Should I upgrade what I have or buy a whole new PC?

dalchina said:

@DavidY: 10 yr laptop? Remarkable.. very environmentally friendly! My experience is of 2 laptops failing catastrophically- this is my 4th in about 18 years, new last year.

I think they built them better in the old days.
I do have a more modern laptop but the keyboard on the 10-year-old one (not top of the range even at the time) is much better than the newer one.

Hi

OK, I have now done quite a lot of researching of reviews of monitors.
(As per this thread https://www.tenforums.com/drivers-ha...tml#post921778 I now conclude that 27" will only JUST be physically large enough to handle a 4K resolution).

Recap on my requirements:
- I want 4K (UHD) but I would conside QHD (WQHD)
- I will NOT be doing any gaming.
- I need reasonably accurate colours (with a matte screen)
- My budget is £550

OPTIONS:
I've narrowed it down to 2 options:
A) Dell P2715Q (£528.49 +£11.50 shipping from Scan)
Released 2+ years ago (Dec-2014?)
60Hz refresh rate, HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2a

B) ViewSonic XG2700-4K (£514.97 +£4.95 shipping from Laptops Direct)
Released: April 2016?
Really designed for gaming but does that matter?
60Hz refresh rate, HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.2a FreeSync (max 40Hz)

QUESTIONS:
- The Dell looks dull and is getting old. I also HATE the way they patronise us by not giving proper specifications on their website, and the way their website is vastly more expensive than elsewhere (that monitor costs £878.40 incl VAT & delivery on euro.dell.com!) but does any of that matter?

- The ViewSonic is more modern, and said to have superbly accurate colours despite an "18%" variation of brightness across the screen....

- The Dell also doesn't seem to do gaming but given that I don't intend to do any gaming, all I want is high resolution and reasonably accurate colours so does the AMD FreeSync vs. nVidia G-Sync actually matter? i.e. Do I need to get an AMD graphics card if I get the ViewSonic?

- Any advice/thoughts? (e.g. Can you recommend any other monitors?)

Cheers

J

Maybe this is too late, but I have only just seen your thread and earlier you asked about Chillblast. As one of their customers I can give you some information.
As you may know they are a small British company, maybe ten years old, based in Poole. They have a team of system engineers who specialize in building desktop PCs to order. They are consistent award winners in the computer press – for the last seven years the PC Pro magazine has nominated their desktop as the best PC brand, and they have awards from other PC magazines.
I bought my PC from them in July 2012 when my old XP PC had died. I chose them because of their high reputation and ease of access, all their staff being UK-based. First I configured my intended system using their online templates, and then I discussed this with them and agreed various improvements. After ordering, the PC was built and shipped ten days later. It has always behaved perfectly.
I have only needed to call on their customer support on two occasions, neither of which was due to a hardware issue. The first was to ask for advice when the DVD drive failed to work under Windows 7 – immediately they gave me instructions for regedit. The second was in October 2015 after I had made a catastrophic error whilst attempting to set up dual-booting. Even though I had never paid for a maintenance contract and this was over three years since my purchase, they very patiently guided me through the solution.
As you can guess, I cannot praise this company highly enough. I suggest that they are worthy of being added to your list when considering a supplier of a desktop PC.

No, not too late.

Yes, Chillblast sound good. Thank you.

It sounds like they are competitors to PCSpecialist then. The latter sounded reasonable on the phone and sound like they have good long opening hours. Fwiw, the took a few minutes to pick up the phone the both times a spoke to them.

Yes, they do compete head on in the same marketplace. In PC Pro's latest Excellence Awards for the PC Specialist category (December 2016) Chillblast were top, scoring 95% overall, PC Specialist second with 91%, Scan third with 86% (then Dell, Lenovo, HP & Apple). Twelve months earlier it was first Chillblast with 97%, second PC Specialist with 92%, third Scan with 81%. You seem to have short-listed the best two.

4K resolution for a non-gaming computer? Isn't that a waste of money?
Cut your monitor spend by about 75% and use that savings on a better computer.

margrave55 said:

4K resolution for a non-gaming computer? Isn't that a waste of money?
Cut your monitor spend by about 75% and use that savings on a better computer.

But isn't gaming just a waste of money ? ;^)

Well, My plan is to spend about GBP1000 on computer hardware - which should be good enough for general business & light 2D & 3D design to last me another 7 years just like my current PC has.

This is the sort of thing I'm thinking of. (Although I may need a different graphics card depending on which monitor I go for...

I really think you should go right back to Ed's post #2. You need a new monitor, and maybe a new graphics card, but the hardware above will not give any noticeable performance speedup. There is little difference from your current hardware, and the two small SSD's are a very strange choice. Conventional wisdom would have one SSD plus at least a 1TB spinner.

I get to see many slowed down computers and, virtually always, it is because of too many unnecessary startups and heaps of adware etc.

Make sure your system is clean, first, then decide whether you need new hardware.

Of course, the new hardware may well show a performance improvement, if only because you have a fresh installation!

linw said:

I really think you should go right back to Ed's post #2. You need a new monitor, and maybe a new graphics card, but the hardware above will not give any noticeable performance speedup. There is little difference from your current hardware, and the two small SSD's are a very strange choice. Conventional wisdom would have one SSD plus at least a 1TB spinner.

Interesting take. I had been cheerfully assuming that Moore's Law had been thundering ahead these past 7 years. i.e. For performance to double every 2 years. By this logic, performance for similar money should have doubled at least three times (7 / 2 ==> 3.5. ). So I was hoping for new machine to run at least 8, maybe 10 times faster (2x2x2)... no?!

So I was hoping that if it took 16 seconds to load (e.g.) Photoshop on my current PC that it would take 2 second on my new PC. I get that formatting the disk and starting again will improve things dramatically as well, so maybe photoshop would in even less time?

What I didn't want to do was spend precious days and DAYS of my life reinstalling all my applications and getting everything how I like it only to discover that it wasn't much better than before in any case and that I would need to start again on brand new hardware and sped a further number of DAYS doing it all over again.

But, looking at my original spec and comparing it with the proposed spec, it doesn't seem vastly different. I don't know what I'm talking about, but the processor sound suspiciously like they are the same thing! "Intel Core I5 750 2.66GHz" vs "Intel Core I5 Quad core 3.0Gz", except that the new one has 4 cores. But if I'm correct that will only run 4 times faster in very exceptional circumstances (when I have lots of different applications running?)

[ More about my proposed new PC spec:
Fwiw, there was an error in the spec I will get 16GB not 8GB, but again I'm guessing that that's unlikely to make all that much difference... To explain the spec, yes I was offered a 1TB spinning hard disk but I simply don't find I need that much space. At present I have a 300GB SSD and it's only half full. So my thinking is that I would rather have the speed of a SSD (about 8 times faster?) than the extra space of a spinner, but that it was good practice to have 2 physical SSDs one for the OS and one for the data. Also I can save a bit of money because I own a retail copy of Windows 10 so should be able to transfer it to the new hardware.]

DRAT. :^[

Nonetheless if I AM going to replace my ailing old monitor, I would very much like something that has a decent modern resolution - at least QHD, maybe 4K.

So maybe I should keep most of my old system, and just buy a new monitor and buy a s****y new graphics card which I would then plug into my old hardware. I could then upgrade the underlying hardware in maybe another 2-3 years or so... and keep the graphics card and monitor.

My current graphics card is an "ATI Radeon HD 5770"
ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 Graphics
Interface: "PCI Express 2.1 x16"

My current motherboard is an "Intel DP55WB (MA TX)".
http://ark.intel.com/products/41162/...P55WB?q=DP55WB
>>>
Expansion Options

PCI Support	1
PCIe x1 Gen 2.x	2
PCIe x4 Gen 2.x	0
PCIe x8 Gen 2.x	0
PCIe x16 Gen 2.x	1

>>>

I don't know what "PCIe x16 Gen 2.x" means but maybe that is the slot my graphics cars is using. Can a decent modern graphics card use that, or would I be wasting my money?

I am at the limits of my knowledge...

Either way time is against me. With every passing day my old monitor seems to take longer and longer to come back to life. e.g. It took over 25 minutes to warm up and come to life yesterday.

All help greatly appreciated !

If you have money ... Yes buying new system is worth it .... i mean Kaby Lake.