Rig Upgrade: CPU, Mobo & RAM or GPU?

[jboydgolfer]

Take it from someone who knows,but until that person posts....save your money

 

[jormungand]

Dont think you have to upgrade and more with the new Intel cpus coming
out next year as well as AMD Zen. Save your money, upgrade other parts like case , ssd or maybe selling your gpus and grabbing
a new gen but your kit stills good. Rememberyou can regret just for waiting a little more and still your system isn't holding you till that time comes.

 

[kn00tcn]

i doubt ddr3 prices will jump much, i never saw ddr2 drop to ddr3 prices & now the leftovers are still at the exact same double ddr3 price as almost a decade ago, so here i am with a 4gb desktop with a 660 that gets problematic with some of these game betas like battlefield1, i have to play them on the 570m laptop with 8gb ram

I find it hard to believe that a 3rd generation i5 wouldn't need to be upgraded, mind you I suppose my rig runs pretty great still. But I don't know I would think a 6th gen might be much faster?

believe? think? why arent you focusing on what really matters: are the games that you play running at the performance you want at the settings you want? (with a bit of wiggle room for turning down settings slightly, but avoiding dramatic visual differences... for example SSAO vs HBAO or FXAA vs MSAA, great performance gains for minor image loss), i dont think you're projecting consumerism, but it's certainly some kind of old parts anxiety that only worked in simpler times of so-called moore's law

edit: aside from your own needs, simply looking at generational cpu benchmarks will reveal the answer, stay scientific & ignore the year or 'generation' numbers

If your not comfortable by doing the OC yourself, just DL Gigabyte's own software Easytune. http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4153#utility

quite the contrary, i am never comfortable with EZ anything! from my personal experience, it's a known fact that certain asus boards in 2008 overvolted too far, there are also anandtech mobo reviews that show tables of voltage vs frequency on auto compared to manual stable settings (in most cases, overclocked manual can end up using the same voltage as auto stock)

 

[BlackAzrael]

i doubt ddr3 prices will jump much, i never saw ddr2 drop to ddr3 prices & now the leftovers are still at the exact same double ddr3 price as almost a decade ago, so here i am with a 4gb desktop with a 660 that gets problematic with some of these game betas like battlefield1, i have to play them on the 570m laptop with 8gb ram


believe? think? why arent you focusing on what really matters: are the games that you play running at the performance you want at the settings you want? (with a bit of wiggle room for turning down settings slightly, but avoiding dramatic visual differences... for example SSAO vs HBAO or FXAA vs MSAA, great performance gains for minor image loss), i dont think you're projecting consumerism, but it's certainly some kind of old parts anxiety that only worked in simpler times of so-called moore's law

edit: aside from your own needs, simply looking at generational cpu benchmarks will reveal the answer, stay scientific & ignore the year or 'generation' numbers


quite the contrary, i am never comfortable with EZ anything! from my personal experience, it's a known fact that certain asus boards in 2008 overvolted too far, there are also anandtech mobo reviews that show tables of voltage vs frequency on auto compared to manual stable settings (in most cases, overclocked manual can end up using the same voltage as auto stock)

Well most games I run just fine but they are some of them that I can't even keep a stable 60fps with all maxed, even with some settings down, like AC Syndicate and Crysis 3 are a prime exemple though it might just be the games are poorly optimized.

And yes I have already decided I'm not upgrading anything for now, I'll wait to see how the 1080 ti in benchmarks. I was only asking for suggestions on if it was worth and I got my answer.

 

[kn00tcn]

Well most games I run just fine but they are some of them that I can't even keep a stable 60fps with all maxed, even with some settings down, like AC Syndicate and Crysis 3 are a prime exemple though it might just be the games are poorly optimized.

And yes I have already decided I'm not upgrading anything for now, I'll wait to see how the 1080 ti in benchmarks. I was only asking for suggestions on if it was worth and I got my answer.

crysis 3 does not need to be maxed, it even looks quite nice on a gtx660 & is playable on a 570m (let's call it faster than a 5770, i lost track of a more modern comparison)

when AC3 came out, it was severely cpu limited, i dont know what the situation is since then

there's another thing to note about cpus, multi gpu usually demands more of the cpu or may have very specific cpu bottlenecks at certain points of certain games (where single gpu may dip to 40fps, multi may dip to 30, but single average could be 60 & multi average could be 90)

 

[BlackAzrael]

crysis 3 does not need to be maxed, it even looks quite nice on a gtx660 & is playable on a 570m (let's call it faster than a 5770, i lost track of a more modern comparison)

when AC3 came out, it was severely cpu limited, i dont know what the situation is since then

there's another thing to note about cpus, multi gpu usually demands more of the cpu or may have very specific cpu bottlenecks at certain points of certain games (where single gpu may dip to 40fps, multi may dip to 30, but single average could be 60 & multi average could be 90)

That's quite interesting, I did not know that. Though, when and how does one know when you've reached a CPU bottleneck?

 

[peche]

RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB DDR3 1600 (2x4GB)

add another kit, double you ram ...

Also I always tend to go with Gigabyte for the motherboard and gpu since I've had a good run with them so far.

me too, great quality and support! also pretty durable,

Also as major upgrade cooling could be improved, replacing your actual Hyper 212 for an prettu reliable AIO Watercooler, Thermaltake's Water 3.0 Pro its a great option, Tick 120mm rad with dual fan support, great tubing and also a pretty brave integrated pump so take a better cooler in consideration and start having some fun with your machine and some OC!

Regards,

 

[BlackAzrael]

add another kit, double you ram ...


me too, great quality and support! also pretty durable,

Also as major upgrade cooling could be improved, replacing your actual Hyper 212 for an prettu reliable AIO Watercooler, Thermaltake's Water 3.0 Pro its a great option, Tick 120mm rad with dual fan support, great tubing and also a pretty brave integrated pump so take a better cooler in consideration and start having some fun with your machine and some OC!

Regards,

I thought about both of these ideas but it doesn't seem the RAM would really benefit gaming so I decided agianst it for now, maybe I'll grab more on black friday or something I don't know. As for water cooling, I did think about that though I have literally no experience with water cooling at all. I heard you have to maintain those on a regular basis, wether it's true or not I don't know. Would you have any recommendations for good water cooling? I wouldn't want to go too expensive either though.

 

[kn00tcn]

i wouldnt bother with water cooling, especially if you have no idea & are going to go with random forum recommendations instead of spending a month reading articles

That's quite interesting, I did not know that. Though, when and how does one know when you've reached a CPU bottleneck?

when gpu usage drops below 99%? when cpu usage on a single core is maxed out? when reducing purely gpu settings like AA or resolution results in no improvement?

it's pretty much testing & measuring hypotheses, everyone can eventually find out what different bottlenecks act like after some amount of experimenting (unless there is a horrible driver problem like nfs shift 1 on amd for the first few months, that's why experiment on multiple games)

 

[JrRacinFan]

@AlienIsGOD Would you recommend using turbo multipliers to overclock? Like per se

1 & 2: 4.2Ghz
3: 4Ghz
4: 3.8

So then wouldn't necessarily have to touch any of the powersaving features either.

@BlackAzrael
If you want to upgrade, look at peripherals. Maybe a new keyboard, better mouse. nice 7.1 speakers, a steering wheel if you enjoy racing games (shameless plug). . . .

Speaking of racing games, check out Dirt3 @ uPlay. Got it for free for the month. I missed out on "The Crew".