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Best card for an old i7 920 system

Zethor said:
What I said was true (although not nice :D). If someone can afford a 980/980ti they would not put it in a 5 yearold system.
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Why not?

A Xeon X5650 can perform as well as a 4790k when all of the threads it has are utilised.

If it works then you can do it. TBH if I still had my X58 board (I'd have been screwed any way I had a Foxconn) then I would get myself a hex core Xeon for absolute peanuts (I've seen them sell for £40) and then simply spend the rest on a GPU.

In gaming it's pretty much all the GPU. Sure, you can't run a gaming rig on a dual core Pentium or Celeron but anything with a few cores and some grunt is usually good enough.

A hex cored Westmere at 4ghz or more is no slouch. Most certainly still fast enough for any single GPU available atm.
 
Regardless, it's pretty clear there is no point focusing on changing CPU at the moment considering the 1680x1050 resolution. i7 920 is still a very capable CPU for literally any card suitable for that resolution. I've used an original Titan on a 920 OCd to 4GHz with no apparent problems and thats obviously way overkill for 1680x1050
 
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Zethor said:
What I said was true (although not nice :D). If someone affords a 980/980ti they would not put it in a 5 yearold system.
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There is nothing wrong with putting a GTX 980 Ti or TitanX in an i7 920 based system. Add a 1440p monitor and you are good to go.

OP you are in a bit of a Chicken or the Egg situation as you really need to upgrade both your screen and your GPU. See if you can grab a 1080p screen and maybe a secondhand 290P.
 
at that res if you didn't want to spend a lot a used 7850/7950 would be plenty juice

double the grunt and more of your current card,plus they oc like crazy
 
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linaaslt said:
why change cpu? I would just stick 980 or something similar, I bet he would be ok for the next few years. but yeah 56xx doesn't cost a lot, and you can still sell 920.
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I had a 920 too and with a R9 290 Ungine valley benchmarks were ok, but crank it up to 4ghz and there was a big jump in performance.

I subsequently replaced the 920 with an i5 4690k @ stock and got another jump in performance.

Conclusion: CPU was a bottleneck in my system. Now obviously this is anecdotal as I can't find find my old benchmark screenshots to show you after I rebuilt the machine thats my experience.
 
Did no one look at his budget I echo the whats been said about the ram get tri-channel working

then if you can i would get a 780 or 290x/290 for the budeget of 150
 
Get a Xeon X5650 for pence then get a 980Ti.

Due to woeful progress in CPUs lately, X58 is still a pretty good platform and the Xeon can trade blows with a 4790k.
 
P.B said:
Did no one look at his budget I echo the whats been said about the ram get tri-channel working

then if you can i would get a 780 or 290x/290 for the budeget of 150
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I can't see him getting anywhere near 150 by selling a pair of 5770's.

He might get enough for a 750 if he's lucky. I was on a 5770/6770 a while ago and moved to a 2gb 7850 that was on a 1600x900 screen and it was great at that res. A secondhand 7850 or 7950 would do a decent job while removing any crossfire issues.
 
Wow, I'm running a pretty similar setup. i7 920, Asus P6T WS, 12Gb RAM (3x3) and Crossfire 5850s.

I have just bought a R9 380 and going to drop a Xeon 5650 in as well. Should do fine as monitor can only do 1600x1050 res.
 
cheers folks,

giving me pently to look at.
liking the 380, might look into a used 290x.

il get an extra stick of ram, only got the 8gb last week, adding another 4 will be easy
 
arc@css said:
No need to add more ram. Either add a new card or save up / get a new monitor.
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This. Sorry you got inundated with bad advice OP.

naty_morris - you didn't say which games are struggling. Upgrading the CPU might help on a few titles, but in most you'll notice more of a difference from a more powerful GPU than a more powerful CPU. So what are you playing?

Regarding memory, it's true that you'll get more bandwidth by adding another stick, but the chances of that bandwidth giving you better gaming performance are roughly 0. I wouldn't bother unless you find a matching stick (timings and speeds should really match!) for very cheap.
 
joeyjojo said:
This. Sorry you got inundated with bad advice OP.

naty_morris - you didn't say which games are struggling. Upgrading the CPU might help on a few titles, but in most you'll notice more of a difference from a more powerful GPU than a more powerful CPU. So what are you playing?

Regarding memory, it's true that you'll get more bandwidth by adding another stick, but the chances of that bandwidth giving you better gaming performance are roughly 0. I wouldn't bother unless you find a matching stick (timings and speeds should really match!) for very cheap.
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Two biggest games for me are csgo (which i dont have problems with) and Total war.
Now that i can clock my cpu (bad memory module stopped me from doing that before) i am getting better performance on total war. but it still struggles with reasonable graphics settings. Also, the cards are well used, and getting very noisey, and generate some heat!

i also anticapte more game buying soon, mainly the big tittle shootin games
 
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