PC gaming Tech → Should I upgrade?

Currently, I am running an i7-930 Bloomfield on an EVGA X-58 FTW3 and 12GB of DDR3 1600 with an EVGA GTX 670 FTW (2GB) system all on air-cooling. I am able to play most games on Ultra specs, though, I am noticing slow-down in certain areas of games with heavy shadows/physics going on. So, the question that I am posing for you all is whether I should upgrade the CPU/mobo or not?

An upgrade to Haswell would do you good. Drop $500 for new motherboard, CPU and memory and you're set.

It should be a fairly substantial upgrade from a Nehalem based chip (from 2008....)

Then again, I have an i3-530 and a 7850 and my games still do fine, but i'm not running Ultra quality or resolutions over 1920x1080.

Run CPU-Z in the background and see what the video card utilization is during the slowdown periods. But yeah, if the CPU is at stock speeds, then that's likely the bottleneck.

I disagree, based on personal experience. His 930 is not bottlenecking him at all.

Like Thordrune alluded to, I would suggest investing a bit of money into a really good closed loop water cooler (Swiftech 220 or Corsair H110) and figure out how to put four fans on it, and then shoot for a 3.8 - 4.2 GHz overclock on your CPU. It's a great chip for overclocking, and the EVGA boards can handle the extra juice.

I would say once you do that, a new CPU would give you less than a 10% improvement (my OC'd 3770K only gave me ~13% improvement for gaming over an i7-920 at stock, I could have lastest another 2 years or so).

I never max shadows, so I'd consider turning those down a tad--you are likely hitting the limits of your GPU, so consider adding a second 670. Or sell yours and upgrade to the new GTX 770 (very similar to the GTX 680 but faster ram)--or two.

Swiftech H220: »www.frozencpu.com/produc ··· tem.html

GTX 670 FTW: »www.newegg.com/Product/P ··· 14130787

GTX 770: »www.newegg.com/Product/P ··· 14130921

Thanks all, for the replies. I have been thinking of getting a closed loop system for a while, as I have never done water-cooling before. The CPU is overclocked mildly to about 3.6 or so on air, with a well recommended fan (I don't remember the name/brand, but it is a beast).

So, you're thinking that I have another 2 years or so on the CPU, Kris? That's good to hear. As for adding another 670, it would be a little cramped in there, as I have a 460 in there for PhysX, as well, and it already gets a little warm. Maybe I will just bite the bullet and get a GTX 780 ACX...

You don't need a discrete GPU for PhysX since the days of... I dunno, the GTX 200s? You'd be MUCH better off throwing out the 460 and getting a second 670, or two 770s, or a 780.

My vote would be two 770s. The 770 is definitely faster than the 680 and beats the 7970 GHz Ed in most tests.

»www.tomshardware.com/rev ··· 519.html

A more affordable alternative would be to wait for the GTX 760 to come out and pick two of those up.

If you want a single card, I'd go for the GTX 780, although two 760s will be more powerful.

A single card solution is more preferable as I game on a 24" at 1920x1080 and the room that I have the PC sitting in does not have the best heat dissipation/air circulation (though, the PC is up off the ground close to a foot with air flow being impeded as minimally as possible).

Get a single card with at least 3GB of vram, then. I believe the 770 only has two, so a GTX 780 would exceed your needs for years to come.

In my opinion, you need to get yourself on a new chipset. I think a lot of people are starting to bottleneck their Nehalem chips with the newer games and max settings. Anything over 3 years old is showing it's age. (personally, I don't run max settings so I avoid this problem)

If you overclocked your chip and had liquid cooling, it *might* fix the problem. But sooner than later, you'll have to upgrade the CPU / chipset.

Personally, I wouldn't sink more cost into something you'll have to upgrade anyway fairly soon.

The new GPU's aren't here yet, but the CPU / chipsets are ... upgrade that first, then slap a new GPU in when they release.

Good point, I often forget how stupidly stressful shadows can be in games. Heck, I don't have them set to Ultra in WoW as it slows down a bit occasionally, even with the 680 .

Prior to my 980X, I ran a 920 as well. I used it for a little while at stock speeds, then cranked it up to 3.7 GHz (2008 C0 chip, not the best overclocker). It helped a bit in WoW, but not much outside of that. I guess I keep thinking of CPU-heavy games being the norm rather than the exception.

In that case, ignore the last half of my post .

OP: What games are you having issues with?

It seems to be shadow/far distance/PhysX intensive areas that are giving me the most issues.

I'd definitely find a spot in the game where you can consistently recreate the slowness, then run GPU-Z for a bit. It should tell you GPU and memory controller usage.

I already posted numbers comparing an i7-920 to an i7-3770K. The results were underwhelming--very little difference in Crysis 3, but about a 15% difference in the Valley benchmark. You can get a much higher increase in performance by upgrading GPUs.

See here: »As requested, Crysis 3 benchmarks
»/r0/do ··· 1440.jpg

CPUs haven't changed all that much for gaming in the past 5 years. As long as you get single cores on a relatively modern dual/quad core Intel/AMD CPU above 3.5 - 3.7 GHz, I think you are good to go.

That is a mighty fine graph, Kris. Thanks to all of you again. I'll probably be buying the GTX 780 ACX and a closed loop system for the CPU in the next few weeks.

If anything, it shows you the bang for buck you can expect if you go for a GPU upgrade over a CPU upgrade. My vote would be the Swiftech H220--it might be a little bit more money, but you can either leave it as a closed loop system, or break it out by adding extra components to the system like a second radiator or GPU block.

I have a Corsair H100 (original) and I am getting ready to jump to the H220 in the next couple weeks or month.

I figured you were leaning toward the H220, as in your second post you linked that, but not the H100.

I think the closed loop cooler is a waste of money -- sunk cost into an old platform. IMO better off with a new chipset and GPU when the new GPU comes out.

Personally, the new GPU's are right on the cusp so in my opinion, the worst thing you could do is get a current GPU (right before the new stuff releases) and put a cooler on a 5 year old platform.

In 6 months, compare these setups.
1) Haswell with brand new GPU

2) 5 year old X58 platform with an 'updated' GPU released last year

I'll take the first, but that's me.

The Swiftech mentioned earlier officially supports ten different sockets (unofficially, 11, it should work on LGA 1150 as well). Hell, it even works on Socket 939. It can easily be moved to a newer machine in the future.

They'll be pretty much the same for gaming. I don't understand your comment about getting an old GPU--aren't we recommending a GTX 770 or 780? Are you advocating he wait for the GTX 800 series? Why?

Proof his CPU is "good enough": »Re: Gaming at 1440p: Choosing a CPU

Ooooh looky, is that a venerable Phenom II X6-1100T within 0.17 FPS (0.6% if you were wondering) of an overclocked i7-4770K?

Why yes, yes it is.

He has a killer CPU--he has the architecture, and he has the cores/threads. He just needs single core speed, which he can get by putting a heavy-duty closed loop cooler on it and cranking it up to 4.0 GHz (depending on the binning/stepping).

Anyways, buying an H100 or H220 is not money sunk into an old platform--it is an upgrade that will probably last him into his next build, since the coolers will support the newer sockets as well.

I'm not discussing performance. I'd rather be on a newer chipset from the standpoint that his setup is 5 years old and he's duct taping the thing just to get it to play.

They won't be the same for gaming, the new chipset is better and more future proof than the X58 which is showing it's age.

Getting the cooler might tide things over for a little while, but in my opinion I'd just upgrade. If he wants Ivy-E then the cooler makes more sense.

I already linked current benchmarks showing the slower Phenom II X6 pulling within 2 FPS of the latest and greatest 3770K/4770K when running a 7970 GHz on some games. If those 2 FPS are worth the combined cost of new mobo/CPU/cooler, then sure, he should upgrade.

I really think he should wait for at least Ivy-E, and investing in a cooler now isn't any lost money, but holds him over very well until it drops.

From my experience, performance bottlenecks due to GPU vs CPU are really dependent on what game you are playing. I've been doing some benchmarks on my 2500k in the past few days in lieu of building a new Haswell setup. My goal is to compare the difference between a 2500K setup in stock configuration with a single 7950 to the same cpu with a 4.5Ghz OC on the 2500k, and then finishing up with crossfired 7950's for scaling comparisons. I'm going to repeat it all on the new haswell setup once ASUS releases the ROG boards. I'm monitoring usage of the GPU and all cores on the CPU, memory usage, blah blah etc..

So far I have noticed a pretty large difference in certain games from setting my CPU back to stock (3.7GHZ with the boost applied) vs my everyday overclock which was 4.4GHZ. (I dont have %'s yet, still in progress so I have not done any formal analysis yet). In contrast, many games do not even really touch the CPU, running at it around 40%, while the 7950 is at 100%. This subject is very game dependent.

It's my opinion that CPU speed (assuming minimum 4 cores) is much more of a factor than the age/generation of the CPU. I dont think the OP would see significant boost from upgrading the CPU from an i7-930 at 3.6GHZ to any newer CPU that is running at or around 3.7GHZ(with turbo boost) in a single card configuration. Now, this argument will change if you overclock the new CPU up to the 4.5ghz range, but the OP would see a boost by getting his current CPU up to 4.0GHz and only in the certain games that the CPU is bottlenecking. It should be also noted that in my benchmarks I am seeing memory usage on the GPU going over 2GB, which gives a good argument for upgrading the 670.

If I were the OP I would spend $150 on an H220 and see how much OC I could get out of the i7-930 first. Secondly, I would upgrade the GPU to something with more than 2GB of memory. Then I would look at CPU/Motherboard upgrades. Just to reiterate that this is based on using the machine for gaming. Remember that all of this equipment can be put into a Haswell/Ivy/Sandy build. If he upgraded the CPU first and waited on the rest, his immediate return is just not going to be there IMO.

(Note: My opinion is subject to change if for some reason I see substantial gains on Haswell once I get it configured, but early reviews indicate this will not be the case)