Hi, I am currently in a dilemma on whether to upgrade my current PC or continue with my PS4 launch purchase. I want the best possible experience for next-gen games, and after seeing some of the released specs by Ubisoft and Activision it has me a little worried whether my PC will be able to run those at high-specs.

PC Specs

CPU: Intel i7-2600 3.40GHz

GPU: GTX 570 1GB

RAM: 8GB DDR3

I'm not sure your PC will be quite up to the task—especially in a year or so. It would be cheaper to buy a PS4 than to meaningfully upgrade. A suitable graphics card alone will cost you $400.

Yer, that's what I thought, I'm looking for something long-term.

CPU will potentially do for the time being, the video card not so much. Could go euther way on the RAM, the BF4 beta will happily keep chewing up memory until you hit that 8gb ceiling.

Maybe buy a PS4 (a fine long-term investment barring any unfortunate hardware failure issues) and stick it out with your current PC for as long as you can for PC exclusives. You'll likely have to turn things like textures down to accommodate the single gig of VRAM, but honestly, I don't think a 570 is too bad. I don't think your CPU is too bad either.

Not too dissimilar to what I have. I've really started to feel the strain though on both BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider. I'm thinking of getting a 700-series or 800-series card in the future. I think your CPU and RAM are probably fine for now though.

In comparison for the GPU: A Playstation 4 is reported to have 1.84 TFLOPS, while a GTX 570 only has 1.41. Also 1GB on that card will not do you any good since most games next generation will definitely be getting a texture upgrade. 3GB seems optimal. So an upgrade on the GPU is needed. 8 GB RAM should be fine, and that 2600 too I think.

I think I will go the PS4 route for the majority of the games and keep the PC as it is for the exclusives and indie titles.

I'm guessing you're playing at 1080p? The cpu should be fine for a couple more years.
I would personally wait and see how well you run the upcoming games. If anything's the bottleneck it's the gpu, and that's a pretty easy upgrade.

Peak theoretical single precision floating point operations is no way to go about measuring over all hardware performance, TFLOP numbers are just something vendors throw around to make their dicks look bigger.

I say no, I think your configuration will do just fine in the next 2-3 years.

i say,

1. play games
2. use your senses
3. notice if the framerate is shitty or not
4. act upon your findings.

Regardless of a new console generation coming out, or the moon is blowing up, this is what you have to do.

Well GTA V was my last current-gen game, I plan to get Watch Dogs for next-gen and don't want to double-dip if the experience is going to be shitty on my PC compared to the PS4.

Judging by the announced min specs for CoD, BF4, Watch Dogs and the like, I'll say you''re fine except for the graphics card. If you don't want the most fancy graphics currently possible I think you're good for another year or two. If you hold on for at least another year you'll probably be able to buy a 200$ card that will set you up pretty fine.

Also keep in mind these next gen games are going to have higher ceilings on PC than they will on the PS4 and XB1, so "the highest settings" for the PC version will probably be higher than those consoles. If you have to knock things down one notch on your PC, it will probably still look as good as the PS4 version.

I think your PC will do fine for another year or two, but you should keep an eye on cards with 3GB of RAM and plan on upgrading when you can afford it. Your CPU and RAM should be fine for another 2-3 years, unless you're into hot new strategy games.

all you need is a new video card.

Sure, but I still think that GPU should be upgraded if he wants to uprade towards next generation With high specifications on the settings.

I think anybody who upgrades their PC in the next year is a fool. With the new consoles launching the games are going to reach, what seems like, absurd minimum requirements. PC vendors are going to be forced to put out a new generation of cards by Christmas 2014 that will trounce anything that has been released this year (The Nvidia 7xx cards are just refined 5xx cards, and the new ATI R9 + R7 parts are refined 6xxx series cards). This is the fourth generation in a row that PC makers have played this exact same game, and every time people, who upgraded their PC's the same year as a console launch, cry about how under powered their new PC's are.

Your only bottleneck will be your GPU. Just wait a year after launch and buy a new GPU and you'll be golden again.

Only if you will be playing at resolutions higher than 1080p. Im still using a dual core with an AMD 6500 card and dont have any problems other than with titles like Metro, Witcher 2 where i have to tone things down a little. Im upgrading this week to a quad core but you will only need to simply upgrade your card.

If developers makes use of AMD's new API Xbox One and possible PS4, PC ports will be very nicely optimized for GCN-based cards so maybe getting a Radeon HD 7970 would be a pretty good investment. Especially if you want to play Battlefield 4.

Why don't you just buy another 570 and hook them up in SLI? I have a similar config, and this is what I always intended to do.

Smarter people: would that be a viable fix? Two 570s in SLI are quite strong, or at least they were a couple years ago...

Weird. I've been thinking the same thing. i5 2500k with a GTX 570.

You can upgrade now and get good frame rates for many years. Just don't expect to run next-gen games at ultra for very long (if at all for some). BTW you could always argue in favor of waiting, because there's always a superior generation of PC components around the corner. By that logic you'll never upgrade. What you need to do is to manage your expectations.

Upgrade your graphics card and probably your RAM as well

Watchdogs system reqs are out.

@chobobot: I would wait a year and see. Make you're decision once you're positive you know what you want to do. Really think it over. Your PC seems perfectly fine for the time being.

@troispoint: It has never been that way in the past, why would it change this time? As someone who has been building PC's for over twenty years, I notice that the part that comes out after consoles launch are the ones that last a generation. If he was to buy a 7xx card, he would just be buying a new version of what he already owns. The difference in power is not that great.

I understand the idea of upgrading for the now, because there will always be something better in the future. The only problem is that the now is the same generation of cards that companies have been shitting out for four years, and the future (April-Sept 2014) is the new generation of parts. The new gen of video cards has a massive die shrink, have an integrated ARM chip (to reduce reliance on the CPU to do its thing), and unified virtual memory to allow the CPU and GPU to read each others memory (this significantly reduces graphics lag, which is the biggest hurdle in getting smooth, consistent frame rates on PC), and triple the performance per watt of the previous gen (could mean that the card sips power, or its just three times as powerful, either way we win).

So basically, if he updates his video card it would be like buying a PS3 now (a month before the PS4 launch). Only the PS3 is more expensive than when it launched.

Edit: The rest of your PC looks fine.

Looks like I am going the PS4 route for the top-quality games, I would have liked to go only-PC next-gen, but the cost of upgrading seems like it will be more than the PS4.

If i were to upgrade my GPU for lets say $200-$250, which one would you recommend, Nvidia or AMD. Would it be worth it?

Why would anyone buy a PS4 or Xbox One for the "long run" of future games?!?!?

I say keep your current set-up and only get the system of your choice for the 1st party, 2nd screen stuff(vita & smart glass) or muti-player games where your friend more likely will play... SLI is just bragging right for the most part because most games don't really support it, unless you have a muti screen set-up or on bigger tv sets 32inch and up, it really doesn't do anything but make the PC run louder and hotter....

I have the same i7 with 16gb ram and 2x550ti nvidia cards sli, I recently built a i5 3570k 4gb ram with one 550ti nvidia card as a bedroom pc and its just as good as my i7 and runs quite too.... both run most games maxed out and no frame rate problems...

I'll wait for the Nvidia 800 series (somewhen Q1/'14) and then buy the 300-400 range card - I have a i5 2500k and I am not really worried about cpu power for at least another 18+ months - take a look at the battlefield 4 performance reviews for cpus for details.

And I'd say you'll have a better (or at least as good) long-term system for the same money then, than if you where to buy a PS4.

EDIT: Upgrading right now would be stupid, wait and see for a couple of game releases/reviews and price-wars for graphics cards in Q1 when NVidia releases.

Because games are going to run well on these new consoles for the next five to six years, if not longer. I don't understand what's so befuddling about that idea.

I seriously doubt a single 550 can run modern games very well at all, but it's all about standards. If you want to run games at max or close, at 1080p and 60fps, a 550ti is far from acceptable. Especially going forward.

@jjweatherman:

Run well, you mean sub HD and sub 60fps?

OP really only needs to upgrade GPU and hes pretty set for next gen, the new AMD series is coming out soon and even a midrange card from that line coupled with what he has is going to give 1080/60 for every cross gen title thats coming out in a few months/well in to next year...and lets be honest here, you need to game at 1080/60 its 2013 already not the dark ages.

That PC should be fine to tide you over until the next generation of PC GPUs, and you should definitely wait for it. Both Nvidia and AMD have been talking about some interesting stuff. You probably don't want to get stuck spending a ridiculous amount of money on a high end card right now until you see if the upcoming changes are meaningful.

In the meantime, for the cost of buying a 770 you can get yourself a next-gen console, which should be able to do those games just fine for a while (and give you access to some exclusives) while you wait and put some more oomph in that PC in a year or two.

So if the GPU is the major issue with my rig, the AMD R9 280x seems reasonable upgrade, is there a newer GPU on the horizons and is the R9 280x worth it?

@chobobot: Theres always newer stuff coming out but that GPU will see you well into next gen.

It looks fine to me for now, but you could go to a better graphics card, the new AMD ones look promising. But the RAM and the CPU are good as far as I can tell. Maybe overclock the CPU if you really want to.