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Forums - PC - Time to Upgrade My Rig, Suggestions?

zarx on 05 May 2012
smbu2000 said:
zarx said:
@smbu2000 Damn that looks nice
I'm so jealous right now

Thanks!

Well today I went to the retail store (bought the 580's from the online store) to sell my old cards and saw that they had almost the same deal for the Galaxy gt 580s that I bought! I was tempted to get another one, but the backplate makes things a tight fit in the adjoining slot and I don't think my powersupply would be up to it (Silverstone Strider Gold 850W (peak 950W)).

The two cards are running great though. I tested skyrim at 2560 x 1440 (resolution of my dell u2711) with everything maxed/FXAA on and it runs super smooth at over 60fps (I forgot to turn off vsync). Witcher 2 EE at 2560 x 1440 on Ultra with Ubersampling disabled runs at over 70fps. (With ubersampling on it still runs at over 30fps)

In case you were wondering about my other specs, I have:

Case: Lian Li X900; CPU: Intel i7 2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4ghz@4.6ghz (highest I've run it is just over 5ghz); Cooler: Corsair H60; MB: Asus Maximus IV Extreme (P67); RAM: 2x4GB (G.Skill Ripjaws X 1600), 2x4GB (Corsair Vengeance 1866); Boot Drive: 120GB Intel 510 SSD.

Ooh and I just noticed that Ivy Bridge cpu's are also compatible with slot 1155 mobos (P67/Z68), nice! Although, I have no intention of upgrading my cpu at the moment.


Ivy bridge doesn't really offer much of a performance boost over Sandy Bridge, the main gains are in power consumption and intergrated graphics. There is really no point in you upgrading unless they release a 6+ core Ivy bridge on the same socket. 

Haswell will be on a new socket tho, but will probably not be a pretty big jump in performance ether as they are only going for 4 core on mainstream again, even with it's new cache design with is expected to support 32MB L3 cache or 64MB shared with the GPU, which is a huge leap from Ivy bridge which currently tops out at 8MB or the E series Sandy Bridge which tops out at 20MB. 

CPUs aren't going to see massive leaps any time soon, and it's not like there are any games that a 2600K overclocked can't handle. With AMD basically saying they are not going to even try and compete at the top anymore, and refocusing on mobile and tablets.



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smbu2000 on 05 May 2012
_crazy_man_ said:

Another question.

How do you know if your CPU is bottlenecking your GPU?

I know my CPU won't do this if I do buy a GTX 580, I'm just curious.

Well for example if you upgrade your gpu and your fps don't increase then it could be your cpu holding you back. Playing games at lower resolutions tends to put more stress on the cpu, higher resolutions are more about your gpu.

The i7 920 should be sufficient, although overclocking it a bit will help no matter what. i7 920's should be able to hit 3.0-3.5ghz with no problems. For higher speeds you'd need a better cooler. Can your mobo overclock?




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greenmedic88 on 05 May 2012

If you have an i7 920, there isn't really any need to change CPU, motherboard and memory when all that money would be better spent on more GPU. That's anywhere from $400-600 worth of hardware for a suitable upgrade. Better off buying 2 instead of 1 of a high end VGA card instead.

It goes without saying there will be no immediate need to upgrade a 2600k or 2500k either.

Of course that's assuming the CPU is set up for a decent over clock and the PC is primarily being used for gaming.



_crazy_man_ on 05 May 2012

CPU is currently not being overcloaked.  As I don't know how to do it anyways. ;p

I'm hoping to just buy the 580 one it drops to 300 bucks, cause I still have the Wii U to worry about this hoilday season.

Anyways the 580 should last me about 2 years as some peeps have previously said.



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smbu2000 on 10 May 2012
zarx said:

With the rumours of the GTX670 being close to the performance of the 580 (probably higher in games but lacking in compute like the 680) and use a lot less power and also be cheaper ($399 has been hovering arround for the 670 http://videocardz.com/32476/geforce-gtx-660-ti-and-gtx-670-specification-leaked) it should push prices down further. It will likely be a better buy than a 580, I mean a quick check on newegg shows that 580s still go for $400+ so 670 could be a much better buy. 

Worth waiting for a couple weeks or so anyway

Oh so the reviews are out and the GTX 670 seems like a great performer! Not too much under the GTX 680 at stock settings and performs above the stock GTX 580 as well. The card seems like a great buy for just about anybody looking for top of the line performance without a super high price at $399, compared to $499 for the gtx 680. (Unless you can find a cheap gtx 580 of course.)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga

In my case going with the gtx 580 was still the best bet. In Japan, a gtx 670 will retail for well 55%-60% more than what I paid for one of my cards! yikes. (For reference, 1 gtx 680 was 90%-120% more expensive.)




starcraft: "I and every PS3 fanboy alive are waiting for Versus more than FFXIII.
Me since the games were revealed, the fanboys since E3."

Skeeuk: "playstation 3 is the ultimate in gaming acceleration"

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zarx on 10 May 2012
smbu2000 said:
zarx said:
 

With the rumours of the GTX670 being close to the performance of the 580 (probably higher in games but lacking in compute like the 680) and use a lot less power and also be cheaper ($399 has been hovering arround for the 670 http://videocardz.com/32476/geforce-gtx-660-ti-and-gtx-670-specification-leaked) it should push prices down further. It will likely be a better buy than a 580, I mean a quick check on newegg shows that 580s still go for $400+ so 670 could be a much better buy. 

Worth waiting for a couple weeks or so anyway

Oh so the reviews are out and the GTX 670 seems like a great performer! Not too much under the GTX 680 at stock settings and performs above the stock GTX 580 as well. The card seems like a great buy for just about anybody looking for top of the line performance without a super high price at $399, compared to $499 for the gtx 680. (Unless you can find a cheap gtx 580 of course.)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5818/nvidia-geforce-gtx-670-review-feat-evga

In my case going with the gtx 580 was still the best bet. In Japan, a gtx 670 will retail for well 55%-60% more than what I paid for one of my cards! yikes. (For reference, 1 gtx 680 was 90%-120% more expensive.)


The 670 seems to be a monster, AMD should be very afraid right now.



@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!