CPU Upgrade Thoughts & Suggestions?

[SchwarzieJSY]

Hello all

I'm considering a CPU upgrade and I'd really appreciate knowing what your thoughts are?

I currently have an i7 920 which has been OC'd to 3.4Ghz.

The socket is an LGA1366 and sits on a Gigabyte x58 mobo.

I have to be honest and say that this processor runs well and I dont have any problems but I often see the CPU hit 90 to 100% when playing games (Bad Company 2 for example). Im a big fan of Battlefield so the reason why Im looking to upgrade is to prepare for the best Battlefield 3 experience I can.

What do you think, would you guys consider upgrading? What would you upgrade to? Is it even worth it as many games dont really take advantage of the multiple cores / multithreading yet? Is it a better idea to wait a while?

The PC I put together over time is only used for gaming so I wont be taking advantage of the CPU power for heavy applications etc.

My build......
Antec 1200 Case
Gigabyte EX58A_UDR3 Intel X58 Motherboard
Corsair HX 1000w PSU
Gigabyte GeForce GTX590 GPU
Intel i7 920 OC'd to 3.4GHz
3 x 2gb Corsair XMS3 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM
Corsair Hydro H60 CPU Cooler

Thanks for checking this thread out, appreciate any comments you have.

Cheers

 

[HeX]

Just OC? 920's are still awesome CPU's, and most folks got 4GHz+ out of them.

 

[setter]

+1 for overclocking the 920 a bit more, 4ghz is practically guaranteed on theese. For gaming alone, an upgrade to say an sb setup would be pointless. Also, your gpu will be bottleknecked less with a higher oc.

 

[Plec]

^ Ditto -as the other guys have said - it's still a stonking setup and the i7 920 will usually hit 4GHz with minimum fuss.

 

[SchwarzieJSY]

Great advice, thanks for taking the time to respond! I was hoping this would be the case but its always good to ask around

 

[setter]

Regarding BF3, the videos doing the rounds at the moment are reputedly being run on a system using a single gtx 580, id think with a 590 youd be well covered. Id like to think that if you can run bfbc2 ok with lots of eye candy, youll be ok. Personally ill be holding onto my sli 470's till the game is released, i play a lot of bfbc2 at the moment and the cards cope really well with it, 70-130 fps, all on high, 1920x1200 with good levels of aa/af, even as high as 32x aa.

 

[SchwarzieJSY]

Same here Setter, I love BC2 and it runs outstanding on my current set up. Just the CPU performance got my attention. Like you also mentioned before I'll hit bottlenecks with current CPU setup before my GPU really stretches it's wings. I think a step up in OC is definitely the way to go for the time being so thanks for that.

As always when buying these things, timing is a big factor so I've been thinking if now was a good time when considering prices, release schedules, improvement margin etc. I'll take another look at it closer towards the end of the year.

 

[setter]

A higher oc will certainly help with bfbc2, i had my system back at stock a few weks ago, found my cpu was severely bottleknecking the cards, (at stock, and oc'd to 750mhz). Luckily i had wrote down the settings for the cpu oc, once clocked up again, my bc2 performance was back to normal. It is a pretty demanding game cpu wise, as ive played it on sli gtx 275's, a single gtx 470 and now my sli 470's, the cpu oc'd really helped with all theese gpu configs.