1080Ti upgrade - will it choke?

[qbazdz]

Hi All,

been pondering on upgrading my old PC for a bit and wonder if this makes sense.
I've got a 2500K, that O/C nicely to 4.3GHz, had been running under WC for good years now without a skip of a beat.
I have it paired right now with HD7950, again under WC loop and it's been long since I had used this for anything more than photo editing as work/DIY projects/kids had taken me away from any sort of gaming.

I am long overdue to even play Witcher 3 for more than a bit and after a forced upgrade to a 2K screen I'd like to benefit from the visual this game has to offer.

So.. my thinking is, let's get an upgrade of the GPU to something I can easily stick in the WC loop that will take on what I need and will easily cope with what now older kids may be interested in.

Is 2500K going to be a huge bottleneck?

What 'good' version of 1080Ti to look out for?

Cheers,

 

[Captain_Bosh]

I'd upgrade your GPU and see how you get on bottleneck wise tbh, it will depend on the game.

I'd keep an eye out in the Members Market on here for one with a water block already fitted. 1080Ti, Titan X Pascal/XP's usually go for around £300 - £350.

 

[Tetras]

Is 2500K going to be a huge bottleneck?

You will see some bottlenecking, but a 7950 is pretty slow nowadays, so still worth an upgrade.

 

[ASMB]

So.. my thinking is, let's get an upgrade of the GPU to something I can easily stick in the WC loop that will take on what I need and will easily cope with what now older kids may be interested in.
What 'good' version of 1080Ti to look out for?

Cheers,

I don't water cool my GPU but if you want to place a 1080ti in a wc loop don't you need to either find a 1080ti with a wc block on it or research what wc blocks are still sold for a 1080ti and then which cards they will fit on?

 

[qbazdz]

I don't water cool my GPU but if you want to place a 1080ti in a wc loop don't you need to either find a 1080ti with a wc block on it or research what wc blocks are still sold for a 1080ti and then which cards they will fit on?

Precisely the point for this thread but yes, ideally would be looking to buy one with a GPU block already.

 

[cjgardens]

If temps on the cpu are good why not overclock it more. You can easily get 4.6 out of that cpu. Probably more. My 2600k would do 5.2 for benchmarks and 5ghz for daily use

 

[Tired9]

Ran a 2700K at 4.7ghz on stock volts, was awesome with an R9 Fury.
Passed that level of card though CPU bottlenecks will occur, Westmere-EP (Xeon E5640) was actually faster in games due to a much larger cache on X58 at 4.578ghz.

 

[nomadd]

Hi All,

been pondering on upgrading my old PC for a bit and wonder if this makes sense.
I've got a 2500K, that O/C nicely to 4.3GHz, had been running under WC for good years now without a skip of a beat.
I have it paired right now with HD7950, again under WC loop and it's been long since I had used this for anything more than photo editing as work/DIY projects/kids had taken me away from any sort of gaming.

I am long overdue to even play Witcher 3 for more than a bit and after a forced upgrade to a 2K screen I'd like to benefit from the visual this game has to offer.

So.. my thinking is, let's get an upgrade of the GPU to something I can easily stick in the WC loop that will take on what I need and will easily cope with what now older kids may be interested in.

Is 2500K going to be a huge bottleneck?

What 'good' version of 1080Ti to look out for?

Cheers,

I moved from a GTX970 to a 1080Ti in my old 3770k based system. This was because I upgraded to a 1440p monitor. CPU was on decent air cooling running @4.2. The upgrade was well worth it, even with that older CPU and RAM. Witcher 3 was well north of 100fps, even in the heavier areas (hairworks off.)

I eventually upgraded to a 9900k, but for the 6-12 months I was running the 1080Ti with the 3770k I was more than happy.

Both cards (970 & 1080Ti) were MSI Twin Frozr models; nice and quiet, just how I like it, and no need for water cooling.

 

[qbazdz]

I moved from a GTX970 to a 1080Ti in my old 3770k based system. This was because I upgraded to a 1440p monitor. CPU was on decent air cooling running @4.2. The upgrade was well worth it, even with that older CPU and RAM. Witcher 3 was well north of 100fps, even in the heavier areas (hairworks off.)

I eventually upgraded to a 9900k, but for the 6-12 months I was running the 1080Ti with the 3770k I was more than happy.

Both cards (970 & 1080Ti) were MSI Twin Frozr models; nice and quiet, just how I like it, and no need for water cooling.

Thanks for feedback, this puts me at ease a bit, that it would not be a bad upgrade considering what my plans are.

And for sure, if I was struggling with performance I see no issue pushing that CPU a bit further, from memory that unit wasn't amazing but still had more headroom for clocking it a bit further.

 

[oweneades]

If you can try and stick a cheap 2600K or 3770K in as well. Whilst it won't alleviate the bottleneck fully the extra threads will certainly help in newer titles.

 

[BUDFORCE]

@qbazdz

Up until about 15 months ago I was using a 2600k, and a 1070 and gaming pretty well.

Those Sandybridge CPUs were so epic, I'm going to frame mine when I'm done with it, but guess what, it's still in service in my 15 year olds hand me down PC and still going strong.

Basically, if you play single player it'll be fine, you'll be able to put the graphics up quite a bit on most modern games and get a good experience.

You will get some bottlenecking yes, and whilst your maximum frames could be high, your CPU will cause minimum frames, in a game where there is a lot of action etc, or a short burst of calculations can cause a bit of almost stutter like slowdown. It'll be fine for single player, the reason I upgraded is if you need to crank out a stable 140 FPS in a competitive type game then no, they simply don't cut the mustard these days.

 

[Tommy_Here]

My brother has a i7-2600 none K version which boosts to 4.1ghz with a Titan Xp overclocked ( 2017 full fat gp102 ) and was a good upgrade from his 980 Ti...it does the job yes but there's definitely a bottleneck even at 1440p.

Go for it, you'll definitely see an increase and try clocking the 2500k more

 

[Scania]

I’ve got a 4790K and a 1080ti (MSI Lightening X) and at 4K it still cuts the mustard for me in most games, I just either lower settings or drop to 1440p as & when I get performance dips in more intense titles.

My nephew has a 9900K and I tried my 1080ti in his system and was very surprised to see it’s not that much faster than my 4790K at stock , roughly a 10% average improvement in fps, and when I overclock it (the 4790K) to 4.8Ghz the difference is negligible.

It put me off shelling out for a new board, RAM & CPU for sure!