My new £1000 upgrade - need confirmation

chriso20

chriso20

chriso20

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Joined
13 Apr 2013
Posts
10
Hi All,

Looking at the following to upgrade my PC:

  • FX-6 6300 overclocked to 4.4ghz
  • 16gb 1600Mhz TeamGroup Elite Ram (dual channel - 2x8gb)
  • Asus 990FX Sabertooth AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+)
  • Gigabyte HD 7970 GHz Edition (3GB GDDR5)
  • Corsair Professional series HX+ 850W '80+ Gold' PSU
  • P280 Antec tower
Total (inc VAT) £1035

to go with my existing Vertex 4 SSD, 27" + 24" Dell monitors and XFI fatality sound card.

I'm going to be playing at 2560x1440 wherever possible - can anyone suggest any changes to this system and/or whether my gaming at 2560x1440 on high/ultra is a dream?

Thanks in advance,
Chris
 
 
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[TW]Sponge;24116704 said:
This would be better imo. Any reason you've gone AMD for the processor?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7970 Windforce 3X 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Crysis 3 & Bioshock PC Games £319.99
1 x Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £257.99
1 x Corsair Obsidian 650D Gaming Midi Tower - Black £149.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £136.99
1 x XFX 750W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Silver' Power Supply £83.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9) £53.99
Total : £1,017.94 (includes shipping : £12.50).

Click to expand...

Good start but cooler?

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 670 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with FREE Assassin's Creed III & FTP Currency £305.99
1 x Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £257.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £112.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance C70 Midi Tower Gaming Case - GunMetal Black £109.99
1 x XFX 750W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Silver' Power Supply £83.99
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £59.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (CML8GX3M2B1600C11) £43.99
Total : £989.93 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 
 
If you can find the extra £130 from your OP, this would be a good shout:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - OEM £257.99
2 x MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III Boost Edition 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **NEW REVISION** with Crysis 3, Farcry3, Shogun2, Dirt Showdown & Bioshock PC Games £233.99 (£467.98)
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £112.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance C70 Midi Tower Gaming Case - GunMetal Black £109.99
1 x XFX 750W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Silver' Power Supply £83.99
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £59.99
1 x Avexir Core Blue Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16000904G-2CW) - Blue Light £40
Total : £1,162.26 (includes shipping : £24.45).

 
Thanks for the feedback guys! I was going AMD as I thought as I'm going to mainly be using it to play games - I don't need an absolute beast of a CPU. Wrong? That was me penny pinching a little if I'm honest.

Cooler I picked out was the 'mount doom' or something like that, looks like the black pipes out the back of a fridge and almost the same size as one :/

Also, thanks for the suggestion of a 670 doomedSpeed - but I've read that gaming at a high resolution requires a lot of GPS ram and 2gb would bottleneck (3gb might still bottleneck, but 4gb+ cards get expensive quickly!)

Also trying to avoid SLI snips86x - would rather pay extra for a card now and have SLI as a cheap upgrade later :)
 
Last edited:
chriso20 said:
Thanks for the feedback guys! I was going AMD as I thought as I'm going to mainly be using it to play games - I don't need an absolute beast of a CPU. Wrong? That was me penny pinching a little if I'm honest.

Cooler I picked out was the 'mount doom' or something like that, looks like the black pipes out the back of a fridge and almost the same size as one :/

Also, thanks for the suggestion of a 670 doomedSpeed - but I've read that gaming at a high resolution requires a lot of GPS ram and 2gb would bottleneck (3gb might still bottleneck, but 4gb+ cards get expensive quickly!)

Also trying to avoid SLI snips86x - would rather pay extra for a card now and have SLI as a cheap upgrade later :)
Click to expand...

What resolution is 'high'? I game at 2560x1440 and 2Gb is fine for me.
 
Clav said:
What resolution is 'high'? I game at 2560x1440 and 2Gb is fine for me.
Click to expand...

Exactly. 2gb may be exhausted over 3 screens but if you just use 1 2gb is perfectly fine.

i have a 2.5gb card and the highest I've measured in games (far cry 3 @ 1080) is 1.3Gb.

Its a tough choice between the 7950 & 7
670 though but don't let Vram be an issues, because its not.
 
chriso20 said:
Thanks for the feedback guys! I was going AMD as I thought as I'm going to mainly be using it to play games - I don't need an absolute beast of a CPU. Wrong? That was me penny pinching a little if I'm honest.

Cooler I picked out was the 'mount doom' or something like that, looks like the black pipes out the back of a fridge and almost the same size as one :/

Also, thanks for the suggestion of a 670 doomedSpeed - but I've read that gaming at a high resolution requires a lot of GPS ram and 2gb would bottleneck (3gb might still bottleneck, but 4gb+ cards get expensive quickly!)

Also trying to avoid SLI snips86x - would rather pay extra for a card now and have SLI as a cheap upgrade later :)
Click to expand...

I completely see where you are coming from but if you spend 1k on an AMD rig and 1k on an Intel rig, the performance of the Intel will always be better than the AMD. Trust me, I'm there now.

AMD maybe cheaper, but if you are spending that amount of money on a PC to play games on, you may as well get the parts which are going to do a better for the same price.

3gb VRAM will only benifit if you are gaming on multiple monitors, a single monitor at 2560x1440, as Clav mentioned, will be fine with 2gb. Value for money is on the 7950, but 7970's are still great.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 7970 Windforce 3X 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with Crysis 3 & Bioshock PC Games £319.99
1 x Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £269.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £112.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance C70 Midi Tower Gaming Case - GunMetal Black £109.99
1 x XFX 750W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Silver' Power Supply £83.99
1 x Avexir Core Blue Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16000904G-2CW) - Blue Light £59.99
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £59.99
Total : £1,033.43 (includes shipping : £13.75).



I've come up with this as your budget has been set at 1k, may as well use it all hey!! This will also last you a good number of years to come and at the same price as your AMD in the OP, it's instantly 100x better. Should also mention that 16gb in gaming will make no difference, 8 is the sweet spot currently.
 
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guy is a gamer, why bother with 3770k?? Unless future-proofing is the case... but then socket 2011 would be needed for this.

YOUR BASKET
2 x Gigabyte ATi Radeon HD 7950 Windforce 3X 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £251.99 (£503.98)
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £112.99
1 x XFX 750W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Silver' Power Supply £83.99
1 x Phanteks PH-TC14PE CPU Cooler - Black (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £69.98
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB2133C11DC) £43.99
Total : £1,007.52 (includes shipping : £10.50).



Pick a case urself..

FPS wise this setup will beat everything above.
 
The 3770k does add a performance increase over the 3570k in games, despite the only difference being Hyperthreading. Since the socket is dead, it would seem pointless to get the 3570k on his budget when he only needs the major parts, not an entire rig. Games like BF3 will benefit from HT, despite it not being fully utilised.

Also the spec you've got there Lazder, he doesn't want SLI:

chriso20 said:
Also trying to avoid SLI snips86x - would rather pay extra for a card now and have SLI as a cheap upgrade later :)
Click to expand...

The 3770k specs above will be fine.
 
snips86x said:
The 3770k does add a performance increase over the 3570k in games, despite the only difference being Hyperthreading. Since the socket is dead, it would seem pointless to get the 3570k on his budget when he only needs the major parts, not an entire rig. Games like BF3 will benefit from HT, despite it not being fully utilised.

Also the spec you've got there Lazder, he doesn't want SLI:



The 3770k specs above will be fine.
Click to expand...

Please provide proof that 3770k is substantially better than 3570k in bf3 or indeed any games... I mean 3-5 fps does not count.

I dont have a SLI in my spec, I have crossfire :rolleyes:

If he does not want a crossfire then he can take away 1 GPU for my setup and have this ;

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte ATi Radeon HD 7950 Windforce 3X 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £251.99
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77X-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £112.99
1 x XFX 750W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Silver' Power Supply £83.99
1 x Phanteks PH-TC14PE CPU Cooler - Black (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £69.98
1 x GeIL EVO Leggera 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (GEL38GB2133C11DC) £43.99
Total : £754.93 (includes shipping : £10.00).



Near identical fps performance in games to other 7950 setups above.. but just quite a bit cheaper.

As I mentioned above, if OP wants future proofing then 2011 would be the way to go...
 
I didn't say anything about substantial, I just said a performance increase. You can future proof on the 3770k also. Just because you cannot upgrade the CPU, doesn't mean you cannot upgrade the rest as and when it's needed. A 3770k with 8GB's RAM and a 7970, will keep him going for a good number of years. If it starts to struggle, add RAM & another graphics card or another SSD if needed.
 
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