Spec me a few bits please.
- Thread starter infernox
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1440p @ 120Hz? You'll be so very, very GPU bound. An 8320 with a 290 will still be GPU bound in most games, especially if the 8320 is a decent clocker.
Edit: Intel may be the best but at your budget the name of the game is compromise and to drive that screen you need lots of GPU grunt so that leaves you less budget for CPU. Ideally it'd be nice to have a 4670k to go with a 290, but that'll put you a fair bit over budget. If you've already got an SSD then use that, an evo would be nice but not as important as other things. Had you no SSD then I'd be torn, they're awesome but would leave you struggling elsewhere in the budget.
Edit: Intel may be the best but at your budget the name of the game is compromise and to drive that screen you need lots of GPU grunt so that leaves you less budget for CPU. Ideally it'd be nice to have a 4670k to go with a 290, but that'll put you a fair bit over budget. If you've already got an SSD then use that, an evo would be nice but not as important as other things. Had you no SSD then I'd be torn, they're awesome but would leave you struggling elsewhere in the budget.
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AMD build to look at.
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI Radeon R9 290 "BF4 Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £335.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x ASRock 990FX Extreme3 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £90.98
1 x Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler £17.99
Total : £578.45 (includes shipping : £11.25).
This is with a 290 and a cheaper aftermarket cooler so you can still OC.
The board I think will also allow you to crossfire/SLI in the future which some of the cheaper ones won't.
This. Only swap the ref 290 for a custom cooled one, and stick yourself 8gb of ram in. You should be able to sell your old ram and CPU to help cover some of the cost of going overbudget
And if possible stretch to a better cooler.
Does your current Mb support the FX 8320 ?
If it does I'm not sure would be spending £90 on EOL socket. Seems a bit of a waste.
I would be temped just to buy the 290 ad 8 gig and memory and see how you go from there. Combined they should give you a good speed bump and you can always add CPU/MB if you still not happy with the speed.
If it does I'm not sure would be spending £90 on EOL socket. Seems a bit of a waste.
I would be temped just to buy the 290 ad 8 gig and memory and see how you go from there. Combined they should give you a good speed bump and you can always add CPU/MB if you still not happy with the speed.
Surely my 955 will bottle neck a card like that?
Soldato
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my advice would be to grab 2x 280s, to really get the most out of that screen. or 290s even if you can stretch that far. That's if your current mb supports crossfire with atleast 8x pcie 2.0 on both cards.
if not, then grab one, and get saving for a new mb and cpu and add a second later. If it does, brill, but still save for a better cpu and mb.
Have you overclocked the phenom? 4 ghz should be attainable, and crank the cpu-nb as high as it can go.
if not, then grab one, and get saving for a new mb and cpu and add a second later. If it does, brill, but still save for a better cpu and mb.
Have you overclocked the phenom? 4 ghz should be attainable, and crank the cpu-nb as high as it can go.
Soldato
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There will always be a cpu bottleneck in some situations with any cpu and gfx card combo. It'd be better to get the graphics cards you need first as it will have the biggest impact on performance, then upgrading the platform to alleviate the bottleneck should be secondary.