Upgrade or bigger upgrade?

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Toy4x4

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I have an AMD 5600+, 4 gigs of decent 800mhz G.Skill, on a Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P. W7 scores the chip at 5.9 on their performance test.

I can run BF3 pretty good, but noticed some slowdown on single-player and some on multi. Action also slows on BFBC2 when it gets hectic. Everything runs on the preselected "High" settings with one on "Ultra". Card is an XFX 6950 2 gig.

Is it worth it to just upgrade the chip to, say, an AMD 970 and milk this system? My logic on this is I can spend $140 now and play the game very well and save money for a much better upgrade a few years down the road.

Or go with a new chip (2500K), mobo, & memory?

I'm not someone who wants to have the ultimate machine and have graphic scores off the charts. Just want to run smoothly and not have any hiccups.

Thank you!
 
go for a new mobo chip and ram.

something like an i5-2500k and 8gb of ddr3

or you could do an amd combo for cheaper but the intel is much better right now.

that processor is an old dog compared to your video card.
 
I see your points, but the chip is the only thing that seems to be holding things up right now. Intel, I think, may be putting out something new next year. Bulldozer from AMD seems to have flopped (spec'ed for W8???) I know its a never ending battle to keep up. I just wanted to prolong the life of what I have and save some $$$, but not throw it away on a outdated chip.
I figure there would be a $360+ savings going with just a chip vs new board, chip & memory.
 
thats a 2.9ghz dualcore with lower ipc compared to i5-2500k

you can oc it to 4ghz + verrry easy.


AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5600+ score 1536
Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.30GHz 7445

The intel is 5x faster at stock speed.(and oc to 4ghz+ easy with no voltage increase)

any processor you get for that deadend board is just a waste.

Spend 350$ now and be good. Anything NEW that comes out next year will most likely have bugs and you will have to wait anyway.

Should be something like 179$ for i5-2500k, 100~~ for mobo
50$ for 8gb ddr 1600 ram (or faster for a few more $$)
 
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Originally Posted By: Rand
thats a 2.9ghz dualcore with lower ipc compared to i5-2500k

you can oc it to 4ghz + verrry easy.


AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5600+ score 1536
Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.30GHz 7445

The intel is 5x faster at stock speed.(and oc to 4ghz+ easy with no voltage increase)

any processor you get for that deadend board is just a waste.

Spend 350$ now and be good. Anything NEW that comes out next year will most likely have bugs and you will have to wait anyway.

Should be something like 179$ for i5-2500k, 100~~ for mobo
50$ for 8gb ddr 1600 ram (or faster for a few more $$)


This.

Intel is the performance king by a huge margin right now. Even an inexpensive i5 system like the one Rand mentioned is going to be a massive upgrade.
 
Add another vote for a 2500k system.

Any of the current LGA 1155 boards should work fine with the upcoming Ivy Bridge processors, so you should be covered for a while on upgrades.

If you're waiting for LGA 2011, expect to pay ~$100 more for the processor vs. the 2500k, plus however much extra the mobs are gonna be going for.

Personally, I'd avoid the "enthusiasts" Intel chipsets. Look at what happened to LGA 1366. Unless you were will to drop $texas, you had no upgrade path. Then Sandy Bridge came out and decimated most of the 1366 processors for 1/3 the cost.

Tom's Hardware just did a big graphics card benchmark for BF3. All the way down to a lowly i3, there were no CPU scaling issues with even the most beefy graphics card. You didn't mention what resolution you're playing at, but at 1920x1080, your 6950 was pulling frame rates in the low 60's in High and, unfortunately, only upper 30's in Ultra.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,3063.html
 
Thanks for all the info. Have a couple more questions.

I'm not savy on some things like mobo numbers. I thought I read somewhere to stick with a Z68 board, but have also seen recommedatios for P67s. What is the deal with these?

Also, I'd thought I'd get another matching 6950 somewhere down the road and I've seen specs where a single card is at 16x on a mobo, but if you use 2 then its 8x & 8x. Very few seem to have dual 16x and generally are high dollar mobos. Is this something to be concerned about for performance?

Is it better to get 8 gigs of memory at 2 sticks of 4 gigs or 4 sticks of 2 gigs? Is it really worth it to get over 1600?

Thanks again.
 
Originally Posted By: Toy4x4
Thanks for all the info. Have a couple more questions.

I'm not savy on some things like mobo numbers. I thought I read somewhere to stick with a Z68 board, but have also seen recommedatios for P67s. What is the deal with these?

Also, I'd thought I'd get another matching 6950 somewhere down the road and I've seen specs where a single card is at 16x on a mobo, but if you use 2 then its 8x & 8x. Very few seem to have dual 16x and generally are high dollar mobos. Is this something to be concerned about for performance?

Is it better to get 8 gigs of memory at 2 sticks of 4 gigs or 4 sticks of 2 gigs? Is it really worth it to get over 1600?

Thanks again.


Generally going to an 8x -8x configuration isn't going to hur tperformance at all. My 880G chipset runs at 16x - 4x when running in crossfire mode, and there was a test done on some website, I'll try to find it, that shows performance doesn't generally decrease by much when PCIe speeds are lower than 16x.
 
the i5-2500k is pretty much the same speed as the i7-2600k unless you need hyperthreading for something.
and the i5 is 100$ cheaper.

Go Z68 chipset its the one you want.
 
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