I suspect bottlenecking. Maybe time for an upgrade?

Jono8

Jono8

Jono8

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I don't think i am getting the best out of my new 480GTX so i am thinking about an upgrade.

Basically I have a Q9650 (@3.6GHZ) running on a Gigabyte P35C-DS3R (Bought back in June 2007! :eek: OLD!) with 4GB of DDR2 800mhz ram so I am thinking that whilst my CPU isnt exactly slow, my whole set-up is starting to show its age.

I have read many things about memory controllers e.t.c that make me worry that I could be bottlenecking my GPU.

I have been looking at the i5 2500k and i would be looking at overclocking it. I have a mind to wait to see what is round the corner but as far as i know, there is AMD bulldozer and then just the enthusiast socket 2011 sandybridge chips ( which i wouldnt really be interested in as they will no doubt be £250 +)

Now, motherboards, where do i start?! I want a Mobo that isn't going to hold anything back and enable me to get a decent OC out of the i5 (say 4.5ghz) however i don't really want to spend more than £150 on one really. I have always had Gigabyte boards since i started the whole pc building thing so any good Gigabyte boards that fall under this catagory?

I would also ideally like 8gigs of RAM or is this going to hold back overclocking?

I would be grateful for some advice as i have been out of the game for a while now :)
 
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well the good thing with i5 2500K's is you don't need to spend an arm & a leg to get a good overclocking board, thanks to the fact they only clock on the multi you can get a board good for 4.5GHz for £110 - £125, as long as it's a B3, thats pretty much all that matters.

also 8 gigs of ram ( 2x4 ) won't hold you clocking back, i use 4x2 & it hasn't impacted my ability to clock, having said that, i settled for 4.5GHz, which seems to be the average for these chips, so ive never bothered trying higher.
 
VoG said:
well the good thing with i5 2500K's is you don't need to spend an arm & a leg to get a good overclocking board, thanks to the fact they only clock on the multi you can get a board good for 4.5GHz for £110 - £125, as long as it's a B3, thats pretty much all that matters.

also 8 gigs of ram ( 2x4 ) won't hold you clocking back, i use 4x2 & it hasn't impacted my ability to clock, having said that, i settled for 4.5GHz, which seems to be the average for these chips, so ive never bothered trying higher.
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Thanks.:)

An i5 2500k setup seems like a very reasonable cost for the performance you can get, especially as it seems that 4.5GHZ is a given.

With regards to motherboards, what is the difference then between say this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-325-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1906

and this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-327-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1906

except for about £150 and 3 way sli support.

I am looking into the first one, the Gigabyte P67A-UD4-B3. Is it any good?

Also, what benefits/differences are there between dual channel and tri channel DDR 3?
 
All the Sandy Bridge chips use dual channel RAM. Triple channel is only for 1366 boards so not relevant.

I'd have thought the cheaper of those boards would be fine for you. A lot of guys on here seem to have gone for the Asus or MSI though. As pointed out above motherboard choice isn't as critical as if used to be. Overclocking happens through the CPU multiplier, and the memory controller and PCIe controller are on the processor die.
 
Blue160 said:
All the Sandy Bridge chips use dual channel RAM. Triple channel is only for 1366 boards so not relevant.

I'd have thought the cheaper of those boards would be fine for you. A lot of guys on here seem to have gone for the Asus or MSI though. As pointed out above motherboard choice isn't as critical as if used to be. Overclocking happens through the CPU multiplier, and the memory controller and PCIe controller are on the processor die.
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Ah i see. Any benefits to the MSI and ASUS ones? Why are people generally going for them?

Also, if anyone has any good reccomendations for a good 1155 CPU cooler, that would be great.
 
ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI are all solid choices as long as you get the B3 revision, but many people are starting to shy away from Gigabyte after their s1156 boards' problems with RAM. The Asus P8P67 board (the cheapest variant with all the features you want) would be the version I'd go for.

My recommendation would be the Hyper 212 Plus, because it's £20 and awesome.
 
ive got an Asus P8P67 & it's been flawless, how ever, ive got to swap it out for a B3 version at a later date, so i plan on replacing it with either a Gigabyte P67A - UD4 B3 or an MSI 67A -GD65 B3 whilst it's being swapped out.

now there's only one reason i'm changing manufacturers, & that's down to Asus's garbage customer support & notoriously slow EU RMA process, if you have a look around in the motherboards section, it's not unknown for people to be waiting 3 - 4 weeks for Asus to do there stuff, which is something to keep in mind when deciding upon your choice of mobo.

coolers, well i use a Thermalright, but tbh, i5's run pretty damn cool until you really start to push them, so again cooler choice isn't any where near as critical as it used to be unless you plan on flogging it to within an inch of it's life.
 
Thanks for all your help guys. I see the MSI board has 2 x 16x PCI Express slots which i dont think the gigabyte and asus boards of equivalant price have? Although i have heard that an 8x slot isnt such a huge bottleneck and im not even sure i will go SLI in the future.

Why are the B3 revisions so critical?
 
Jono8 said:
Why are the B3 revisions so critical?
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there's a design flaw in the chipset that affects the 3GB sata ports which can cause them to fail, there's no way to know when they'll fail, could be never, could be straight away, so Intel rectified the problem hence the B3 stepping chipset.
 
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