which was top of the line as far as performance and compatibility. Before 2000, direct x was crap, and opengl drivers were usually half assed.

I Owned a oak technology iso SVGA card, that i upgraded the vga card in my 80386sx. Went from 256colors at a time (8bit) @ 320x240 (16 colors @640x480) to 16k colors (16bit) @640x480 or 800x600w/256 colors and 2mb ram. Was a big upgrade for then. Some software only games didn't require more mb ram until the late 90s. They had ega(16 color 4bit) cards to upgrade cga (4color displays) and VGA cards after that.

My first 3d card was an ATI Rage Pro pci, it sucked so bad. I remember trying to play prince of persia and half-life. Any area that had an outside location would dip into single digit slide shows. Some games wouldn't even run.
I took it back and returned it for a voodoo3 on pci slot . Everything worked. I still didn't get great performance but that was all cpu bound (a cyrix pentium clone with weak fpu will do that).
Next was voodoo 5 5500 (this card rocked so many games in 1999/2000. Dues ex, unreal tornament, quake 3 , thief2, black and white, all ran like a dream.

I didn't go agp slot till the geforce 3 (my first geforce card, and the new pixel and vertex shaders were awesome!! )

 

[Pagusas]

There was a gpu market before geforce. ATi had rage pro, nvidia had tnt and riva lines, there was also Matrox with Millennium, mystique and Parhelia lines. PowerVR with kyro and kyro2.
The king of 90s gpus was of course 3DFX, with Voodoo cards which was top of the line as far as performance and compatibility. Before 2000, direct x was crap, and opengl drivers were usually half assed.

I Owned a oak technology iso SVGA card, that i upgraded the vga card in my 80386sx. Went from 256colors at a time (8bit) @ 320x240 (16 colors @640x480) to 16k colors (16bit) @640x480 or 800x600w/256 colors and 2mb ram. Was a big upgrade for then. Some software only games didn't require more mb ram until the late 90s. They had ega(16 color 4bit) cards to upgrade cga (4color displays) and VGA cards after that.

My first 3d card was an ATI Rage Pro pci, it sucked so bad. I remember trying to play prince of persia and half-life. Any area that had an outside location would dip into single digit slide shows. Some games wouldn't even run.
I took it back and returned it for a voodoo3 on pci slot . Everything worked. I still didn't get great performance but that was all cpu bound (a cyrix pentium clone with weak fpu will do that).
Next was voodoo 5 5500 (this card rocked so many games in 1999/2000. Dues ex, unreal tornament, quake 3 , thief2, black and white, all ran like a dream.

I didn't go agp slot till the geforce 3 (my first geforce card, and the new pixel and vertex shaders were awesome!! )

i think you misunderstand me, yes there were graphic accelerators, but i’m pretty sure the term GPU was coined during the first Geforce launch.


edit: yep found it, even on wiki:

The term (GPU) was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as "the world's first GPU". It was presented as a "single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines".

 

[poppabk]

generally in during mid-gen

Yeah I generally upgrade once my computer isn't capable of playing the newest games at 1080p which is generally in the middle of a console generation.

 

[Braag]

Every 3 years usually