MSI P55-GD65 Intel P55 Express (2009)

StarSolitude

StarSolitude

StarSolitude

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10 Sep 2009
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299
Hi,

I'd like to upgrade my PC. I don't want to replace the whole system. Ideally I'd only like to replace the graphics card, to improve gaming speeds. But I feel that if I do, my motherboard and CPU would bottleneck the graphic cards' performance to an unsatisfactory degree.

I have an MSI P55-GD65 motherboard, chipset LGA1156, with an Intel Core i5 750 cpu. It's being cooled by a Corsair Hyrdo H50 water cooler.

When I was looking at new motherboards, I noticed that the new socket chipsets are 1150 (Haswell) or 1155 (Sandybridge). If I went ahead and bought a new CPU, I'm guessing it wouldn't be compatible with my current 1156 socket motherboard? In which case I'd have to buy not only a new motherboard, but a new CPU cooler, too?

In THAT case, might it be better just to accept a bottlenecked graphics card? I'm really not looking to spend too much on an upgraded gaming rig. £300-400 max...

Sorry for all the questions, I've just been away from the custom-building scene for too long and all my knowledge is outdated.
 
I was in the same boat as you. You cpu is still pretty beefy and good overclocker.
You don't mention what your graphics card is.
Unless you want to max out settings on games a graphics card upgrade is probably the best way to go to get better game performance.
And yes, our socket 1156 boards are waaay outdated. New cpu would require a new mobo and cpu cooler, and more than likely new ram
 
Thanks for the reply. Okay, given that I'd have to replace the whole damn system, and the Core i5 still has some juice left, I may just go for a new graphics card... the ATI 7950, and upgrade the rest of my system in a year or two. I only really want to play Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn and (maybe) Rome 2 on max settings.
 
Well I know bugger all about the ati gpus. But a cheap and pretty decent upgrade gpu wise would be the 670/680's as they've dropped down in price and ocuk offer some tasty deals on them from time to time
 
Well I have same cpu and motherboard as you but with a 7970 gpu. System in my sig. I can max out all games I play. BF3 at full ultra, 4x msaa at 1920x1080 and it doesn't drop below 60fps.

Only reason I'd be wanting to upgrade is for sata III and usb3.
 
StarSolitude said:
In which case I'd have to buy not only a new motherboard, but a new CPU cooler, too?
Click to expand...

Hi,

Just thought that i would clarify you WOULD NOT need to buy a new CPU cooler - mounting holes for 1156, 1155 and 1150 are all the same.

Also just to add - your current i5 is using DDR3 RAM (of whatever speed) - i was going to dispute needing to by new ram as Hakanese advised - however - check your RAM, if its 1.5V your perfectly fine, however initial ' i ' processors would run RAM at 1.65V which i believe (ivy & haswell?) are not rated for this voltage.

I would like to vouch for the 7970 aswell - worked brilliantly as part of my previous Socket 1156 (i5 760) as well as in this rig, and its overclocked to the max aswell :-)

Hope this helps.
 
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2009 spec ram would probably be too slow to really take advantage of new tech is what I meant. Sorry mobile forum browsing sucks.
 
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Hakanese said:
2009 spec ram would probably be too slow to really take advantage of new tech is what I meant. Sorry mobile forum browsing sucks.
Click to expand...

Ok - now that i can agree with :-) - had 1600MHz paired with mine when i bought it. Although having purchased 2133 with new rig - i do have to wonder how much real world advantage there is between say 1600 , 1866 & 2133...
 
Hi there,

I thought I would kick in my experience for the OP - as I'm using the exact same board as the OP and an i5 760 CPU (clocked at 3.8GHz using a prolimatech megahalems cooler).

I recently upgraded the graphics card from a HD 6970 to HD 7950 Crossfire - and I'm finding the system is still able to keep up really rather well with modern games. Sure, it doesn't have the same grunt as one of the newer Intel quad chips - but it still does fine in even CPU-intensive games like ARMA2/3.

Therefore, my suggestion would be to get a nice new graphics card (a GTX 670 or HD 7950 would be my pick due to the nice price/performance) and bring your system ram up to 8GB if it isn't already. If you have some money left over (and don't have one already) then a nice 256GB SSD would make a good gaming PC into a really good one (as well as generally nicer PC to use overall).

As has been mentioned, as the OP's P55 is a s1156 board (which uses the same mounting holes as s1155 and s1150) then the H50 cooler will work fine with any future Sandy, Ivy or Haswell build.

As for RAM compatibility - even if a kit was sold as "1.65V" that will just be the XMP profile voltage used by many of the X58/P55 vintage kits to achieve the higher clockspeeds. Any DDR3 RAM needs to be able to run at 1.5V, though it may be a relatively low frequency like 1066MHz (thoughmost modules are usually able to do a lot more at that voltage). So your existing modules should work, though may not be super speedy.
 
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I think it will - IIRC a H50 is approximately equivalent to a TRUE at cooling - so a i5 4670K should be able to get up to 4.2GHz if not a bit more with a H50. If you de-lid then you may be able to take it a bit further (though if you go to the trouble to de-lid then you may want to invest in a really good cooler to get the most out of it).
 
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