i7 920 Upgrade Path

[AiiR]

So it's my birthday soon, and after much deliberation, I've decided to celebrate it early. So I'm investing in a new system for Battlefront in November.

I currently have an i7 920 overclocked to 3.8GHz running on an msi x58m. The chip doesn't seem to like doing more than 3.8, as it was highly unstable. Whether that's my settings and inexperience, the cooling, or just a duff chip - I'm not entirely sure. It's under a Corsair H60 so that should be fine for more than what I'm currently getting, but I've not been able to achieve it.

With Skylake right around the corner, I'm looking towards that as my next port of call. However, it's a case of what my budget allows, as I also want to drop a sizable amount of a capable graphics card.

The way I see it, I have 3 options:

1) Keep my current setup, spending more on a better card (GTX 970)
2) Keep the motherboard, upgrade to a Xeon 6 core and clock it up
3) Upgrade to Skylake, with a mid level card (GTX 960ish)

Thoughts? I also have an i7 950 laying around spare. Is it likely that this will be able to clock higher than the 920?

 

[AiiR]

Currently running a 7870.

Budgets probably about £600, which needs to include a corsair 240 case.

 

[AiiR]

Remember that your x58 motherboard and any Xeon you'd buy are completely out of warranty. If either fails you've thrown money away.

I think this is whats sticking with me most, dropping a Xeon in it then splashing my budget on a new gpu only to have the mobo fail after a couple of months due to age.

is PCie3 going to be something I'd miss? I'm not too fussed about the additional new features as I'll just be gaming. However if its something thats required for a present day high end card, then it'd be something to consider.

 

[AiiR]

Option 2 with Xeon 6 core (shouldn't cost much more than £50-60) and graphics card upgrade - should see you good for some time to come and give you the needed performance to run the latest games & software.

skylake you'll need to replace motherboard, CPU and graphics card which will significantly increase required budget

This is what I'm pretty much doing. From the reviews, there's not much reason for me to move to anything more than a 5650 just for gaming. All in, the upgrade is going to cost me about 30 quid after I sell off my current i7 - great value!

Going to push the rest of my budget into a high end graphics card, new case and a new cpu cooler (Thinking H100 or thereabouts).