Looking for a bit of advice on upgrading :)

Greenboi

Greenboi

Greenboi

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Hey all,

Im getting that itch again to upgrade the PC! Current system is a Q9550 @ 3.8ghz, 4gb ram, GTX 285 @ stock (doesnt like overclocking at all, for some reason) and mobo is a P5Q-E.

I do want to fully upgrade the PC at some point to a P8P67 Pro with i5 2500k etc, but for now i was thinking of grabbing myself 2x MIS 6950's and shader unlocking them then overclocking them, and a Coolermaster Silent Pro Gold 700W Power Supply to run them.

A few things thats putting me off though, is that my board (and i think the P8P67 Pro) run crossfire in 8x/8x...im a bit of a crossfire/sli newbie so dont really know if this matters? any info on this would be great!

Also, will that PSU be enough to run both cards and the rest of the PC? Only have the one HDD and DVD drive along with board / cpu obviously.

And i guess the last thing is, is it worth the upgrade from a GTX 285 @ 1920 x 1080.

Thanks in advance :)
 
Contrary to what others may suggest, x8/x8 has zero performance loss from x16/x16. Don't worry about it.

I'm not sure about the quality of the Coolermaster Silent Pro- I'm a bit of a Corsair fanboy as far as these things go, but provided it's a good quality PSU, I believe 700W should be fine, although I'd be tempted to push to 750. Corsair and XFX are the best trusted names, as they simply rebadge Seasonic units, which are known for their reliability and performance. OCZ are popular around here as they tend to be a little cheaper.

As for whether it's worth it, that's another matter. Certainly CF'd "6970s" will give you about 3 times the FPS of the 285, but I can't imagine it's giving you any slowdowns at the moment. The GTX 285 is roughly on par with the GTX 460 768MB, so I'm not really sure if it's worth it, unless you're desperate to max out settings on Crysis or Metro 2033.

I feel you're more likely bottlenecked by the CPU, which of course would need upgrading to the i5-2500K (for roughly the same price as 2x6950 actually), but obviously only you can test which is holding you back.
 
Greenboi said:
And i guess the last thing is, is it worth the upgrade from a GTX 285 @ 1920 x 1080.
Click to expand...

That depends, does it let you play everything you want to at top settings? If not then the crossfire cards will give you a performance gain. Why not look for some benchmarks for the games that you play?
 
Disco Boy said:
That depends, does it let you play everything you want to at top settings? If not then the crossfire cards will give you a performance gain. Why not look for some benchmarks for the games that you play?
Click to expand...

Im finding its starting to struggle really at max settings in some games, also im thinking for future titles Crysis 2 / BF3 / Skyrim etc.

Im really sat on the fence on this one!
 
If it's struggling just at max settings, why not go half way- buy yourself a single 6950 2GB and flash it to a 6970? It'll still be a big performance jump (67% increase in DX10 Crysis, nearly 100% increase in DX11 Metro 2033), and should be plenty enough to max all your games.

I'm not convinced you'll need a second one, but if you do, you'll be able to simply buy another one later, at a lower cost, without having lost anything by buying a single one first.
 
If you're only playing games on a single monitor setup with 1920 x 1080 resolution you won't need to crossfire 6950's. The card you have is roughly equal to my card (GTX 460 768MB version) and I run games at max settings without a hitch. The only thing I can't do is turn the AA up to 16x etc which isn't a big deal for me though. So it's most likely your CPU holding you back at the moment.

So a 6950 flashed to a 6970 will be more than enough for your needs and if for some reason you feel like you need more FPS and performance then you can get another and crossfire but it's better to just buy one for now.

And despite what some people think, running two cards 8x/8x will have no effect on the performance of the cards. Although I would stay away from Asus boards, they're not very stable with Sandybridge. I'd look for a MSI or Gigabyte board instead.

I'd also go for a slightly higher PSU just incase, maybe a 750W or higher.

I was in a similiar position to you, although I went from a Q6600 with 8400GS to a i5 2500k and GTX 460 so it was a insane difference (although I've only just got into PC gaming). A few days ago I was thinking about getting a single 2GB 6950 but cause I'm only running a single monitor setup, my GTX 460 is more than capable for my needs, I don't see the point in paying £200+ for an extra few FPS and the ability to go a bit higher with the AA settings. So I'm holding off now and seeing what BF3 will run like on my system before I think about upgrading my GPU.
 
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I wouldn't say so. Might need someone to clear that up, I don't fully understand cpu/gpu bottlenecking

Wheres the proof they're not stable with SB?

I have a p8p67 deluxe and it's been totally fine. Asus are getting bad words becuase of the fact they've sold a lot more tha Gigabyte and MSI so there is more room for negative feedback
 
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ewarwoowar said:
I wouldn't say so. Might need someone to clear that up, I don't fully understand cpu/gpu bottlenecking
Click to expand...

Bottlenecking is essentially the idea that your system is limited by its slowest part. Naturally, that's normally the hard drive (even with SSDs!), but when everything is cached into RAM as is done with games, it becomes a matter of CPU vs GPU (even DDR2 RAM is fast enough that you don't need to take it into account).

This means that your actual FPS is basically the minimum out of whatever your CPU gives you, and whatever your GPU gives you. However, games are so GPU-dependant nowadays that even a Q6600 at stock can manage about 70FPS in Crysis, so unless your graphics card(s) can do more than that between them, a stock Q6600 won't struggle too much.
 
I think i may wait and see how Crysis 2 performs on my current pc before deciding on two cards or one.

Thanks for all your help guys :)
 
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