Is it worth upgrading?

dhill

dhill

dhill

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I currently have the following spec PC which is mainly used for gaming:

[email protected]
GA-Z77-UD3H
Kuhler H2O 920
Sapphire 7850 OC
Kingston HyperX 8Gb 2133Mhz DDR3
Samsung 840 Pro 256Gb
Asus Xonar D2X
Coolermaster Silent Pro M2 850

I'm thinking of maybe upgrading to the following:

i7 3770k (which I would overclock)
GA-Z77X-UP7
Kingston HyperX Genisis X2 Grey Series 8Gb 1600Mhz DDR3 (9-9-9-27)
2nd Sapphire 7850 OC for Crossfire

Now the question I keep asking myself, is it really worth the expense of the upgrade? I should see a significant performance boost in games etc surely? Would you go a different route, and if so why?
 
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Maybe I should just look at upgrading the video card instead, if so what would you recommend as a jump up from the Sapphire 7850 OC?
 
Why would you be thinking of upgrading the motherboard and yet stick to Ivy Bridge? You wouldn't see significant gains from a 2500K to 3770K in gaming, so it'd be a bit of a waste of money in my view.

Two 7850s would certainly do well in games, or you could sell yours and get a 7950.
 
teppic said:
Why would you be thinking of upgrading the motherboard and yet stick to Ivy Bridge? You wouldn't see significant gains from a 2500K to 3770K in gaming, so it'd be a bit of a waste of money in my view.

Two 7850s would certainly do well in games, or you could sell yours and get a 7950.
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What would be the best motherboard/cpu upgrade in order to significant gains?

Would a single Sapphire RADEON HD 7970 OC with Boost perform better than two 7850's and/or a single 7950?
 
From a 2500K at 4.5GHz I'd say don't bother. It'd only be sensible to go for Haswell from Z77/2500K, but it wouldn't increase gaming performance a lot.

I'd get a single 7970 over 2x7850s. It'd leave you the option of a 2nd 7970 later as well.
 
That'd be too small an upgrade to be worth it given it'd not be cheap.

Just curious - why are you considering changing to slower RAM?

7850 -> 7970 GHz would be decent upgrade with leaving everything else as-is.
 
David Bisset said:
That'd be too small an upgrade to be worth it given it'd not be cheap.

Just curious - why are you considering changing to slower RAM?

7850 -> 7970 GHz would be decent upgrade with leaving everything else as-is.
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I was looking at the slower ram as the timings are better than my current ram.
 
I'm looking to get a 2nd Sapphire 7850 OC instead of getting a 7970. I'm mainly getting it because I've never had XFire before so fancy seeing that it's like. 2 x 7850 overclocked to 7870 speeds seem to be a fair bit faster than one 7970 Ghz (See here) AMD are also releasing a driver on the 31st which improves XFire pacing. A 7970 would be less hassle and you could always upgrade later but you'll get £100 for your 7850 which means you are looking at £200+ to upgrade to a 7970 Ghz. If you add another 7850 it will cost you £100 for more performance.
 
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I wouldn't bother with crossfire below a 7950. An overclocked 7970 should do about as well as 2x7850s, plus you get better memory bandwidth/size and none of the issues that can come with two cards.
 
MG42Maniac said:
I'm looking to get a 2nd Sapphire 7850 OC instead of getting a 7970. I'm mainly getting it because I've never had XFire before so fancy seeing that it's like. 2 x 7850 overclocked to 7870 speeds seem to be a fair bit faster than one 7970 Ghz (See here) AMD are also releasing a driver on the 31st which improves XFire pacing. A 7970 would be less hassle and you could always upgrade later but you'll get £100 for your 7850 which means you are looking at £200+ to upgrade to a 7970 Ghz. If you add another 7850 it will cost you £100 for more performance.
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Whats your current rig MG42Maniac?
 
I have a i5 760 @3.8 and I still can't really see the justifaction for upgrading CPU yet. I have upgraded my GPU from a 6870 to a 7950 last year though as I got a 1440p screen. I was hoping Haswell would give me a reason to upgrade but it was a little underwhelming.
 
This all makes for interesting reading, and definitely food for thought that's for sure.

Am leaning towards a 2nd Sapphire 7850 OC, especially since the 7850 overclock so well, and then upgrading my monitor to a BenQ XL2420T.

Would that be a more sensible upgrade path?
 
Two 7850s is certainly an upgrade, but bear in mind you're spending £150 to upgrade to Crossfire on a midrange card, with the limitations those come with. I'd definitely go for a single high end card in preference, but it's up to you.
 
dhill said:
Whats your current rig MG42Maniac?
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i7 920 @ 4.2GHz
GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5
6GB
Sapphire 7850 2GB OC @ 1150 core / can't remember memory.
120GB Agility 3 SSD
2TB Seagate
Asus Xonar D2X
650w Corsair PSU

I looked at upgrading to Haswell but it's not worth the mimimal performance vs cost. I also looked at getting a 7950 and OC to 7970 but the low resale value of my 7850 put me off. So, I flipped it on its head and will get another 7850 for a low price.

Actually just as I am writing this I've just had my offer on a 7850 in the MM confirmed so I'll be going XFire soon :)
 
So which 7970 is the card of choice at the moment then?

I'm looking at the following:

Sapphire VAPOR-X HD 7970 6Gb
ASUS MATRIX-HD7970-P-3GD5 3Gb
Gigabyte GV-R797TO-3GD 3Gb
Sapphire VAPOR-X HD 7970 3Gb
Sapphire RADEON HD 7970 OC with Boost 3Gb
 
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dhill said:
I was looking at the slower ram as the timings are better than my current ram.
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Given the freq difference the better timings are not likely to help that much - that'd be like 12-12-12-36 timings @ 2133 without the memory bandwidth. No idea what your current ram timings are like of course.
 
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