Recommended Upgrades

Hi jcmcn5......Depends on the monitor's resolution you're using,  If you're gaming on a 1080p then my guess is the sli 570 is still pretty good gaming.  Your cpu, mobo, etc are all still good to go.  I have a 2500k clocked at 4.4 and just upgraded to a 970 from a single 570 and it runs everything out there.

Swapping the sli 570 for a single 970 or 980 will give you better performance but not huge.  It would however require a lot less power form the psu, a lot less heat generated and a lot quieter then the sli 570's.  All good things.  My MSI 970 makes no noise at all, even under load. 

 A 980ti upgrade, single, would give you a noticeable boost over the sli 570 but more $$$.  

Very rough...a 980 is about 20% better than a 970 and a 980ti is about 25% better than 980.  

If you game on higher resolution, you'll find the added vram on the 970 and up really helping with minimum fps, which is where a lot of the lag in gaming is seen.  Even 1080p with more vram will help min fps.

Your rig is getting old, like mine, but they still game just fine with upgraded graphics. 

Hope this helps.

Hi jcmcn5,

The 980ti is expensive but if you shop around and bid your time you can get a 980 at a very good price. I bought one in November for $419 and then got a $30 rebate. $389 for a 980 is a heck of a good price. So keep you eyes open for a bargain. We should see a drop soon with the new GPUs coming out later this year. You can track the price for GPUs on the PCPartPicker site.

Frank

Thanks for the responses.  The drives (OS and secondary) both look good (at least, according to Windows Check Disk), but is there a simple way to check the voltage on the psu short of buying some kind of volt meter?  Any specific kind of RAM sticks I should be buying?   

unfortunately the only way i know to test the efficiency of a psu is with a voltage reader that measures the +12V, +5V and +3.3V rails.  if you haven't had any erratic behavior (BSODs and such) it's more than likely okay. 

as for adding memory, make sure it's the same make/model/capacity/etc. as the sticks already in your rig.  they might be difficult to find after so long.  in which case you'll need to replace the entire kit with a 16GB one if you want to upgrade.