New system - Don't know what to do

Thesnipergecko

Thesnipergecko

Thesnipergecko

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Thinking of the future.

I don't know whether to get:

  • i7 5930k or i7 5960x (6 or 8 core)
  • 980 Sli or 970 Sli

Aiming to get a 4k gaming rig. Will the 5960X be out of date by the time games are utilizing 8 cores? There is a massive price difference.

Any help appreciated.
 
The 8 core won't be out of date by the time it's fully supported.

Six core support is almost the norm now and the Westmere Xeons and the 980/990X are far from what I would consider to be out of date.

TBH the only thing that will quickly be out of date will be the GPUs. 4gb in my humble opinion is not going to be enough as we go into the future. The new consoles have a unified chunk of memory, but 2gb of the 8gb goes to the system and the rest (up to 6gb) goes to the graphics subsystem.

This is why the last couple of games (Titanfall is one I mention here) use quite a chunk of vram. Even more so when you go 4k.

I wanted my rig to be 4k ready so I went with two Titan Blacks. Yeah, they may be a few % slower than the 980 and more expensive but I get to sit and laugh at the 980, given mine has more vram.

Nvidia are really, really tight with vram and always have been. My 295s had 768mb or so each and as soon as BF3 came out they were turned into very pretty paper weights.

So, I would pick the CPU you want (only you can decide on that) and for now go with a couple of cheaper cards (970s or 290s would be perfect IMO) and then wait for the real Maxwell cards (980ti? Titan 2?) and then invest in those.

That means IMO avoiding the 980 as it's not what I would call a reasonably priced stop gap. Of course, you could invest in a pair of Titan Black like I did, but with Maxwell 980ti or whatever it's called being reasonably close it may be a mistake.

I bought mine a good three months before Maxwell mid range came out, so I don't regret it at all. They have more than enough horse power for any game I throw at them, regardless of the few % loss they apparently have in benchmarks vs the 980.

If you want vram on Nvidia be prepared to pay for it. They're not stupid they're a very clever and shrewd corporation. They don't ever give away anything unless you pay for it, and they want you coming back.
 
As mentioned in the Titanfall thread though, it is not "using" the Vram, just reserving it. You can only say a game uses the Vram if stuttering occurs once it's full. Some people had that happen at 4k, but titanfall uses 4gb at 1080p.

It's just a badly optimized game.
 
Make said:
As mentioned in the Titanfall thread though, it is not "using" the Vram, just reserving it. You can only say a game uses the Vram if stuttering occurs once it's full. Some people had that happen at 4k, but titanfall uses 4gb at 1080p.

It's just a badly optimized game.
Click to expand...

They're all badly optimised, though.

And they will remain that way all the time the consoles exist and are the main source of revenue.

So we just have to live with the fact that something like the Titan Black could actually put out photo realistic graphics if it were optimised to the full. But it isn't, and it never will be because the consoles come first.

Sad fact is this...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-future-proofing-your-pc-for-next-gen

That basically to build a decent future gen PC you need to match the consoles as closely as you can.

It'll never change. The PC just isn't a big enough platform or source of revenue to make it worth developing solely for. And that's not going to change as we go into the future.
 
Thanks for all the feedback, it's certainly given me something to think about.

it seem's it might be worth holding out a while longer to see where the next gengeration of GPU's goes to compete with the console market and VRAM needs.
 
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