thinking about upgrades.... am i crazy?

Sasso

Sasso

Sasso

Soldato
Joined
7 Dec 2007
Posts
3,939
Location
Swansea, Wales
right so i've upgraded a load of stuff already but thinking about morreeee!!!

currently have:

i7 920@4GHz
6GB corsair dominator
asus p6t deluxe v2
TRUE-120 + 2xviper 120 fans

128gb m4 ssd
7970 3GB
raven rv03 (the graphite one not gold :P )
etc...
etc....

and this is what i'm thinking:
9ldi83.jpg


want to clock high but also don't want to set the pc on fire. been looking and it seems to be pot luck with the ivybridge depending on clocks and volts (like most other chips to be fair)

would like to hit 5GHz but think i would be happy with 4.6-4.7....

am i crazy?
 
Personally don't see the point of upgrading from what you've got already. Where do you feel your system lacks performance or is this just an itch to upgrade to some new tech? At 4GHz your cpu is still very good and you won't see a huge difference with Ivy Bridge in most everyday situations or gaming.
 
mostly just the itch to be honest. had it for what... coming up to 3 years now? one of the few original parts still left over from my pc xD only thing older that's still in it is the thermaltake toughpower 750W PSU that i've had for about 5-6 years xD

want new toys mostly xD
 
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Hell of a lot of money for not much extra performance really. Seriously, i'd skip the current gen of CPU's as yours is still damn good. Wait for Haswell and see what that brings.
 
If you're itching to spend that amount of money, for no other reason than to spend money, then there are a whole lot of charities who could make better use of it :mad:
 
Got the same CPU as yourself and whilst I do not have the GPU power you do (I am thinking about 6970CF or 680/7970) I don't think I am going to upgrade the CPU/mobo/RAM combo for quite some time.

As above, I think it would be a waste. Yes you are crazy :D


I would say if it is an itch - how about a new monitor be it 120Hz or 1400p or 1600p?? Or peripherals/sound/headphones etc....

I just think a CPU upgrade from that is not worth it unless you are doing some serious CPU intensive work (in which case you would probably have an nvidia GPU if it was graphics intensive).

My 2cents (pence). SSD was the best thing you've done to your rig I bet you would agree :)

GZA
 
well i had just bought myself a 27" asus monitor a few months back to replace my 5 year old 22" sammy. love the difference going up to 1080p and LED... colours are sooo pretty.

also recently bought some carcharais head set, goes nicely with my asus zonar dx (using the unified drivers v1.5x) got a tidy logitech g510 and cyborg rat 5 mouse which i love.

GZA,.. yea i had a 6950 which i unlocked to 6970 and then got this 7970.... to be fair i'm thinking about selling both and going to the 680 as i seems to be out performing it from what i've heard. if i sell both it will pretty much cover the cost of the 680.

yea the SSD was a massive improvement! boot time down to 30secs from like a min and a half or something?! also using the intel rapid storage drivers and disabling the marvell controllers knocked off some time! was about 10 seconds where marvell was looking for devices during boot.


lol jony xD to be honest i was a lil drunk when i wrote this xD


so when is the next cpu gen going to be out? not till atleast Q4 this year i imagine... probably even later....

mostly this pc has just been used for gaming (not very cpu intensive :P ) but i have also done quite a bit of video encoding which maximises everything.

I have a new job now involving computer modelling which is INCREDIBLY cpu intensive (no CUDA version yet of the software) so i'm going to be using my home pc to run simulations as well as the pc's in work. these simulations can take seconds... hours.... weeks!!!!! so it's uselful to have every bit of processing power i can get.... granted i doubt i'll be running the ones that take dayyysssss to run but for ones that may take 12 hours on the work machines.. it would be nice to remote into my home pc and set it up to run there can get it much faster :P


shashman, thanks for your helpful incite.. fyi i already sponsor my friends when doing charitable events, i also do volunteer work in 2 different places... i'm not spending the cash "for the sake of spending cash"... like most people on here i consider computing a hobby! i thoroughly enjoy taking apart and building pcs. i have had the core of this pc for several years now and fancy a new overclocking challange... because it's what i enjoy. my last upgrade when i bought my ssd, case, gpu and braided cables i took 2 days taking everything apart... cleaning... and putting it back together then way I wanted it to be.. i could have done it in 30 mins... but i enjoy it and love the tinkering (plus i had to file down a pci-e plug to make it fit in the gpu xD)

also i would be selling my old kit to mates who are still running C2D machines for cheap so i'm not the only one getting new stuff :)
 
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No point in replacing a 7970 with a 680, you won't even notice the difference. What's the point anyway as all PC games are Xbox ports which hardly need the power. My 480 will do me nicely for another 2 years :)
 
IvanDobskey said:
No point in replacing a 7970 with a 680, you won't even notice the difference. What's the point anyway as all PC games are Xbox ports which hardly need the power. My 480 will do me nicely for another 2 years :)
Click to expand...

well i've been getting some issues with the 7970... if i have a chrome window open with a flash element to it (youtube etc...) the GPU settings bug out and get stuck on 501MHz even when trying to play a game. i've had to resort to, for example, loading up bf3, waiting for the game to fully load and then closing chrome (or atleast everything but facebook and battlelog.. and ofc these forums ;P) to make sure i get the full clocks.

also when ever i open/close a page with a flash element i get a single screen rip (across both monitors)... yes this isn't hindering any performance but it's getting annoying as **** :p
 
Have you thought about a GTX670 if you want to make the switch to nvidia? It performs about in par with your current 7970 and is roughly only 7% slower than a 680 @stock settings and when overclocked will at least match if not surpass it.

I wouldn't bother with switching to Ivy Bridge, hold in for Haswell or perhaps IB-Express.

If you do stick with skt1366, I would though get some more RAM. It won't help with gaming but will improve video encoding and modelling etc .Could grab two kits of the Samsung Green (2x4GB), and just install 3 modules so running 12GB in triple channel mode.

Also, I realise your motherboard doesn't have Sata 6Gb/s but 30 seconds to.boot with an M4 seems rather slow. My old Samsung F3 mechanical drive was able to boot into Windows 7 in 35-40 seconds and my Corsair Force 3 only takes 12 seconds (again both on sata 3Gb/s). Have you enable ahci in the bios?
 
i think part of the boot time is that my 2TB drive is on it's last straw and it pauses on the detecting drives on that drive for a couple of secs as i hear it dying on the inside :P also duno if this affects the boot time but the xonar card turns on and off twice i think (can hear the amp click).

yea i have achi enabled as my storage mode. i think the longest single part of the boot time is straight after turning on., takes about 5secs or so for post to come up on screen.

yea i was looking at the GTX670... but im thinking if it's only a little bit behind the 680.. after a few driver releases the performance of the 680 might be unlocked a bit further (think similar thing happened with the 5xx series getting like a 40% increase in games or something silly according to a mate)
 
Get a new 2TB drive then :P instead of wasting your cash on this upgrade because tbh it will be a marginal upgrade apart from in certain applications. Better off waiting.

What I would do:

Get new 2TB drive, or a 3TB to replace your dying one.
Maybe get the H80, if your cooler isn't up to scratch.
Save the rest for Haswell :D
And if you must have a 670 then make sure you sell your 7970 haha (don't bother with a 680!)
 
meh might just go crossfire xD probably the only real increase in anything i'll see :P get the FPS a bit more stable xD
 
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