Do I really need to upgrade?

[Supraphil]

My pc is aging a little and I'm just about to upgrade my sons PC from an AMD to Ivybridge. He mostly games but I do a mixture of things less gaming but still do the odd online BF3 etc.

My AMD 955BE C3 is clocked at 4.2ghz with 2750 NB and 1600 Ram on an MSI 790FX GD70 board with an MSI Hawk 6870

It plays BF3 online at medium with a solid 60 FPS, higher with vsync off. it can play on high but is slightly lower and dips occasionally.

So I could go Ivybridge, or I could go Piledriver but I've never seen a benchmark showing an overclocked 955 against piledriver etc? Would it be much faster? at stock I see it would.

Obviously Ivybridge would be better but I kind of like backing the underdog and if the performance is fine, so be it.

Opinions?

 

[opethdisciple]

Your cpu, isnt the issue in BF3. You need a faster GPU.

I'd sat 7950, 660ti, 670 or a 7970

For a cheaper upgrade you could go xfire I suppose.

 

[Supraphil]

I did think about xfire on the 6870 but couldnt find one the same, I know I can mix them but prefered to get one the same. I heard a bit about bottlenecking so wasnt sure if I could use a 7950 to its full ability.

That aside I guess the question is, would I see a big improvement over my overclocked CPU, going to a piledriver? I would have to change the MB too so Ivy keeps ringing a bell in my mind. But in all apps in Windows my PC flies... do I... dont I lol

 

[opethdisciple]

Well I had a [email protected] before I upgraded.

My 670 arrived before all my other components, so I put it in the machine along side my Qx9650. I could max out any game easily.

So it shows the bottle neck was my 5870. However, once I put my 3570k rig together, it was the minimums that raised drastically.

So basically you will see a difference with a new cpu, but only if the gpu is powerfull enough to push those high maximums.

If you have to choose get a new GPU.

 

[Kaapstad]

BF3 uses the CPU quite a bit so you really need to upgrade both the GPU and CPU for a balanced system. For a single GPU an i5 3570k is fine but with BF3 it has been found with two or more GPUs you really need an i7 to get the most out of them.

For an upgrade though an i5 3570 and single modern GPU will be fine to run BF3.

 

[~>Dg<~]

just done similar upgrade in some games that older you wont notice much difference but in modern games performance can be a lot of diffrence.

for eg in arma 2 i play dayz a lot my fps has nearly doubled from 955 - i3570k

bf3 fps isnt much great high end but minimum is better by quite a bit and not only that you seem to get better bullet reg with faster cpu

skyrim is litterally double fps


at end of day 955 is still good capable cpu but id upgrade that first before card