Do i need to look at upgrading?

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 17:11

ok, I bought the ASRock Z68 Extreme4 (first version) for my 2500k, now im thinking I might upgrade to IB when it comes out, will my motherboard support it fully (if a bios update comes out) or will I be limited, so should look at replacing motherboard soon?

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 17:26

stulid said:
What for the IB chips to come out and see if there is a BIOS update, should be

You only gain PCI-E3.0 with a newer Gen3 board, this has been tested with a 7970 and the improvements over 2.0 is negligible.

that's good to know

is there anything better than the Z68 chipsets out at the moment?

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 17:47

what about the Z77 chipsets, are they going to offer anything worthwhile with IB that my current motherboard possibly wont?

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 17:53

stulid said:
Native USB3.0 support.

I only have 1 usb 3.0 external drive.
so nothing majorly different like the lucid was with the Z68 chipset, just more SATA 3, native USB 3 and PCI-e 3?

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 17:56

and the jump to 2011 setup is expensive with little gains?

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 18:13

stulid said:
For gaming very little.

i5 2500K vs i7 3820 (cheapest chip) - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=523

but IB should be better than the 2500k?

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 18:18

stulid said:
The IGP is better, apart from that, looking at these chips,

http://cpuforever.com/intel-ivy-bridge-official-specifications-leaked/

Theres a small speed increase, some have a bit more L3 cache and some have Hyperthreading which again is pointless for gaming.

so I would be better off sticking with what I have now?

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 18:21

stulid said:
Yep, overclock it also, get it over 4.5Ghz.

its been running @ 4.6GHz now pretty much since I got it, which wasn't long after you got your Z68 Extreme 4.

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 18:24

stulid said:
Good, then you have nothing to lose sleep over.

If all you do is play games and browse the net, stick with your setup.

I recently got a BD-RE drive, so I have been having a bash with some encoding and stuff, and it seems to be pretty quick at that. just kind of fancy an upgrade, and well, there was a bit of a mess up with my graphics card, so I might have £150-£200 to play with.

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 18:27

stulid said:
Seen the 7850/7870 reviews? look interesting pricing is about £230-£270 respectively.

from another thread :

paradisiac said:
I have recently got my GTX460 swapped out for a GTX560 (the supplier had no GTX460s in stock ) but I got a call from them saying that they cannot replicate my fault, so are considering if they deem it acceptable to give my money back or return my GTX460. I explained that they had already sent me my GTX560 and I have it in my pc now so do I have to return it, to which she replied 'No, that is yours'. it puzzled me, but I wasn't prepared to argue.

so I have a nice new graphics card, but could also be getting a full or partial refund on my old card.

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 18:32

stulid said:
See what you get back then, also is the GTX560 doing ok in the games you play? do you crave higher detail settings?

settings wise it seems to handle most things maxed out (forced in NVCPL) as I can only play @ 1366x768 with vsync on (60FPS). but in some things I do get some micro stutter.

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 18:38

stulid said:
More GFX power would be good I reckon.

would it be worth it at those res though?

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 18:41

stulid said:
The native res of the LG in your sig is 1920X1080, is the TV not full HD then?

the monitor has gone to another pc

nope it would appear not. worked fine with my AMD cards, but any Nvidia card I stick on it, 1920x1080 is too big to fit on screen

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 18:48

stulid said:
Strange, try asking in the graphics card section, someone ma have an answer, never used a TV with a PC myself so zero experience.

i asked when i got my first Nvidia card a few years back, apparently its the way it scales it or something compared to AMDs. its not a problem as the picture looks pretty good, plus it means i don't need such an expensive GFX card.
i considered maybe going to 16GB RAM, going for an SSD again (moved my last one to my HTPC as i didn't really see any gains on the gamer), 3d monitor....but couldn't really see how i would benefit, so thought maybe a motherboard ready for IB, but if i don't require either, then i don't know what to do (there is a possibility our supplier might only give me credit).

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 18:53

stulid said:
Mechanical keyboard and a gaming mouse?

i have a gigabyte M6900 mouse. im not sure our suppliers have mechanical keyboards, they are more component based.

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 19:00

whilst semi on the subject, im still only on bios 1.6, is it worth upgrading to 1.7?

paradisiac · 5 Mar 2012 at 19:08

that's what it thought.
will wait and see what happens with the GTX460, but looking like motherboard aint the answer