Help me pick my next upgrade...

[lordofduct]

My tax return is pretty nice this year, and I plan on socking like 1000 dollars away into savings, I'm going to spend a few hundred bringing my girlfriend up north to go skiing and to do get together with my dev team about our game and get some work done. This leaves about 250 dollars left over that I'm willing to spend...

So I'm looking to upgrade my machines a little bit, but I can't decide what exactly. All three things are relatively similar in importance, and roughly the same price (about the 200 - 250 range).

My choices are:

Nvidia 560 GTX (Fermi) -
right now I'm running a 9800 GTX, and it does fairly OK. The thing is I have 2 monitors, one running 1920x1080 and the other running 2560x1600 (50" and 30" respectively). And some of my newer games need to have the settings backed down on them to play games... even Fallout New Vegas can't handle high settings on the 1080p screen.

3 1TB internal drive, 1 Ext. 1TB drive -
My server has 1.5TB of storage space and I'm starting to run a little low. I was thinking of bumping my RAID up 3 1TB drives giving me some more storage space. You might wonder why the hell I need this kind of space, but when you see that I have a 300 gigs in mp3's alone... then tack on the flac, movies, and videogame backups... as well as my svn server for my projects and art. It fills up quick. I was planning on doing some house cleaning though and really this is the lowest on my list, but only barely.

120GB SSD -
I'm looking at the OCZ Vertex 2 120 gig solid state drive. It would replace my current 120 gig OS drive that only holds my video game install, dev tools, and OS. I know this would certainly boost some loading performance of my software and games... but I'm a bit shaky on the quality of SSDs at this moment.

Save, you asshole -
Or should I just sock this in with the other 1000?

[YoshiEgg25]

Nvidia 560 GTX (Fermi) -
right now I'm running a 9800 GTX, and it does fairly OK. The thing is I have 2 monitors, one running 1920x1080 and the other running 2560x1600 (50" and 30" respectively). And some of my newer games need to have the settings backed down on them to play games... even Fallout New Vegas can't handle high settings on the 1080p screen.

I'd attribute your problem more to the memory not being able to handle it, not your graphics card. I'm not familiar with dual-screen gaming (though I am with dual-screens and gaming separately), but you're trying to have one processor run both of these high-resolution screens in a memory eating game? Personally, I'd look into upgrading RAM in that case. Try borrowing some from somebody and see if there's any improvement, though.

3 1TB internal drive, 1 Ext. 1TB drive -
My server has 1.5TB of storage space and I'm starting to run a little low. I was thinking of bumping my RAID up 3 1TB drives giving me some more storage space. You might wonder why the hell I need this kind of space, but when you see that I have a 300 gigs in mp3's alone... then tack on the flac, movies, and videogame backups... as well as my svn server for my projects and art. It fills up quick. I was planning on doing some house cleaning though and really this is the lowest on my list, but only barely.

That's a lot of mp3's. And I thought I had a lot with my 3,200 songs taking up 9GB. Also remember that external HDDs can be very useful (such as moving iTunes songs to another computer) but can be bulky to carry around.

120GB SSD -
I'm looking at the OCZ Vertex 2 120 gig solid state drive. It would replace my current 120 gig OS drive that only holds my video game install, dev tools, and OS. I know this would certainly boost some loading performance of my software and games... but I'm a bit shaky on the quality of SSDs at this moment.

I'd probably pass on this for now; it seems like the quality could shoot up in the future.

Save, you asshole -
Or should I just sock my money away? My tax return is pretty nice this year, and I plan on socking like 1000 dollars away into savings, I'm going to spend a few hundred bringing my girlfriend up north to go skiing and to do get together with my dev team about our game and get some work done. This leaves pretty much 250 dollars left over that I'm willing to spend on this... or should I just stick that in with the other savings?

Entirely your decision.

[lordofduct]

Thanks for the input

I'd attribute your problem more to the memory not being able to handle it, not your graphics card. I'm not familiar with dual-screen gaming (though I am with dual-screens and gaming separately), but you're trying to have one processor run both of these high-resolution screens in a memory eating game? Personally, I'd look into upgrading RAM in that case. Try borrowing some from somebody and see if there's any improvement, though.

If you mean regular RAM, I have 12 gigs... probably not my problem.

It could be a video RAM issue... in which case I would need a new video card (the 560 GTX has twice the memory at 1GB as opposed to 512MB in the 9800 I have).

[YoshiEgg25]

Thanks for the input

I'd attribute your problem more to the memory not being able to handle it, not your graphics card. I'm not familiar with dual-screen gaming (though I am with dual-screens and gaming separately), but you're trying to have one processor run both of these high-resolution screens in a memory eating game? Personally, I'd look into upgrading RAM in that case. Try borrowing some from somebody and see if there's any improvement, though.

If you mean regular RAM, I have 12 gigs... probably not my problem.

It could be a video RAM issue... in which case I would need a new video card (the 560 GTX has twice the memory at 1GB as opposed to 512MB in the 9800 I have).

Ah, alright. I'm not terribly familiar with graphics cards and such, so I'm probably not the person to ask on that one. A freshman working in IT for a Division III University? Ask someone more experienced.

[Bradtemple87]

I say save it! Your girl will love a getaway trip, they always do

[lordofduct]

It looks like saving is winning so far. It didn't expect everyone here to be so conservative about money when compared against gizmos.

[Opa Opa]

Save that cash. You never know when you might need it.

[lordofduct]

Keep in mind I'm already putting aside 1000 dollars, and I do already have money in my bank account.

see it goes:

1000 - into savings
550 - trip
250 - ???

[Opa Opa]

I know this isn't one of the poll choices but instead of saving you could take your girlfriend out to a club or something.
One with drinks... And one that has electronica playing in the background...

[lordofduct]

going to 'Jackal & Hyde' and 'Exzact' tonight (semi local electro). And then tomorrow another club for a birthday.

Though it's mostly her sacrificing because she usually doesn't like going to clubs. It just so happens that this time one of my best friends is going to come (he never goes out), and she finds him hilarious when he's drunk.