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Would an AMD FX-4170 Bottleneck a 7950?

Don't think it'll take the 965, you need a 95W TDP CPU.
While I'd wait for Vishera, I still think you'd have to upgrade sooner that an i5, but I think an i5 upgrade just simply wouldn't be worth it unless you'd went 1155 originally.

Keep what you've got, save money till you can go whole hog upgrade of CPU and GPU when Haswell launches, that way you've got your full spectrum of upgrades.
 
Martini1991 said:
Don't think it'll take the 965, you need a 95W TDP CPU.
While I'd wait for Vishera, I still think you'd have to upgrade sooner that an i5, but I think an i5 upgrade just simply wouldn't be worth it unless you'd went 1155 originally.

Keep what you've got, save money till you can go whole hog upgrade of CPU and GPU when Haswell launches, that way you've got your full spectrum of upgrades.
Click to expand...

It will. supports up to 95W. Does mean you can't have an X6 or X8 though.

http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/M5A78LM_LX/#specifications

AMD AM3+ FX™/Phenom™ II/Athlon™ II/Sempron™ 100 Series Processors
Supports CPU up to 95 W
 
Your board can take it, but they're still pretty poor.
If you really want an upgrade, I'd go for a 7870 and an i3 3220 and overclock the 7870.
Use it as an interim and you can always slot an i5 in future.

There's some B-Grade Z68 boards for 35 quid so you'd get the overclocking future ability with an i5.

But wait for Vishera before doing anything.
 
Interesting results for the FX4170 against the Core i3 3220. I expected the FX4170 to be behind in all the game tests. However,Skyrim is the only one it seems to be really behind in. I kind of expected SC2 to really do well on the Core i3 against the FX4170, as that is lightly threaded like all Blizzard games,but evidently that is not the case.
 
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Martini1991 said:
560TI isn't exactly a slouch, I certainly wouldn't go from a 560TI with Athlon IIX4 to a 7950 with Athlon IIX4.
Click to expand...

Martini in my thread you claimed I should never of bought the 560ti, I even got the 2Gb one as to not suffer from VRAM limitations in long distance drawing games. AND it was to be paired with an FX-4170 clocked at 4.6-4.8Ghz.

You seem very contradictory...

I suppose it does just depend what mood you are in.....
 
No, I suggested you shouldn't have gotten a 560Ti at the time that you bought, you spent over the odds for a 2GB one when you could have had a much better 7850 or 660Ti (Thus you shouldn't have bought a 560Ti)

The OP already has the GPU (And it's not a slouch)

2 completely different scenarios, you completely and utterly built the wrong system, your money would have went so much further than what you made it, you can get i3 3220's and 7850's in systems for 400-500 quid, and they'd be better than what you ended up with (More so due to the better GPU) and you spent upwards of 900 quid.

I'm not contradictory in the slightest, I give advice to the situation.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Interesting results for the FX4170 against the Core i3 3220. I expected the FX4170 to be behind in all the game tests. However,Skyrim is the only one it seems to be really behind in. I kind of expected SC2 to really do well on the Core i3 against the FX4170, as that is lightly threaded like all Blizzard games,but evidently that is not the case.
Click to expand...

There's like 1GHZ between them, it makes up some room of the IPC deficit :p

Also, different reviews give different results, you already know this stuff, you just try too hard to come across as objective (Which you don't need to do)
 
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GamingRealist said:
Hmm, what about if i just buy a motherboard and an I5 2500K and keep my 560TI?
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Depends of what sort of game you play the most. If you are a fan of mmos in general, it would be the best upgrade you could possibly make.

Upgrading to faster graphic card but sticking with your existing CPU would allow you to run games at higher graphic settings, but your frame rate will still be restricted by your CPU (i.e. running a game at 30-50fps on ultra settings instead of high settings).
 
I take it you have an AM3+ Motherboard?

If i was you i would get an FX-6100 to go with the 7950 and overclock the CPU, most newer games are multithreaded, for those the FX-6 is not going to be a problem to the 7950.

I don't agree with Martini1991.

Swapping out the Motherboard for a locked 2 core i3 and stepping down from a 7950 to a 7870 is a bed idea in my mind.
 
And telling him to buy an FX6100 is a bad idea when we're days away from Vishera launch, much worse than what I suggested, and I didn't even really suggest it, it was more what I'd do.
For the majority of this thread it's been "Hold off".

Also,where's all these highly multithreaded new games? Games have been multithreaded for a while, the degree of that is different game to game.
I still see the FX's trailing behind Phenom II's in new AAA titles like Borderlands 2.
 
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Also, what difference are going to notice from a 7870 and 7950 at stock? They're hard to distinguish, at this level of performance you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between a 7870 - GTX680 unless you've got a counter.

That said, I'd still hang tight till Haswell and go full hog.
A half assed CPU upgrade (Unless Vishera is brilliant) isn't really worth it with a 7950, especially when we're not miles away from 8XXX/7XX or Haswell and potential price drops.
 
Martini1991 said:
Also, what difference are going to notice from a 7870 and 7950 at stock? They're hard to distinguish, at this level of performance you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between a 7870 - GTX680 unless you've got a counter.

That said, I'd still hang tight.
Click to expand...


Well i have a 7870, the 7950 has 35% more shader cores and higher binned (faster rated memory), clock for clock the 7950 is 20% faster, of-course he will notice the difference.

There is no release date yet for Haswell or the 8###, could be 6 months yet, could be a year.... and all of that is also assuming there going to be that much faster, and he would need to change the motherboad, again.
 
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Some of those Skyrim benches are out of date. Bethesda didn't turn on any compiler optimisations which as a result heavily favoured the pure x86 Intel implementation. This is a sample from the patch 1.4.15 notes:

Beta Patch Notes (1.4.15)

NEW FEATURES

Skyrim launcher support for Steam Workshop*

BUG FIXES

General optimizations for memory and performance
Optimized bookshelf script in player-owned houses that would occasionally cause active scripts to lag and also cause an increase to saved games filesize (PS3)

Improved compiler optimization settings

Memory optimizations related to scripting

I don't know if the benches are with a fully upgraded version of Skyrim but those optimisations can give up to a 40% performance boost when in city areas for example (due to the number of scripts).

There used to be a program called Skyboost that implemented these optimisations but it was made redundant with that patch. I got interested in this because the performance of my PII x4 @ 3.7GHz seemed unusually low relative to an i3 2100 in Skyrim.
 
Please don't do "clock for clock" with GPU's given there's more to it than that.

And saying there's a difference doesn't mean you can notice it, not at this GPU level of performance, I've used the lot, can I tell a difference? No, it's just fluid, the same could be said for FPS in CPU's at times as well (When it's consistent)

EDIT : That's some very nice information there Jon, although I only took the second page of that review because it was obvious why the original was chosen in the first place.

EDIT 2: What he has now isn't about to keel over, the AMD CPU's as they stand aren't worth the purchase given their 2009 parts are still the better gamers, hanging tight is the better option, or an Intel upgrade, why else do you have a Phenom II and not the FX? Because the FX is abysmal.
 
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