Yay or nay?

breathe3asy

breathe3asy

breathe3asy

Associate
Joined
14 Jan 2013
Posts
1,461
Location
Horsham
Current setup:

i7-920
6GB DDR3
Asus P6T X58

Does anyone know if I have an upgrade path to add muscle to the setup above or would I have to start from scratch? :D
 
Get a nice SSD:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 840 PRO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7PD128BW) £119.99
1 x Plextor M5 Pro 128GB Extreme Series Solid State Drive - (PX-128M5P) £99.95
Total : £229.54 (includes shipping : £8.00).



or a 256gb one:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 256GB SSD 840 PRO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7PD256BW) £209.99
1 x Plextor M5 Pro 256GB Extreme Series Solid State Drive - (PX-256M5P) £185.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 256GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT256M4SSD2) £164.99
Total : £570.56 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
Forgot to mention I have a SSD but use it purely for OS. I game on occasion & like to max things out when I do, so looking to upgrade the weaker components below:

i7 920 @ 3.2 GHz
6GB 1600 MHz DDR3
two 6850's

Do you guys reckon the 920 has enough life to last me the next generation of games? Which leaves RAM & GPU to be upgraded but need opinions on whether its worth it. Basically my aim is to find out where I am being bottlenecked & whether I am able to upgrade or not.
 
The I7 should have the muscle for most games for another year or two at least, if you use steam consider steam mover to put your current game onto your SSD as this vastly increases load times and in some cases improves game performance.

As for RAM most games will only use 4Gb at the mo leaving a healthy 2Gb for windows to chew up. If it were me i would hold off on the GPU upgrade untill the 8xxx series lands, can't be more than 4 months now and you should see a bigger performance jump, then get a new CPU the year after when haswell gets replaced.

Edit: decreases load times, must lean to proof read
 
I would hold off upgrading, what you've got should make quick work of games. I'd consider upgrading to Haswell and 8xxx gpu.
 
Nice rig fella

The only "issue" you might have is the GPUs. In xfire the 6850s will have a fair bit of gaming grunt but the VRAM isn't combined you still have 1GB of VRAM. Depending on your resolution and wether you have AA, MSAA enabled etc you could well be held back by the VRAM. You can sometimes get microstutter with Xfire too, not sure if you have that problem.

I've seen the 6850 go for £50ish on our MM (you dont have access), so it might make sense to flog these cards off now while they are worth something to someone. This will help you fund getting say a 7950 with 3GB of VRAM, having a single GPU is a simpler setup and I imagine it will be quieter to boot ;)
 
I'm a big fan of single GPU as opposed to the hassle of two cards but luckily I haven't come across any problems so far, no microstutter & scaling all good. You do raise a good point with VRAM though & come to think about it, that is probably where I'm being held back at the moment (gaming at 1080p).
 
ceaton88 said:
I'm a big fan of single GPU as opposed to the hassle of two cards but luckily I haven't come across any problems so far, no microstutter & scaling all good. You do raise a good point with VRAM though & come to think about it, that is probably where I'm being held back at the moment (gaming at 1080p).
Click to expand...

1gb vram is fine for 1080p http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2012/11/05/msi-radeon-hd-7850-1gb-review/3 no difference to 2 even with aa only when you go above 1080p you start hitting walls
 
For upgrade path you've got Gulftown.
You've got limited SATA 3 due to your controller, which could probably be resolved with getting a PCI-E based SSD, or a PCI-E SATA thingy :p
 
Have you got the C0 or D0 stepping? I've heard the D0 overclocks more than the C0 & unfortunately I bought the 920 early days so don't have that privilege! Still grateful for how much the i7 does oc though!
 
I got a D0 but it can get warm, hit the low 70s on some cores in BF3 :p however it's very stable and doesn't really bottleneck my 680 at 4ghz.
 
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