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Ivy or Sandy

juno_first

juno_first

juno_first

Soldato
Joined
18 Apr 2003
Posts
2,686
Location
England
Whats best for gaming? Looking at Crysis3, GTA5 on a 1080p 60hz TV best IQ / future proofing.

My brother is finally upgrading his old bulldozer, he just got a GTX680 & intends on getting another 680 one day, so...

The budget is about £500 for CPU, mobo, cooler.
He already has 8GB xms1600 RAM & could get faster memory later if necessary.

Don't know whether go Sandybridge 2011 on X79 or the new Ivybridge 1155 on Z77. Online benchmarks often show the Ivy to be faster than Sandy, but quad channel memory & 2x16 PCIe sound better?

Is 2x16 lanes PCIe essential for 2 graphics cards now or in the future?

Option 1:
Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz (Sandybridge-E) Socket LGA2011
ASRock X79 Extreme7 Intel X79 (Socket 2011) DDR3 Motherboard

Option 2:
Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155
ASRock Z77 Fatal1ty Professional Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard

We're still reading reviews of motherboards so the above options are very open to change atm. Its just a lot of benchmark reviews show conflicting results for Ivybridge vs Sandybridge.
Oh, it will definitely be overclocked as far as it will go.

thanks
 
Unless the upgrade is absolutely needed i would wait now a few months for haswell.

But buying now i would get a 3570k for gaming. No need for the extra expense of an i7 setup.
 
Yeah we're thinking i5 as best bang for buck and splurging on the GPU's.
It's just is 2x8 lanes OK or would pci3 make up for it.
Would 2x680 bottleneck an i5.
 
If you going to dual GPU you might as well get 2 *7970's, an Ivy i5 and something like a K2 or a custom loop.

Some games the i5 will be bottlencecked in when running everything at max with a 120hz monitor or 3 displays etc because the game is poorly coded, ie extremely single thread heavy.
 
Max budget is now £650 for CPU, cooler, motherboard & RAM.
Already have a GTX680 & intend on getting another next month. Selling current 1600 RAM.
Still a bit confused whats better 1155 or 2011. Especially future proofing as in a couple of years just needing a new GPU.

Thinking this kit ATM:

Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz (Sandybridge-E) Socket LGA2011
Asus Rampage IV Formula Intel X79 (Socket 2011)
Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB (4x2GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual/Quad Channel
Corsair Hydro H60 V2 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
 
KingBrian said:
I think you should go with an i5, or if you have the patience, wait for haswell.
Click to expand...

That's probably a good idea with essentially building a new rig, but he won't wait 6 months & his current micro AMD board is only single PCIe.

He's complaining about Crysis2 dropping to 45fps at max IQ (no AA) 1080p with a Bulldozer at 4.5ghz/2000mem, GTX680. Would an i5 or i7 improve the minimum fps? Or only another GPU would cure that..

ta
 
Haswell seems to be a low power CPU with better integrated graphics to compete with Trinity. Not a monster CPU for gaming.

What i'm about to say may be blasphemous to most folk, but what about that CPU begining with the letter 'A' ?
The CPU with 8 cores & not 4+4 fake cores that games don't use. Rather than i5 at least?
A lot of benchmarks show it praise & some downright disrepect it.
Whats the score?
 
Had go with socket 2011. Just upgraded from Amd 8350 to a intel 3930k and the difference is amazing. Maybe go for the 3820 i7 and the upgrade path for ivy bridge E chip later.
 
Yeah, core for core Intel is quicker but a £450 6 core Intel is way over budget.

Heres hoping new games start multi-threading better:
AMD FX-8350 Vishera 8 Core 4.0GHz £150
Asus Crosshair V Formula AMD 990FX £160
Corsair Vengeance RED 8GB 2x 4GB 2133mhz £55
Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SATA 2.5" 6Gb/s Solid State Drive £80
Corsair Hydro H80i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler £77

Some prices are from a shop only 5miles away, unless OCUK price match.
There are 10 days until the build so the parts may change yet. It was either this or a 3820 on 2011 to get 2x16 PCIe, the AMD does 2x16 too.

With AMD im concerned that if it wont overclock near 5ghz then the memory wont be fully exploited if at 2400 & the minimum fps may be impacted with 2x680.
 
Is his bulldozer struggling? Really now is not the best time to upgrade. You'd be better waiting for a new platform to hit and then catch the bargains as prices fall.

I'd also be a lot less concerned about 2 x 16x PCI-E, Quad Core memory, Memory Speed on a single GTX680 @ 1080p. All these things make very small differences to a gaming system at a fairly standard resolution. The biggest difference would come from a second card and maybe a bigger overclock on the processor, both of which can be done for a lot less than £500.

Processor upgrades for a pure gaming system rarely make sense, it is a bit different if things like encoding, folding etc are involved.
 
Yeah the current Bulldozer is struggling at 4.5ghz & the board has only 1 PCIe so need a new system for SLI anyway.
E.g on Cinibench my 6year old quad G0 at 3.9, 1042 mem scores 4.36 but the Bulldozer at 4.45, 1967 mem scores 3.6.

Torn between 3820 on X79 or 8350 on 990FX.
 
No brainer x79 Quad channel mem future proof for Ivy bridge-E chip coming Q4 this year. Plus you can still clock them to 4.5/5Ghz which would blow 8350 out the water.

Here a system that would perform well

Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz £224.99
Gigabyte X79-UP4 Intel X79 £209.99
Kingston HyperX Genesis 8GB (4x2GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit £59.99
Corsair Hydro H80i
Total 583.34
 
Decision just been made as he cant wait & he's getting a piledriver tomorrow with a double rad intending to get 5ghz.
I think a 3930k on 2011 would be great but thats just a loada dosh.

I have the task of jerry rigging his current case to fit this rad too lol. I'll let you know how it goes, maybe post some nerd porn pics too of a butchered case lol.
 
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