Upgrade Advice 980ti's and surounding hardware

[Madeddie]

Scenario being my gaming only rig has a 4k Monitor, a 5 year old ASUS P8P67 PRO Motherboard and a I5 2500k 3.3 oc'ed to 4.4, 8Gb of DDR3 1600 ram and a Corsair 850 PSU (think it's the plat edition.)

Currently running 2 x 970 gtx's in SLI however it not quite enough to drive 4k, some older 4k games yes but newer not a chance and I really want to take advantage of the monitor and crisp res, The machine I use for gaming only.

Do I throw in 2 980ti's to the existing hardware, will the PSU have enough power to drive these cards, currently just 3 SSD's and a blueray.

Or do I upgrade my board cpu, memory in addition to the cards, this being my non preferred option obviously more hard earned cash to part with, however if my board and cpu is holding back the GFX and the benefits are worth it then it may be the best option. If so could anyone recommend a reasonably priced board/memory/cpu bundle.

Appreciate anyone's time to guide me.

Many Thanks

Ed

 

[drakioned]

I would throw the 2x 980 Tis in first, and see how they do.

 

[Madeddie]

okay thanks Drak, appreciated.

I would throw the 2x 980 Tis in first, and see how they do.

 

[razorpakk]

I would move to a newer platform (Skylake) and start off with only one card (which will give you the same performance, minus the stuttering for the low Vram). Either that or move to X99.
Maybe it's just a personal thing, but I wouldn't invest on high end cards and make them run on weak foundations.
The 2500k is still relevant, but you would run them on x8 Pci-ex 2.0, definitely limiting their potential.

Ok I'm exaggerating, only 2%. Would still move to Skylake for peace of mind.

 

[Madeddie]

I would move to a newer platform (Skylake) and start off with only one card.

Completely understand what your saying, I guess in my case I want to get as much bang to run 4K for the Buck so to say.

In example current setup 970x2 in 4k witcher 3 high end probably maintaining close to 30fps.

I'm expecting 2 980ti's to give me close to 50fps in the same settings perhaps slightly more which whilst not perfect it acceptable 4k gaming.

£1100 buys me a 66% increase acceptable for 4k gaming.

If I build around the mb/cpu bottle neck I may get 2-3 additional fps on top of that, yes there are other advantages I completely agree but lets say for argument sake my 50fps becomes 53fps by upgrading the surrounding hardware at a cost of £700.

I'd be only getting an increase of only 6% for £700, by comparison to the 66% gpu's for £1100 that's not the bang for buck i'm really looking for.

Perhaps it may be worth holding out for the cannonlake next year?

 

[NoobCannon]

I get 50+ fps using 4k in witcher with everything on full including aa with 980ti sli and 3770k just for your comparisson

 

[razorpakk]

Completely understand what your saying, I guess in my case I want to get as much bang to run 4K for the Buck so to say.

In example current setup 970x2 in 4k witcher 3 high end probably maintaining close to 30fps.

I'm expecting 2 980ti's to give me close to 50fps in the same settings perhaps slightly more which whilst not perfect it acceptable 4k gaming.

£1100 buys me a 66% increase acceptable for 4k gaming.

If I build around the mb/cpu bottle neck I may get 2-3 additional fps on top of that, yes there are other advantages I completely agree but lets say for argument sake my 50fps becomes 53fps by upgrading the surrounding hardware at a cost of £700.

I'd be only getting an increase of only 6% for £700, by comparison to the 66% gpu's for £1100 that's not the bang for buck i'm really looking for.

Perhaps it may be worth holding out for the cannonlake next year?

DX12 might change quite a few things (SLI scaling and core usage), so it's a bit more difficult to think about the future. But yes, just going 980ti Sli will be the more tangible upgrade.