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Advice please? Which is the best CPU for my graphics card to reach full potential?

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Current specs are in my system specs.

:eek: I tend to upgrade slowly, and preferring graphics card updates over cpu ones, since I always manage to oc the hell out of a cpu much better than oc'ing graphics...

So far my games always ran great.
Oblivion when I had an E4300 @ 3Ghz (from 1.86Ghz) then I upgraded from 8600GTS to 8800GT, using 1680x1050 resolution.

Then later I upgraded to E8400 which I oc'd to 4Ghz (from 3Ghz), bought a new 850W PSU, and a 5970. And a 2560x1440 monitor.

Fallout New Vegas still ran fine @ 60 fps maxed out @ 2560x1440 though there were still areas which dropped to the high 30's.. but that never bothered me since the game was still ok-ish........

Today I tried Alice Madness Returns. Full 2560x1440 resolution, no AA, all other settings maxed except shadows. Fps was 30 max all throughout the game :confused:, and then it dropped to 14. :(

___________________________________

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my cpu which is stifling performance, isn't it?

___________________________________

I play the same game at a lower resolution on a laptop with a single 8800M GTX and it renders better. The laptop's got a Q9450 at stock though.. Which means that a quad at 2.67Ghz nowadays is better than a dual @ 4Ghz :confused: right?

Can I be sure that it's the cpu in my main rig which is throttling the 5970? Or am I missing something out here and a core 2 duo @ 4Ghz is enough to make a 5970 get its full power?

___________________________________

Now that I'm in the market for a new CPU (and motherboard and ram...) what would you suggest?
I've got nothing against AMD (in fact I prefer AMD graphics)... but regards CPU's an Intel would be more familiar, especially since I plan to oc the chip to the max, on air-cooling. I'm more confident working with Intel cpu's when overclocking.

___________________________________

What are your suggestions?
Just tell me everything. I'll decide on what to budget for it later ;)


I've lost my touch somehow lately. I know that in both eras of the E4300 and the E8400 there were chips which performed better at stock than either of them. But which when overclocked, the cpu's beat the better chips hands-down.

I'm looking for a good, overclockable cpu which is good value for money and gives great performance to last a couple of years or more.
 

qubit

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I'd always go for the fastesy affordable CPU I can get. I'm about to upgrade my trusty E8500 system and I would now go for the i7-2700K hands down. However, with SB-E released in a couple of weeks, I'm gonna wait for the reviews and the market to settle down before deciding what to get.
 
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I would go with the 2500k. That card should still push all games really well.

Edit: qubit's suggestions are valid as well.
 
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Benchmark Scores They're pretty good, nothing crazy.
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/alice_madness_returns_performance/2.html

^^ that chart might help...

"There were some issues observed with the game that lead us to believe Alice was either released too early, or was designed for consoles first and then ported to the PC. The first issue we ran into was an FPS limitation that only allowed the frame rates to vary from 22 to 31FPS. These are essentially the target frame rates for consoles, and it is unfortunate to see a game released for the PC with frame rates below 60FPS. Additionally, there is no option to disable Vsync from within the in-game menu, which makes the process hard for those with only minimal knowledge on how to do so through the game's .ini file."

5# Alice Madness Returns Framerate Fix – 60 FPS Tweak
Open Alice.ini in text editor, you can find the file located here:

\Documents\My Games\Alice Madness Returns\AliceGame\Config\AliceEngine.ini

and Set these to your desired values for framerate boost:

MaxSmoothedFrameRate=60
UseVsync=False

(source: Guru3d Forums)

You definitely need a new CPU soon - but see if that helps your game. Also the game lacks crossfire support (as per that same source), but you still should be more than fine even with half of that 5970.

More tweaks: http://segmentnext.com/2011/06/14/a...s-freezes-errors-no-sound-and-controller-fix/
 
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I'll definitely try the Alice tweaks. But I'm also getting Skyrim on release, and I want to get full performance for that game. It's a game I know I would be addicted to for long months, hence it's worth..
 
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Benchmark Scores They're pretty good, nothing crazy.
definitely wait for SB-e if anything but for the price drops. As far as CPU choice, I doubt anyone is gonna roll in with an FX suggestion... Any of the 2K series depending on budget would be eons ahead of the dual core.

If you really want to save some dough, second hand 1156 would work to get some perf out of that card.
 
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could you change the e8400 with the q9450 in your laptop, making your desktop a quad core and your laptop a dual core? If you dont want to do that, build yourself a 2500k or 2600k system.
 
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could you change the e8400 with the q9450 in your laptop, making your desktop a quad core and your laptop a dual core?

Thought about that but had doubts on whether the performance increase would be worth the trouble. Also, I don't know much on the overclockability of the Q9450.

So you guys can confirm that although the 5970 used to run most games fine on a E8400 @ 4Ghz... now the cpu is too weak for todays' games and is bottlenecking them?


(C'mon I just need a tad of a push to... do it... you know... :eek: )

________________________

Oh and while you're at it, suggestions for a good and reliable mobo won't hurt either :)
 
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qubit

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Thought about that but had doubts on whether the performance increase would be worth the trouble. Also, I don't know much on the overclockability of the Q9450.

So you guys can confirm that although the 5970 used to run most games fine on a E8400 @ 4Ghz... now the cpu is too weak for todays' games and is bottlenecking them?


(C'mon I just need a tad of a push to... do it... you know... :eek: )

________________________

Oh and while you're at it, suggestions for a good and reliable mobo won't hurt either :)

My E8500 is at 4GHz and it doesn't feel slow at all on any modern game, it's just that newer processors are incredibly fast. Having said that, I've recently got myself a 120Hz monitor and it can't always reach that frame rate, so it's giving me the itch to upgrade.

But make sure to wait a bit as I suggested in post 2. :)
 
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i5-2500K and ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen 3, get some cheap DDR3 RAM and you'll have a machine twice as fast as what you have today for under 500$. Alice is the problem there, I mean the game.
 
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I'll try to hold on for a bit longer.
I kinda suspected that Alice is the problem since Fallout NV runs fine @2560x1440...

I'll wait till 11-11-11 for Skyrim.
I don't think I'll manage to hold on then if Skyrim runs badly, it's a game I plan to enjoy for long months :)
 
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2500k plus a noctua nh-d14 and z68 Asus board.
 
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If you are looking for price vs performance as you are suggesting a little bit, go 2500K

But knowing your history with hardware etc, I think a quad-core SB-E will serve you much better. SB-E comes out 11-15-11 I think, so you will have to wait before playing Skyrim the the best of its potential. I know you don't want to, but please do wait, as you will be keeping this CPU for a long time and the platform probably even longer. LGA 2011's IVY Bride-E processors are rumored to have up to 8 cores, by then you could upgrade to an SB-E 6-core or IB-E 6-core (or 8 but I doubt you would need the performance)

TL;DR
Suck it up and wait for SB-E and grab yourself that nice quad. If SB-E is underwhelming, you can always go the 2500K route
 
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I don't think you have to wait - doesn't look like much of an improvement vs. overclocking a 2500k to 4.6-4.8ghz, take a look at some SB-E numbers:
http://coolaler.com/showthread.php?t=276465

You can't really get much from that... BP will be more interested in the 38XX series as 6 cores is probably wayyyyy overkill and expensive.

Also note those are the performance at stock. Also, I don't trust chinese sites :p LGA 2011 is coming out in LESS than 2 weeks, we will know it's OCing abilities and performance by then ;)
 
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Dude it's Coolaler the original benchmaster since core 2 duo.
Anyways you're right it's just a matter of weeks plus cyber Monday...
 

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That game does have a lot of issues, so in that particular case it's not the CPU. The game is not CPU intensive, it was just put together very poorly for PC - and it's quite clear when playing it on PC. I had to use my PS3 controller to play it because the mouse support was freakin awful. I can't say I had framerate problems, but I played it on an i7 950 at 4GHz with really fast RAM and a 6970 at the time.

Your CPU is definitely not feeding the 5970 100%. Think about it. Do you think that CPU would scale 100% with two 5870's? Nope, so why would it scale well with a 5970 which is essentially the same (5850's I guess, but still).

I am planning on building an LGA2011 6 core build in Q1 2012, so that's what I would personally recommend :D Get a good LGA2011 quad core and an X79 board. I'm eye balling the Gigabyte X79 UD3 and UD5 for my crossfire setup right now. The future is looking good...
 

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Personally id go z68 for all its new features, some may be handy, some may not but at least one has the option, and thats always good.
2500k is plenty for most people, and it overclocks nicely, im well stable @ 4738 24/7 and its been at that since i bought it a few months back.
Low end liquid setup is great too, like antec or coolermaster range, im very impressed with the liquid cooler i have,and i paid under 100$ for it too.
At 4738 mhz my temps are idle 24-30c and never go above 45c even when gaming .
 
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Z68 and 2500K would do you some good BP.

And not just through sheer CPU performance, multi-GPU performance is also much improved with Sandy Bridge compared to Nehalem and the Core 2 series.
 

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Push your FSB up some more on the dual core. With all of the highend parts you might be bottlenecking a bit with that old FSB setup. Upgrade wise wait for the -e's to drop prices.
 
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I do with my friend before two days ago on eye test with BF3, we know BF3 need quad core, but he already have q9650 and run it at 4ghz, we setup new system with z68 and core i5 2500K, i didn't expect crazy different in frams, cuz booth of them quad core and q9650 have higher cash but sure 2500k will be better with new technonlogy chipset and ddr3 run, after new setup he have 5850 and we run the 2500k withou OC just defualt guess what? I am shoket with big jump in frams to be sometimes reach double, many many tests after that the resualts are holy different, more than 20 frams jump somwtimes more up to 30.
I think better if you think about one.
 

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Display(s) HP LP2475w 24" 1920x1200 IPS
Case Technofront Bench Station
Audio Device(s) Auzentech X-Fi Forte into Onkyo SR606 and Polk TSi200's + RM6750
Power Supply ENERMAX Galaxy EVO EGX1250EWT 1250W
Software Win7 Ultimate N x64, OSX 10.8.4
Go 2600k or better, or go home.

I would wait to see what SB-E offers tho.
 
Joined
Jan 26, 2009
Messages
488 (0.09/day)
no point in upgrading every 6 months ,but I really like op's upgrading style ..from E4300 to E8400 then to quad ...the best vfm choice is i5 2500k or wait till x mas , you can find good deals ...
 
Joined
May 4, 2009
Messages
1,970 (0.36/day)
Location
Bulgaria
System Name penguin
Processor R7 5700G
Motherboard Asrock B450M Pro4
Cooling Some CM tower cooler that will fit my case
Memory 4 x 8GB Kingston HyperX Fury 2666MHz
Video Card(s) IGP
Storage ADATA SU800 512GB
Display(s) 27' LG
Case Zalman
Audio Device(s) stock
Power Supply Seasonic SS-620GM
Software win10
Why not get a bulldozer?
 
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