Time to upgrade or not?

[Boris534]

Ok so I have a Phenom II 940BE at stock 3Ghz and using a HD7970, playing games such as BF3, PlanetSide 2, FarCry 3 and Borderlands 2, all running on pretty high settings, My usual frame rate is around 35/40 (Have no idea if this is good or bad....) with some dips in high intensity scenarios.

So my question is do you recon I will see much of a difference in performance if i upgraded? or shall I stick with if it ain't broke, don't fix it?

Opinions would be great

 

[~>Dg<~]

depends on games u play

in arma 2 and skyrim fps can be as much as double

in bf3 not much at all literally few fps.

 

[random_matt]

What your expectations are depends on you and you alone, what I or anyone else thinks is respectable performance is different from everybody else. If 35/40 fps or whatever is ok with you then stick with it, if you want more then upgrade.

 

[humbug]

Ok so I have a Phenom II 940BE at stock 3Ghz and using a HD7970, playing games such as BF3, PlanetSide 2, FarCry 3 and Borderlands 2, all running on pretty high settings, My usual frame rate is around 35/40 (Have no idea if this is good or bad....) with some dips in high intensity scenarios.

So my question is do you recon I will see much of a difference in performance if i upgraded? or shall I stick with if it ain't broke, don't fix it?

Opinions would be great

35/40 FPS in BF3 on a 7970?

Thats bad, i get 60 average on Ultra preset with a 7870 at stock and a Phenom II x6 @ 4.1Ghz, 70 FPS average if i overclock the GPU and turn vSync off.

Its a hell of a bottleneck, more than i would have thought.
Can you overclock the CPU?

 

[opethdisciple]

Ok so I have a Phenom II 940BE at stock 3Ghz and using a HD7970, playing games such as BF3, PlanetSide 2, FarCry 3 and Borderlands 2, all running on pretty high settings, My usual frame rate is around 35/40 (Have no idea if this is good or bad....) with some dips in high intensity scenarios.

So my question is do you recon I will see much of a difference in performance if i upgraded? or shall I stick with if it ain't broke, don't fix it?

Opinions would be great

Be under no illusion. A 3570k (or better) will make a huge difference.

When I was building my new pc, my 670 arrived before my 3570k, so I put the 670 in to my old rig with a Qx9650 temporarily.

I was able to max out the settings at 1920x1200 and I was impressed.

However I did notice a difference in smoothness when I finally got to play BF3 on my 3570k, machine. It felt like the minimums increased.

Also basically I read recently in an article to get the most out of a high end gpu it does need a minimum of a 3570k (you could look at AMD alternatives), but the 3570k is a safe choice.

 

[Boris534]

I Have thought about overclocking the cpu, but will need to read up about and so on, I am currently running on a Pure CrossFireX 790GX Mobo, Phenom II 940BE, HD7970, 600w PSU, 2x2gb of generic ddr2 ram so will see what I can out of it and compare the differences.

 

[danny77]

I wouldn't expect too much difference with overclocking your processor to be honest it will still hold your gpu back, as mentioned above if your serious about gaming your best bet is the 3570k and then you will get the full performance from your 7970.

i was in the same boat as you mate i got phenom , bulldozer and piledriver and to be blunt there crap compared to the 3570k for gaming

By the way if you decide on overclocking your cpu i take it you have an aftermarket heatsink ?

 

[humbug]

I Have thought about overclocking the cpu, but will need to read up about and so on, I am currently running on a Pure CrossFireX 790GX Mobo, Phenom II 940BE, HD7970, 600w PSU, 2x2gb of generic ddr2 ram so will see what I can out of it and compare the differences.

DDR2? i see....

You might get 3.6Ghz on the stock cooler, anything more than that and you will need to spend £25 on a better cooler.

You will see an improvement in overclocking, but your overall rig does not look like its going to improve things much, even with overclocking.

Edit- if you have the Money it would be worth swapping your MOBO, RAM and CPU for something much newer.

For xFire an Intel 3570K will do nicely, or a 3770K probably a little better.

(danny77, don't throw adolescent fanboy jargon around, The Piledriver chips are not crap for gaming, Intel are just better for some situations, while there are others who have used both chips and say they can not tell the difference)

 

[danny77]

Hunbug have you bought the piledriver yet? i remember you saying you was getting it ages ago, and how can it be a fanboy blanket statement when i have two amd pcs and one intel ?

I'm speaking from my own personal experience

For anyone else whos not seen this review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u7wFKewAbgs

 

[humbug]

Hunbug have you bought the piledriver yet? i remember you saying you was getting it ages ago, and how can it be a fanboy blanket statement when i have two amd pcs and one intel ?

I'm speaking from my own personal experience

For anyone else whos not seen this review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u7wFKewAbgs

Did you?

I have built a few of them for other people as well as Intel rigs

I have a 2500K rig of my own as well as a Phenom II x6, and no there is no difference, at least not with any game i play and i play a lot of games including BF3 and the like.

If YOU have improvements then good for YOU, i however get the same results and spent the difference on some extra toys, good for me, and good for those with enough sense to know what they do with their computer and then to know what they will benefit from and what they will not.

Yes, i will be getting an FX-8350 when i'm good and ready, perhaps along with an 8950, or perhaps before, i'm in no rush.

 

[~>Dg<~]

depends on what games you play at end of the day

i have a phenom quad core rig at side of my 3570k

in some games its nothing in others fps is double (skyrim , arma 2 , )

so look at the games you play or will be playing and see if they benefit.

 

[Boris534]

So currently playing planetside 2, farcry 3 and borderlands 2 mostly, farcry 3 was on pretty much highest settings with good frame rate, same with borderlands 2 both running around 50-60 fps, planetside 2 is running on medium setting but seems to have a low frame rate of 30 and lower, not sure if this due to being online?

I have clocked the cpu to 3.2ghz, and it seems to run fine, going to try go to 3.6 as mentioned above, and for a cooler i'm using a coolermaster 612s.

I will play around with overclocking a little and see what improvements I can get out of it.

Im not a die hard gamer more a casual one, so I don't need to get a top end CPU, I was looking at the FX6300 being £100, (new Mobo and Ram will be purchased if a CPU is bought) is the FX6300 going to suffice or am I going to need to go for the 3570K?

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I was playing PS2 today. I have a Xeon E3 1220, which is basically a Core i5 2400, and a mate has a FX6300 running at around 4.3GHZ and we both have HD5850 1GB cards and installed the games onto our SSDs. We were on the busiest map and AFAIK it was nearly full. We were in one section which had dozens of ground and air vehicles and loads of players,and the gameplay appeared to be smooth(the frame latency seemed fine to me),and we were running the game at decent settings at 1920X1080. Another mate who had a similar graphics card, and a Athlon II X4 at around 3.2GHZ did have performance dips and had to run the game at lower settings.

 

[Boris534]

So have been playing around with CPU, and managed to get it to 3.5Ghz and stable (3.6Ghz seems to cause the system to restart), played Farcry 3 on with most setting maxed and was hitting 50FPS (about 5-6 fps better) and PS2 on the same settings as before, the frame rate was still around 30FPS, the only difference was that it didn't dip as it was before. I will try OC the cpu more tomorrow and see what I get.